Bula (hello) from Fiji! But first a round-up of phase 1...

We decided to stay in Monterey a couple of extra nights and look at the sea otters over and over again. In just 7 days clip had developed a kind of pigeon american twang which caused oodles of unilateral hilarity as she started throwing in words like "disoriendayded". America is an odd place. There seems to be a huge emphasis on success and displaying success in clothes, cars and personal appearance; they even employ people to go round cleaning the litter bins and polishing the streets so that the huge number of homeless poor people have somewhere nice to sleep each night. We spent a day in the uber-posh and extremely hot environs of Carmel, sunbathing on the beach and watching the surfers in the sea, then made our way back into Monterey for the Superbowl Finals night (happy hour lasted longer).

I've adjusted to the travelling life much faster than I expected I would. Our eating patterns have changed quite a bit - rather than eat at meal-times we tend to eat small amounts whenever we happen to be hungry. We keep forgetting what day it is. Working seems like a distant memory.

We took the Greyhound bus again, this time from Monterey to Los Angeles. The Greyhound bus service seems to attract a particular type of clientelle - this time we had to endure some bloke shouting about a girl being cut in half by a speeding lorry and had Mr Bubblegum Popper Champion pop-pop-popping all the way. We stupidly chose not to get off the bus at the beautiful Hollywood stop and instead arrived in downtown LA greyhound hell at 10:30pm. Some psycho asked us for money before we'd even managed to get our bags off the coach and it didn't seem like the kind of place you'd want to hang around in for very long so we splashed out on a taxi to the backpacker "paradise" known as the LA Adventurer. Hmm.. well it was the most expensive and run-down place we'd stayed at since we left home and we checked out of it so early the next morning that we reached the check-in desk at the airport 7 hours early. We checked in anyway and decided to visit Santa Monica and Venice Beach (about 20 miles up the coast) for a bit. An american couple saw us looking vacantly at a map in the "parking lot" and immediately offered us a lift to Santa Monica in their car. Thanks very much! Santa Monica is a bit like Baywatch and there is a pier like the central pier at Blackpool but smaller. We had to take 3 buses to get back to the airport.

And then we said a fond farewell to the US and flew off towards Fiji. Crossing the international date line is a bit peculiar - I fell asleep at 11pm on Tuesday 28th and woke up, two hours later, at 1am on Thursday. By the time we reached Fiji we had gone from being 8 hours behind the UK to being 12 hours ahead! Sorry I missed your birthday Faystah. We landed at 2:30am and walked off the plane into a temperature of 26C. It smelt and felt exactly like walking into Roundhay Park Tropical Butterfly House except that noone stopped suddenly or pushed a pram in front of me. The first bus to our campsite didn't leave until 7am so we spent a long boring wait in the airport cafe with a couple of other brits, drinking coffee and trying to keep cool. A two and a half hour knackered bus journey (and clip toilet emergency) later we arrived in the hottest most humid place imaginable - The Beachouse on Viti Levu's southern Coral Coast. It's a self-contained backpackers' resort with a coral reef. The nearest shop is a 40 minute bus ride away. There are 80 people staying here, most of them in mixed-sex dormitories, and it is really boring. There really is nothing to do except sit about in the shade (it's far too hot to sit in the sun) listening to people telling you their life-stories. Most backpackers seem to be sunburnt idiots. The wildlife is great though - there are lots of chicken-legged starling raptors (Indian mynahs) running about, hundreds of huge copulating frogs, massive burrowing coconut crabs, geckos, giant cockroaches, it's brill! After an hour of listening to the same old crap we decided to go for a stroll (sweaty trek) along the beach. Big chunks of coral have been washed up everywhere. Suddenly, with no warning at all, it absolutely PISSED it down for about an hour. Interesting. Then it was too hot and boring again. We sat in our tent for a bit until we got too hot and bored. A couple of coconuts and a big leafy branch fell out of a tree and narrowly missed the tent so we went for another hot, boring walk. We had tea in Coconut Restaurant and went to bed early but it was too hot to sleep. While we were asleep lots of insects bit us.

Today we braved the 40 minute bus journey and went shopping in the local town. clip finally has some flip-flops to wear and we have a can of fly-killer for the tent. Now we're back at the Beachouse and it is still far too hot to do anything. Typing up the log seemed a good a way as any to quell the boredom for half an hour. I suppose I'd better return to the yawnworthy world of backpacker chit-chat.

At some point in the future people will send back a Terminator to kill the person who invented the SMS silicon chip.

Bye for now, clop xxxx

Hiya clip here, I've been told I've to fill in the blogger today, so here I am. Erm..... well its very nice weather and clop is developing a drinking problem with all this cheap beer. He also has developed a daily cookie and nacho craving, he'll be chewing gum loudly and eating peanut butter with everything in no time. We're at Monterey Bay, it's very nice and relaxing here, there are loads of cutesy animals (most of which I am hoping to keep as pets as soon as we arrive home). We've finally found somewhere that offers reasonable rates on internet access. The library, its freeeeeeeee how cool. Can't think of anything to say anymore so I'm off. Tara

After leaving Bishop we drove north through the Sierra Mountain area. We stopped at a place called Mammoth Lakes (more snow, mountains, trees, lakes etc) but couldn't drive around much of the area because the roads were still blocked with snow. We managed to find a 16 foot snow drift. Slightly further north we stopped to take a look at June Lake but the loop road was closed again due to snow. clip decided to have a wee in the snow at the top of the look-out tower but fell over on the ice before even reaching the stairs, after which her scuffed jeans made her forget about going to the toilet for several hours. All the Your Smartie passes were closed due to snow so we had no choice but to travel up as far as Reno (Raino more like) in Nevada and drive back to San Francisco past Sacramento and over the Oakland Bay Bridge the following day. The highest elevation on the road over the mountains was 8147 feet.

After dropping the car off at the airport we got a local bus back into San Francisco downtown and then took the Greyhound (complete with ex-con psycho rapping out his MF'ing lyrics in the back seat) down the coast to Monterey which is where we are now. Things have become even more plasticky and surreal. This place is like the Truman Show with a seaside. America is so sodding dull in the evenings. It's the same franchises everywhere, and you have to walk 5 miles along the edge of a 10-lane motorway to get to them. Monterey Bay seaside is very nice though, we've seen wild sea otters smashing crabs to death with rocks, yellowy-green humming birds, double-crested guillemots, half a dozen huge pelicans, and yet more seals and sealions. Then we visited Monterey Bay aquarium and saw many of the same animals trapped in glass tanks. The aquarium had a special exhibition of deep sea jellyfish which was amazing.

One good thing we are making full use of is "Happy Hours". By visiting pubs during happy hours we save oodles of cash on beer and food (a huge trough of cheesy nachos with cream and chopped-up red and green bits that we couldn't finish was $2.90) plus we're both comically squiffy by about 7pm. I'd be surprised if we're allowed back in Safeway supermarket tonight.

If anyone wants to make some easy money I suggest you buy some shares in T-mobile. I'm starting to think it would have been cheaper just to fly all of clip's friends out here and have them with us for the year.

Tomorrow we plan to take the Greyhound to Los Angeles and then we fly to Fiji on Tuesday. It feels as though one adventure is drawing to a close and a whole new one is about to begin.

clop

Greetings from Bishop, California on Monday afternoon!

We decided to keep our Big Green 4x4 for the whole week - it's quite expensive ($209 for the week) but it's the cheapest way to see the things we want to see. Petrol here is 18p per litre! We left Richard and Jane's on Friday morning (thank you for letting us stay) and drove straight to Yosemite National Park. When I say straight I mean STRAIGHT. The roads are just so amazingly straight. The longest straight that day was 26 miles long. 26 miles of completely straight road. It's SO UNBELIEVABLY BORING. We bought some dinner in a supermarket on route but clip wouldn't let me buy any of the bright blue butter-flavour squeezy topping. Your Smartie National Park is breathtakingly beautiful. Snow, lakes, mountains and forests. You're supposed to take snow chains in with you but we decided we'd be ok in our 4x4 SuperJeep and took a chance. Despite hot baking sunshine all the way to the park, once we were actually in it the temperature plummeted to minus something and it got dark very quickly indeed. This is 5000ft up in some mountains. As we are on a budget we decided to camp at the walk-in campground near Your Smartie village. Even wearing three tops and "twat pants" it was so cold that neither of us could sleep very well. In the morning our spare pegs had frozen solid to the metal bear-proof cabinets we had to lock our food and toiletries in. There was 8 inches of snow on the picnic tables!

In the morning we packed up and drove down through Your Smartie park and out into an utterly different terrain of flat grassy prairies that went on for a couple of hundred miles before it changed again into a hostile volcanic wasteland. Despite the changing terrain american towns are all identical. Every single one of them is set out in grids and has the same fast food joints and hotels. Being an american must be jaw-slackeningly dull - you can drive for a thousand miles and nothing changes. It's like living in a cartoon world. By the time we reached Las Vegas it was already dark and we were very tired. Unfortunately this has been a holiday weekend in the US (it's Martin Luther King Jr. Day today apparently) so every "hotel" (read threadbare motel craphole) we went to was completely full (and charging $149/night). After walking around a couple of casinos neither of wanted to stay in Las Vegas anyway - it's a bit like Blackpool but everyone is much fatter. We ended up in a motel in Boulder City. Nice vomit on the carpet.

On Sunday we drove over the Hoover Dam (unimpressive small white dam covered in fat people and rusty pylons) and along to the Grand Canyon. By this point we were sick of driving and as the signs for tourist-mecca "Grand Canyon Village" showed it to be yet another 260 miles away we turned off early and drove 48 miles over scrubland with a huge cloud of dust trailing behind us to Grand Canyon West Rim. It is impossible to describe the Grand Canyon. I'm gonna try and post some photos at some point but even then I don't think they will do it justice. After the canyon we set off back towards San Francisco as we have to drop the car off on Wednesday. Last night we stayed in a cheapy motel in a place called Beatty, just east of Death Valley.

Today we've driven across Death Valley to a place called Bishop. Death Valley is huge, very hot, and very barren. The bottom of it is well below sea level and there are a load of sand dunes. Weird seeing so many fat american kids wearing baseball caps tumbling down sand dunes in the middle of nowhere.

Now we are in Bishop which is a town straight out of Twin Peaks. The sun is just starting to set behind the snowy mountains out of the window so we're gonna go and get some tea. It's after midnight in the UK now so hopefully clip will turn her phone off. She seems to spend every waking moment texting or ringing people back home. Sometimes I feel like I am here on my own.

Until next time, clop

Hiya. clip here. I thought it was about time I said a few things about our lovely far away adventure. Firstly whatever clop has said it's probably greatly exaggerated, you know what he's like! Its pretty cool here, Steve isn't proving to be too annoying, which is nice. The weather is great and we've been to loads of fab places. Favourite so far is probably the erm..... sealions at San Francisco or maybe the cool bumpy police chase streets of SF, or maybe the Grand Canyon, dunno really i guess its all pretty wack (a yank term meaning okey dokey). Righteo this is dull so I'm off for some pie.

Hello from Pier 39 in San Francisco!

After our last entry things went into overdrive and there was no time to come online at all. Then we were rocketing down to the office in Maidenhead to drop the car off before whizzing to a hotel for an early night and then rushing to the airport to fly off. Rather stupidly I left my mobile phone at the office - I don't actually need it to make calls on but it does have all the telephone numbers of my friends and family back home in it. So if you were expecting to have received a text message by now and haven't had one you can understand why.

It was also a bit foolish of us to fly to America without the address or phone number of the people we were planning to stay with on the first night. If anyone from US Immigration asks we're staying at the Marriott Hotel in Santa Clara ok? The correct address was actually in an email in my mail.com account but we didn't think it would be very difficult to find an internet cafe and log on to find the information. Of course every internet access point in Heathrow was out of order and when we finally found one in San Francisco airport that would accept my visa card it kindly blocked mail.com as a "dodgy" website. It was some time before we finally got the contact details. Then we couldn't operate any of 5 different public telephones. After losing $1.25 in them without even managing to get a ringing tone we gave up and went off to hire a car. Nice of the man to add clip as an additional driver for no extra charge, and also a free upgrade to a "mid-sized" car (read gigantic green 4x4 station wagon with John Deere wheels). It took us a very long time to find Richard's house and after some crisps and bread we went to bed early.

And today we've driven up into downtown San Francisco to see the amazingly hilly streets, the Golden Gate bridge, the sealions and Alcatraz. It's very very sunny though the temperature is only about 15C. Three guys have already tried (unsuccessfully) to fleece us by demanding money to walk through their "checkpoints" along Fishermen's Wharf.

Both of us have lost track of what day it is.

We're considering keeping the car for a week and driving off in the Yosemite National Park (we can easily sleep in the car), then to Las Vegas for a helicopter tour of the Grand Canyon, before driving back across to Monterey Bay and down to Los Angeles.

Watch this space.

Jabs done. Yey.

This packing lark is really starting to piss me off.

Amazing. She rang back after just 15 minutes to say she has the tickets in her hand. The plan is now to courier them to my work office so that I can collect them tomorrow afternoon. clip thinks she's lying and that the tickets are still lost. I suppose we'll find out tomorrow.

Saying goodbye to all our friends has been a bit weird. We're both like, "yeah ok, see ya" as though we're going to see them again in a week's time. It's difficult to grasp what's actually about to happen.

I waited until 10:45am before ringing her up. Nobody had passed the message on to her apparently. I hope The Global Village is enjoying all this free publicity. When I told her the tickets still hadn't arrived she said "you are joking" three times in a scared kind of voice. Now she's gone to ring the ticket issuer again and she's gonna call me back "in five minutes."

49 hours to go.

Doctor Doom - Surely one and a quarter hours is enough time to drive 40 miles along a motorway? Nope. Wrong. It took 30 minutes to drive the first 6 miles. I've had to cancel my injections appointment and make another appointment at another practice for this afternoon.

I've just rung The Global Village to ask where our tickets are. They are still with the ticket issuers. I wonder why The Global Village didn't telephone to let me know the tickets weren't sent out last Thursday like they promised they would be. The lady is supposed to be ringing me with an update at 10:30am. Who thinks she'll ring on time?

60 hours to go.

clip said goodbye to all her friends and had a family leaving party at her dad's house today. Sounds like it was all quite traumatic.

I've moved almost all my things to my parents' house. I think they regret ever offering to let me store my stuff there now that they can't get into any cupboards.

Too tired to type any more and I've got to be up early for my injections.

The tickets still haven't arrived.

85 hours to go.

Believe me when I tell you that "packing practice" has got to be one of the most stressful ways to spend an afternoon.

Eyb eyb Neil and Emma.

95 hours and counting.

Shit.

I am now in possession of 540 daily disposable contact lenses. 540 contact lenses. Ha ha ha. Actually they're very compact.. should fit in the bag without any problems.

clip is on her way over for our "packing practice" session. This is where we put out everything we want to take and then realise we can only take every 5th item.

clop out

Yey!!

At last, something positive to report. Our passports have arrived. And the Australian visas are stuck in!

clip's trip to the doctor proved interesting - we have to have innoculations for rabies, japanese encephalitis, meningoccocal A, meningococcal C, yellow fever, typhoid, tetanus, hepatitis A, hepatitis B and polio. Apparently we're just going to have to take our chances with cholera, tick encephalitis and dengue fever.

Bontempi panda ringpull selector.

Surprise surprise.

The passports have been delayed yet again, this time by the snow in London.

The courier forgot to pick our tickets up and so they've been delayed again too. "Saturday. Possibly."

It's clip's last day at work today. Lucky clip. I don't finish until Tuesday.

140 hours to go

God love a duck. Less than a week to go.

It's difficult to describe how we're feeling now. When we first decided to do our year away it was like, June, and it seemed so far away. Now there is less than a week to go and it feels much much much more daunting. We are both suffering from regular episodes of abject terror.

So, with just 6 days to go, neither of us has a passport - they are both at the Australian commission having visas glued in, and there is a chance we won't get them back before we fly on Wednesday.

As if that weren't enough, our tickets (which we bought in October) STILL aren't here. Singapore Airlines has withdrawn their flight route Bombay to Manchester (our final flight home) and the tickets have had to go away to be altered. It looks like we're going to have to fly home via Singapore with a 15 hour connection. The travel agent doesn't think the tickets will be back in time to post to us before we leave and they want to courier the tickets to us at Heathrow Airport. Yeah right, how reassuring is that.

And we still haven't had our immunisations. clip sees the doctor on Friday and I see the doctor on Monday. Talk about cutting things fine.

Watch this space :o\