USA Chapter 5-6-7… Death Valley, Cambria, Hawaii, Fiji… home

After saying goodbye to Flagstaff we drove northwest to Las Vegas, where we partied hard all night. Just kidding. We went to the Hoover Dam and did a long hike along the rail trail to the dam. When we went on top of the dam Travis’s irrational fear of heights kicked in and he was not happy when I dangled my water bottle out over the edge to tease him. As an engineer, he very much enjoyed the engineering of the dam. The water levels in the dam are low – not the lowest they’ve ever been but not particularly high either considering it’s the end of winter. I am scared for what this summer in the US will look like. It was also already quite hot, and we were glad that we weren’t here in summer, where the heat can quickly become quite dangerous.

We had a shower at a Planet Fitness in Las Vegas and then ate dinner at a trailhead outside of town before driving to an area called “The Pads” on Google Maps. We couldn’t see much before bed, but the morning revealed kind of a bizarre scene: a campervan city where the vans were parked on concrete “pads” – hence the name. There were no public toilets (I guess all the campervans had their own set-ups), so we drove to Death Valley to use the toilet and eat breakfast there. We spent the day exploring the national park, which, unlike its name suggests, was at that point full of life. It had rained a few weeks prior and so the salt flats had puddles of water in them, there were millions of White-lined Sphinx caterpillars crawling all over the place (including so many on the roads and sidewalks getting themselves killed), and a “Death Valley Superbloom”, which was an impressive number of flowers for Death Valley, although paltry when compared with Southern California superblooms. In one area where water was flowing there were thousands of Death Valley Pupfish. They were so entertaining to watch as they defended their little pebble piles against other pupfish, sometimes chasing each other through water so shallow they were almost out of it. They made a delightful racket that could only be heard if you listened closely.

Our main activity for the afternoon was a hike up a canyon where we sat for a while and absorbed the desert. We heard so many birds, and saw a chuckwalla and lots of insects. I love the desert – it has the reputation of being a place devoid of life, but this could not be further from the truth. You just have to look a bit harder sometimes. I think Travis enjoyed the desert as well, which delighted me, although he doesn’t handle the heat as well as I do.

We ate dinner and watched the sky turn from light blue to orange and yellow to lavender and finally deepest navy blue with pinpricks of stars before turning to the ever-important matters of where to shower and sleep. It was very warm in the valley (parts of it are below sea level), and we filled up our water bottles for pour-over showers before finding a place off the main road out of the park to do the showering. By the time we found a good place to pull over, however, we had actually climbed quite a lot in elevation and it was not so warm anymore. We saw many kangaroo rats on our drive out, and slept down a dirt road outside the national park.

The next morning we drove west and then north to Mammoth on the eastern side of the Sierras. We were getting close to the end of our trip now, and both of us were ready by this point. We had been on the road for nearly two months, and traveling for almost four, and we could taste the days when we would be in a house again, sleeping in a bed. Still one more day of skiing to be done though: Mammoth Ski Resort, which was a pretty large ski field that had some fun terrain. It would have been more fun if much of it wasn’t actively melting. We saw butterflies from the chairlift. Someone we knew from New Zealand had spent the winter working there, and we ate lunch with her there. She’d had a fall in the morning so we didn’t ski with her, but it was still nice to see a familiar face.

That evening we took a shower at her house before heading out to camp near some hot springs. There were lots of people in them in the evening and we didn’t have a good way to get the sulphur smell off of us if we did sit in them, so we didn’t. We were also both reaching the end of our tethers with the camping and with each other.

The next day we went on a hike up a valley that Shannon had recommended. Or tried to anyway – the road was closed halfway up the valley and we couldn’t drive close to the lakes we were trying to get to, so we went up to the ridge instead. There were patches of deep snow that we post-holed through, and ultimately, we decided to come down instead of stranding ourselves in the middle of a snowfield with no exit.

We spent the afternoon at Manzanar, which is the site of one of the WW2 Japanese Internment Camps. It’s appalling to hear about what the US government did to thousands of innocent Japanese people living here. Mostly it was an exercise of robbed dignity. Many of the Japanese people were proud to be American – they played baseball to show their patriotism, for instance, but were still forced to use toilets without walls, live in cramped conditions, and answer questionnaires about who they were loyal to.

Originally, we were going to have two more nights before we were back in Cambria. We decided, however, that that night would be our last. We stayed at a paid campground by a lake (something we had not done very often), and took a sizeable dose of the weed gummies we had bought (legally) in California. It was a good way to end the trip.

On our last day, we drove west. We stopped at Red Rock Canyon and went for a hike. I looked (unsuccessfully) for horny toads, and Travis sweated in the heat. We ate lunch from a taco truck in Tehachapi, and stopped by the Carrizo Plains in the afternoon, where we walked through some nice wildflowers. We crested the hill and got our first view of the Pacific Ocean in months just as the sun was setting, and then we got to eat dinner with my parents. It was a relief to not be driving anymore.

Over the next few days, we tied up the loose ends of the trip and decided how much of my stuff we could bring back and in what configuration of bags. I got to spend some nice time with my parents, and also got to see Tovia’s presentation of her final project! It was neat to see what she’d been working on, and interesting to compare it to what the other people in her cohort chose to do. There were some very interesting ones, but, if I’m not mistaken, Tovia’s was the only one that would actually be put into action. She had written up a restoration plan for Fiscalini Reserve in Cambria consisting of restoration methods like burning, grazing, resting, and sowing seeds. Fiscalini Reserve is a grassland that was once full of native plants and now is mostly European grasses. Other people’s projects included things like designs for electric car charging stops, a racetrack with less noise, and a cemetery with incorporated Buddhist values. All very impressive, all with hundreds of hours of work gone into them, but none that will actually be built, except Tovia’s (which won’t be built so much as executed). Tovia has decided that she actually doesn’t want to work in landscape architecture and actually wants to be a field biologist, hence the direction of her final project.

On our last day Annika drove Travis and me to San Luis Obispo, where we all got brunch with Tovia before Travis and I took the FlixBus down to LA. When we left SLO it was hot (like 90 degrees F/32 degrees C hot), and Travis was dying in the heat. It was only March – definitely a preview to what summer will be like in the US this year – but a nice little summer between winters for me and Travis. Saying goodbye was hard – I don’t know when I’ll next see my family. On the other hand it did feel like I was getting closer to being back in New Zealand, which also feels like home.

We spent the night in a questionable hostel near the airport, took the bus to the airport at 4am, and then flew to Hawaii. Sofie, one of my best friends from high school, picked us up at the airport, and drove us to the storage locker we had booked. Sofie lives in a studio apartment on campus with her partner Sean, and at that point was in her last semester of her marine biology degree (she has now graduated! That’s how behind on writing I am). She and Sean so kindly allowed us to stay with them, but it would have been impossible with all our stuff – we were travelling with a ski bag, a large suitcase, a large duffel bag, a ukulele, and two smaller backpacks. We left all but the small backpacks and the ukulele in the storage locker.

When we got to Hawaii it was raining heavily, and would continue to do so on and off over our 5 days there, at times causing significant flash flooding. Sofie was in the midst of her research project and spending lots of time collecting data at the marine biology institute field station, which was a 30-minute drive away on another side of the island. She had rented a car to help her get there and back every day over the spring break when there were less people to catch rides with, which meant Travis and I could borrow the car while she was there to go explore. One morning we went to the Aquarium in Honolulu – it was a smaller one but very well done with lots of local fishes and corals, and a Hawaiian Monk Seal. One afternoon, after visiting Sofie at her coffee shop job, Sean and Travis and I went to the Pearl Harbor Museum/Memorial. I had planned to go on a hike but because of the flooding the trail was closed. I always have mixed feelings about military museums – although I acknowledge that there have been important military acts and the soldiers were in difficult situations, I find it hard to stomach the glorification of the military. So often the men (often but not always white) inflicting the harm are held up to be exemplary and good, while the victims or opposing side are objectified or dehumanised, and the women aren’t discussed at all. Although the stories are worth telling, the fact that they are so one-sided makes me not want to hear them at all.

The highlight of Hawaii, other than getting to spend time with Sofie, was Sofie taking us snorkelling. We bought gear at a thrift store for cheap and then Sofie took us to her favorite spots. Unfortunately the first spot was near a stream that was bringing lots of silt down into the ocean after a big rain, making the visibility almost zero – pollution is always a worry as well. That day we went to the nearby Disney resort where there was a small enclosed pool with some interesting critters in the rocks, including a Moray Eel. The highlights though were the sea turtles, known as honu in Hawaiian, and the Monk Seal that came into the pool.

Later that day, after having some delicious Poke for lunch, we went to another spot. This spot turned out to have some incredible corals and tropical fishes. Sofie had lent me her wetsuit and a boogie board, but even then, I am not made for cold water, and I envy Sofie and Travis’s bodies that allow them to exist in that environment.

We came back to that spot on another day, and the tide was much lower that day so we were much closer to the fish and corals. At one point, I spotted an octopus! I called Sofie and Travis over and in doing so scared the octopus, who had been out on the sand. We all got glimpses of it while we hung around, but it never came back out fully.

Even though we had only been in the water for about an hour, I was exhausted, and after dropping Sofie off to collect more data, we went to get pancakes and hot chocolate. Only after some food and a nap did I eventually regain some energy. Later that day we climbed Koko Head, which is a smaller mountain with a set of railroad tracks running straight to the top. On our way up and down we saw people of all fitness levels on their way up or down – some picking their way slowly, one step at a time, or stopping every few steps to catch their breath, some, like us, making their way up with few breaks, and one guy who, in the time we hiked up and down, must have run up and down 5 or 6 times.

Being guests, especially in a tight space like Sofie and Sean’s apartment, is an art in and of itself. We did our best to minimise our inconvenience, from packing away the mattress every morning, containing the clothes we had brought, and cooking meals as often as we could. I still am so thankful to Sofie and Sean for hosting us, and hope we can do the same for them someday.

After repacking our bags in the storage locker, Sofie dropped us off at the airport and we said goodbye. Honolulu Airport is one of the nicer ones with its outdoor area in the terminal, and we enjoyed the greenery before boarding our flight to Fiji via Kiribati. Kiribati is a tiny island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean with a delightful array of towns, including Poland, Paris, London, Tabwakea, and Banana. Our flight there was so empty, and half the people got off the plane there (we and everyone else who was going to Fiji stayed on), and a few people got on. I felt immensely guilty for the carbon emissions from a flight that was half empty.

We arrived in Fiji around 7pm local time and took a taxi to the hostel with all our luggage. We had been fed on the plane so just went straight to bed, sleeping as well as we could in the much stickier Fiji heat. In the morning we had a chat with the receptionist, who did her best to recommend this or that tour we could go on, all upwards of $200. “This one will take you snorkelling! And this one will take you to a Fijian village!” We said no thank you and went for a walk on the beach, where Travis went for a quick swim.

Afterwards, we walked to Nadi proper from the touristy hotel area our hotel was at. This turned out to be a very controversial choice, and we were offered a taxi (whether by someone yelling “taxi?!” or honking at us) 9 times on our hour walk (we counted). Our walk took us through some obviously untouristy neighborhoods, and it was odd how similar the houses looked to other developing countries I’ve been to like Brazil or Costa Rica. In Nadi we went to the market, which had fewer interesting fruits than I had hoped, but we still drank some yummy pineapple juice. When we wandered into the kava section, we were accosted by a man who insisted he come to his friend’s shop, which turned out to be a 10-minute walk away. Once there his friend did a “kava ceremony” for us, which was interesting and free. However, there was a clear expectation that we would buy something from the shop, which was full of carving that were priced fairly enough to compensate the carvers for their labor, but thus out of our price range, and we were pushing the weight limits with our bags anyway. I pulled Travis aside and suggested that we just give them $10 and skedaddle, which we did. It’s exhausting for everyone to constantly be trying to sell you something.

The next task was lunch. I was acutely aware that we were in a developing country and food safety was something we definitely should worry about. Travis, not so much. I saw a shop advertising fish and chips, which in my experience, are usually freshly cooked and so have minimal risk, right? Wrong. We walked into the shop and had to walk 5 meters to the end of the empty shop to where a group of women was sitting behind a counter with precooked fish and chips. The alarm bells went ringing in my head, but before I could say anything, Travis was already ordering. It was too late to back out so we got the food and went to a nearby park to eat. Travis immediately chowed down, and I nibbled a bit of the food and finally told him I was concerned, at which point he found a piece of fish that he thought tasted funky. We didn’t finish the meal and went looking for a proper cooked lunch. We finally decided on a Hare-Krishna Indian restaurant with several families eating there, and filled up on fried rice before taking a taxi back to the hostel.

We spent the afternoon swimming in the water, which was almost as warm as a bath tub. I had no trouble staying in the water for over an hour, and we only got out because we started getting itchy irritated spots on our bodies – we never figured out what caused them. We ate dinner at a local noodle place and managed to get $20 of cash back from them, just enough to pay for the taxi to the airport in the morning (we had paid $30 for the ride to the hostel, but the people at the hostel had said it would be $20 and arranged a taxi for us at 6am). The next morning, we went out with our stuff to meet the taxi. The driver took one look at all our stuff and announced it would be $30 because of our stuff! I told him we didn’t have $30, and he said we could stop by an ATM to get the other $10. Every time you got money out of an ATM, though, it cost $15 in fees. I sat in the back of the taxi the entire ride to the airport scheming how we could get out of paying another $25 for this taxi. Finally, I came up with an idea: we had some chocolate bars from Germany in our ski bag, and we could give the taxi driver 3 of them to make up for the $10, so that’s what I did when we got out. The taxi driver laughed and accepted the very melted chocolate bars with a “I should put these in the fridge, yeah?”. Success.

We flew to Auckland, went through biosecurity without a peep (I thought for sure we would have trouble, but no), repacked three bags into 4 to meet the weight limits, used our flexi-ticket to catch an earlier flight, and then flew to Christchurch, where Travis’s brother Ethan picked us up from the airport and drove us to our new house. Back in February, we had found a place on Facebook Marketplace, interviewed with the current residents, and been selected. We had already paid a few weeks rent to secure our spot, Ethan and Isaac had brought over our bed from the old flat, and Annie, who had had my car while I was away, had brought down some stuff from Blenheim, so we were able to move right in.

I’ll leave this post here – it’s a long one but wraps up our time travelling. It was so good to see so many friends and family, learn to ski properly, and see so many incredible places. It’s also really good to be back in a warm and dry house and not having to worry about where we’ll sleep every night, especially as we head back into winter #3.