San Francisco

We had a whole day in Yosemite (pronounced yos-sim-ite) today and what a beautiful place it is too. A proper national park deer trees meadows rivers waterfalls its got loads even if we never saw a bear, we headed as a group to the local village and separated, some wanted to go hiking some wanted to do other things. There was a group of us that wanted to hire a raft and float down the river through the park. We found the hire shop and found that it was $30- PER PERSON!! Plus $5.50 for a life jacket plus $5.50 for a paddle!!! Myles very much expressed his displeasure at this told them that it was a disgusting price and walked off, the rest of the group following. We headed back to the village to see if we could buy one only to find they weren't allowed to sell them as it would undermine the hire company.  Back to the river it was to have some fun without spending any money at all! We found a lovely bank and went to settle down to look up and see the beach on the other side! This was a good idea that we should ford the river to get to the other side, very carefully we waded across making very sure that all electronicles stayed above the waterline! It was a great relief to reach the bank the other side. Bags deposited we jumped in and had a long swim avoiding traffic that was the morons that actually paid for the rafts! We got bored and laid on the bank to sunbathe for a good 4 hours. We headed back to the village to get picked up by our guide and drive back to camp. Tonight was pork chops with salad and corn mash, like mashed potato but with corn. The corn mash was like a very thick couscous which should have had chopped onion and mushroom however as Myles was cooking he thought he would do it differently. Paul basted the chops in honey and BBQed them Myles fried off the mushroom and onion to go with the pork chops leaving the corn mash as, well, corn mash. The group was very pleased that it was cooked this way and we ate rather well! We headed up to the games room at the camp to have a very violent game of table tennis in which 3 balls were smashed to bits. This was rather good fun. We also had a good few games of pool and went to bed at around half 11.

 

The morning after our violent sports night and we packed up for the last time and loaded the van in the usual procedure. Jumped in and headed for San Fran. We stopped after a couple of hours for a rest stop and Liam found a drinks machine which serves 2 litre drinks for $1.49! He filled up and drank it all. After getting back on the road we had to stop 40mins later so he could have a toilet break....

A few hours later and the San Francisco skyline approached we headed over a bridge (not the golden gate) and got to our hotel. We offloaded the van did a good check to make sure we had everything and found our rooms. Only 2 mins had passed and our bags had exploded, there's clothes everywhere...

We met up downstairs and had a driving tour of the city, saw the Golden Gate Bridge and went to a mountain that overlooked the city to have lunch. Today it was sushi without the fish. Effectively rice wrapped in seaweed paper. Expressing our displeasure at the lack of flavour Myles proceeded to raid the cooler and found some meat. So he made a meat sandwich, ham wrapped in turkey wrapped in salami. It was good. Laura found some pita and filled that with air. Lunch done we headed back to the hotel and agreed to meet at 5 to get our bus to the catamaran tour! 

We got to got to the harbour had a walk around and checked in. We boarded the boat and headed straight to the buffet tables, many plates of cheese, crackers, bread, fruit and veg was consumed. We set sail (it was a sailing boat catamaran) and headed for Alcatraz to take some pictures. This done we swept past to sail under the Golden Gate Bridge! Everyone was rather hyper at this point as there were complementary drinks onboard so Myles was stocked up on coca cola and Eigor on poweraid! (In a Russian accent). What an amazing trip it was we were taking photos of each other and got a group photo done at the front, Myles Susanne Laura and Eigor were at the front of the boat as it started to get choppy as a container ship cut across our sailing path, this was very much fun until a wave engulfed Myles. On that note we ran inside for more food. We got back to the harbour and disembarked still very hyper. Got the bus back singing songs and being generally immature. The plan was to go to bed but as it was our last night we found who had the biggest room and the group piled in. Several beverages later and it was coming up for midnight so we decided to call it a day and agreed we would meet for brekkie in the morning. Morning came after a brilliant nights sleep in one of those bed things again, I have no idea why they aren't in tents? We aimed for the breakfast bar, unfortunately it was just a continental breakfast but we still had many pancakes and syrup, we said our goodbyes to the group and separated, to  watch the final of Wimbledon, delighted to see Murray win! This brings me to now where we are organising our next few days, probably without wifi until we get to Fiji so don't worry if there are no blogs for a while...

Bye for now, Myles and Laura xxx