Miami – Cincinnati

The airport awoke early, around 5, and we had to cut our sleep short. We waited until the daylight and ventured out. It was chilly. We took a bus downtown, in hopes of getting online in the public library. We got off at the central station and walked one block to the library doors. It was a scary walk. All kinds of crazy people were hanging out at that hour in downtown Miami. Black homeless old men, preachers on the empty street corners, grim-looking white men with tattoos on their faces… As we were walking by a white guy sitting in the flower bed, he got up and took of his shirt. His whole upper body was blue with gangster style tattoos. We looked straight and walked.
The library was not open yet, so we sat outside, watching a peculiar crowd gathering around us, waiting for the doors to open. Bob Dylan songs came to mind. There was a group of men near us and it sounded like they met here every morning, for a long time.
“So, you got a job yet, Bill?”
“No, nothing. I’ll check my facebook now though, you never know, maybe something came up there…”
“Yeah, you never know”
We were experiencing a strong cultural shock – everything was so clean, so perfect, the air was fresh, we understood the locals perfectly… It was a very strange Saturday morning for us.
Finally, the library opened and everybody went in. Many people headed straight for the couches, lied down and fell asleep. We followed the majority to the internet station. Unfortunately, as guests, we were only allowed 15 minutes each. After we explained our nature to the librarians, they probably thought we were just as crazy as most of the visitors at that hour.
“You are gonna do what? Hitchhike to Canada? Oh my God, you are going to die. Do you realize that it is very cold up there? Do you really need to go there?!”
We briefly told them about out trip up to date. Their disbelief quickly changed into a strong desire to help.
Julio the librarian opened Google maps on his computer and plotted a public transit system route to a truckstop outside of Miami. He did a good job and we followed the directions. It was a shock to us that you could do that.
“Do you guys need Internet time?” he asked, “here is an hour, if it is not enough, tell me”.
It looked like it was going to be a busy day: we had to get to the truckstop before sunset, buy food and eat and also buy some warm clothing and rubber boots for the cold temperatures up north.
It was 8 pm when we got off at the end of the line of the seventh public transit bus we took that day. We were loaded with two new sweaters from Goodwill each, and a shiny new pair of rubber boots was attached to each backpack. We had bread and peanut butter for food and we were exhausted. The truck stop was still 5 miles away (about 9 kms). We started walking in its direction when suddenly an ideal camping spot looked straight at us. We waited for cars to pass, then quickly rushed into the bushes and set up our tent not 5 meters away from the road. After a couple of gulps of mediocre Venezuelan rum we fell asleep fast and woke up with the birds chirping in the fresh morning air of North America.
When we approached the truck stop we saw a lot of motorcycles parked at it. It was a weekend motorbike show, and tough looking white men and women were sitting around. Most wore black leather and Confederation flags could be seen in many places. People sipped Coca-Cola and discussed biker stuff. We did not hang around too long there, eager to hitchhike north.
After only 15 minutes, a van pulled over. The passenger window was open and we could see three Hispanic physiognomies smiling at us.
“A donde vas?” (where are you going?)
“Norte”
“Vamos!”
We got a ride with an illegal bus line servicing illegal immigrants in the US of A. The driver had no license and was living out of his van for the last three years. People would call him and he would drive wherever his customers wanted to go. After we got in, we headed to a trailer park to pick some people up who were headed to Atlanta. 6 short, stubby Guatemalans got in. It took them a while to load their belongings in the back. After a while they succeeded though and we were off.
We dropped off and picked up more people as we zig-zagged around Fort Myers.
The guys were very careful not to attract any attention to themselves. The driver drove 5 miles under the speed limit and when we stopped to refuel people got in and out as fast as they could, always closing the door behind them.
When the night fell, the driver asked us if we can drive.
“I haven’t slept for three nights, I am really tired” he said.
Of course, the least thing we could do to help him was to take over the wheel. We dropped the passengers off at a lonely cabin in the woods of Southern Georgia and then continued empty onto Atlanta. The driver happily snored in the back seat while we took turns driving on the wide and straight highway 75.
As the light drove away the night, our driver woke up and took the wheel. He dropped us off on the outskirts of Atlanta and was off to Colorado to pick up his next clients.
“Thank you so much for driving,” he said,”you have really helped me out. I think I would have crushed tonight if it wasn’t for you”
We took busses across Atlanta pretty much in the same way we did in Miami: bus to library, plot the route, follow directions, walk to the on ramp.
As we were walking, an SUV slowed down and opened a window.
“Heading north?”
“Yes!”
“Get in!”
Craig was cool. He was only heading a few miles up the highway, but he invited us into his home to watch some TV. We accepted and watched a documentary on cocaine trafficking and M-19 in Columbia on the Marijuana Channel. Unfortunately, as the story came to the culminating point, Craig had to go, so we had to leave. He was very kind to give us a lift a few exits further up the highway. He dropped us off at a nice forested off-ramp.
It was already late and we did not feel like traveling any further that day. We were falling asleep on our feet.
We walked a little ways away from the highway, climbed a small wooded hill and pitched our camp just behind the top of it. The forest was absolutely beautiful. Pines, oaks and beeches stood silently and the floor was entirely covered by leaves shed the previous autumn. We laid down on the soft blanket of dry rustling leaves and took in the beauty of these stately black trunks. Not a banana palm to be seen.
It rained heavy at night but as it usually happens, as soon as we woke up and we ready to get out of the tent, the rain stopped. We had breakfast and hot Venezuelan coffee in the cold wet misty morning. We put on our new rubber boots and walked to the on-ramp.
Three hours have passed before we got a short ride to a rest area not 10 miles ahead. There, only 30 minutes of waiting before Libby picked us up. She and her husband (in another vehicle) were coming home to Cincinnati from their winter holiday in Mexico. Libby invited us to stay with them for a day, an invitation we surely accepted. So here we are now, sitting in a condominium downtown Cincinnati, typing up the blog. It is cold and rainy outside, but all our things are freshly washed and dryed, we have just had a delicious American breakfast and we are full of eagerness to reach just one more border, into Canada, this time!

Guiria-Miami

So, the boat to Trinidad did not work out. The carnival was approaching, the festivities were due to start the next day. People told us that Guiria’s carnival is considered one of the best on the whole coast. We had our reservations, though. We had no desire to stay any longer in Guiria to see the carnival. True, we had a good place to stay, but we had absolutely nothing to do in town. We had no access to the house’s bathroom, so performing our daily functions became a real task. We had to plan in advance or wait until the nightfall to… you know. The idle sitting around our tent all day long got very old by day 6, so we made up our minds to move. The most agreeable option, we reasoned, was to fly from Caracas to Miami.
When we told our host Kira that we were leaving, she broke into tears. She really did not want us to leave! She hugged us, we exchanged emails and she hopped on her motorbike and was off.
We started walking to the highway and as we were passing an idling truck we asked the driver if he could give us a lift out of town. He said:
“Sure! Jesus loves you! He is in your heart!”
The day being Sunday, the local Evangelical group was getting together to go to church. We drove around town picking up the believers and then headed out. We were dropped off at a turnoff and quickly flagged down the next ride. A few more quick and short rides got us deposited near a police check point.
For the carnival time the “security” on the roads was increased. In reality, it meant groups of casually dressed men carrying shotguns standing in the middle of the road. Some wore bullet-proof vests while others had nothing but a radio or a pistol. Their main task was to question the passing vehicles:
“Where are you going?”
“Guiria” or “Carupano”, depending on the direction
“Ok, you may pass”
We baked in the hot sun just past the check point and wandered how the men did not get heat strokes: none of them wore a hat!
Soon enough a car stopped with a family inside. An elderly man was behind the wheel and his beautiful young wife (she looked 25 years younger at least) held a year old baby on her knees. The family gave an impression of being well off.
The conversation flowed and soon we learned that Argenis worked for PDVSA (the national oil company that was expropriated by the “revolutionary” government some years ago). He was an important man in the company: the whole Paria peninsula PDVSA operations were under his control.
“I am on duty this weekend, supervising the Guiria division” he shared with us, “that’s why my wife and I here decided to go to Carupano to pick up my mother-in-law. It is nicer to spend the carnival with your family.”
That was an interesting logical connection but we agreed that it was indeed a good idea to spend carnival with the family.
Soon enough, Argenis steered the conversation to politics:
“Do you think it’s a dictatorship here in Venezuela?” he asked straight.
Without pausing for a second for us to reply, he continued:
“No, it is a lie. What is a dictatorship? A dictatorship is when people are killed, when they are treated badly, when there are soldiers on the streets… None of this happens in Venezuela, right?”
We had no desire to argue with such delusions so we agreed, of course, none of these things happen in Venezuela...
“In any case”, Argenis continued, “if it is a dictatorship, I like it. I am a Chavista, you know. I am with the revolution! You see my cap? It is red! That is the color of the revolution…”
We have heard similar words before, if you remember, but in a different setting.
“I always pick up people,” carried on Argenis, “you know why? Because this car that I drive (he lightly tapped the steering wheel of his brand new Toyota sedan) is not really mine! It belongs to the people of Venezuela! So why not share?”
This phrase was spoken as we sped through a very poor village. Hens and people scrambled out of our way. Apparently, the shocking contrast between his shiny ride and the mud walls and tin roofs of the village huts escaped our driver.“And look at the roads here in Venezuela” Argentis was going full throttle by now, “look how many pot holes there are! It’s going to wreck my car! There is so much oil in our country, so much asphalt, but the roads are still as bad as they were before. Why?”
“Obviously, the abundance of the resources is not the problem here…” George carefully suggested.
“Of course not, but I can see no other obstacles to improve the roads!”
“Eeeh… Corrupt… I mean, I have no idea either.”
We drove in silence for some time, each pondering the mystery of bad roads. A cell phone rang. The young wife pulled out three different Blackberries to see which one was ringing.
“Oh, hi mom. Yeah, we are getting close, we’ll see you soon!”
Argenis had just enough time to drop us off on the other side of town. We wished him to spend a pleasant carnival and watched him speed away to pick up his mother-in-law.
By the end of that day we have arrived to Cumana, a good sized city. It was the carnival night and the downtown was blocked off for traffic. Multitudes of people were already gathering along the carnival route and the drinking has begun. The night was falling but we still had no place to sleep. We aimlessly walked through empty city streets when we came up to a fire station.
“Firemen, may be we can camp at a fire station tonight?”
The firemen were friendly but it was “prohibited to camp” on the station territory. Instead, they suggested that we go to the military post and ask there. So we did. A young military commander came to greet us. He said he was really sorry, but the law “prohibits anybody camping on the military territory”. He then suggested we try our luck with the police office further down the road.
“Yeah, right” we thought.
Unexpectedly, the police chief was young, slim and quick. He instantly grasped what it was that we wanted and invited us to camp inside the police station!
Having set up the tent, we went across the street to witness the so-much-talked-about carnival. It was a sad scene. The music was blaring hard, but few people seemed to enjoy their time. The carnival participants dragged by without smiles as if they were out to pick up some groceries. The costumes were a poor imitation of the Brazilian ones. Some were impressive feathery constructions, but more than a half of participants wore every-day t-shirts and shorts. They marched by us, talking on their cell phones and waiting for the whole thing to be over. Having observed the procession for some time, we went to sleep. Or, rather, tried to sleep. As soon as the procession ended, the music got turned up a notch, people kept on drinking and some started to dance. The party lasted until 4 in the morning.
A few quick rides the next day and a long wait before our last ride in South America came about. It was around sunset when Felix and Deborah pulled over for us. A young couple, they were on their way from a beach to Caracas. We enjoyed each others company and the three-hour drive to Caracas went by quickly. Once in the metropolis, they dropped us off at a hotel and we agreed to meet for a beer the next day.
In the morning, a quick visit to an Internet café revealed that one out of our 5 CS requests was accepted by Laura and Luis. We went over to their place and showed up just in time for lunch:)
Laura and Luis are practicing psychologists and are a very cool couple. They fully entrusted us their house from the start: we had the keys, we were free to move around and we could eat as many mangos as fell from the mango tree in the back yard. Luis is a painter as well as a psychologist, and the house is full of his paintings, interesting design ideas and books. We were very happy just to stay inside for the whole time, playing with the dog, reading and just enjoying not moving anywhere.On our last night at their place, Laura gave us a quick talk about one of their projects. Laura and Luis have developed a system called Neurocodex. Laura briefly explained it to us and taught us a few techniques to “get the problems out of your head”. Empowered by this new way of seeing things, we went to sleep.
24 hours later we stepped on the American soil. The airport was quiet – it was 1 in the morning. We pulled out our sleeping bags and slept the rest of the night on the comfortable couches they have all around the Miami International Airport.

Two in one

Nov.25

For the last couple of weeks we have traversed many climatic zones - from coastlines, old-growth ancient forests to uninhabited valleys and deserts. This is the largest tree in the world (by volume):
That's Anastasia in the tree there... After exploring King's Canyon and Sequoia parks, we headed down south... Just as we were leaving the mountains, we met Shel, who invited us to stay at his campground for the night, just outside of Three Rivers. Once in our conversation we mentioned that we were looking for a job to continue our journey, next thing we know - we've been offered one to take care of the flower garden that he built a couple of years ago and was slowly planning to add some perrenial flowers to its numerous terraces. We stayed for two days, working during the day and enjoying the company of our host in the evenings.
Afterwards, in our loose plans, was to head towards canyons of southern Utah that our good friends from Ontario have visited in autumn and were amazed by the beautiful shapes and textures. We chose to go there through Death Valley. We have never been to the desert so we were quite exited for our further route.
Catching a ride during Thanksgiving weekend in the Mojave desert is not the easiest thing. So we were stuck there for two days camping amongst dried out prickly bushes and blowing sand. We had to experience the desert somehow we thought, so that was our chance!
As we were leaving the desert, we found out that it is freezing cold in the canyons already -12C and snowing! Alright then, we are going south to Mexico. Decision is made and it feels good!

Dec 2

It's our third day in Mexico, we have covered about 30 km on foot and we are 1000 km south from Tijuana - in Santa Rosalia, on the east coast of Baja California.
People here are friendly and helpful, but our lack of Spanish is frustrating. Yesterday we got a ride from a guy who owns a metal recycling yard, and he offerd us an empty industrial office building to camp in for a day of two. We took him up on his offer and are now enjoying a warm sunny day without heavy bags on our shoulders.

San Fran

After having spent a week in a suburb of San Francisco, we are well rested, cleaned up and ready to go again! We've met cool friends of Urtica's in town, took a tour of Pixar studios and strolled down to the Golden Gate Park , Haight & Ashbury and that steep zig-zagy street.

The weather's great, next stop - King's Canyon, home of the world's BIGGEST trees!

Big Trees in California

A lot of good things have happened to us since we left the ever-sprawling Sacramento and headed to the Redwood national Park on the West Coast. While we were making our way through a beautiful town of Weaverville, almost EVERY passing driver showed us this mysterious sign. We decided that it was the locals' secret excuse sign. Puzzling, isn't it? The couple that eventually stopped for us, turned out to be the ex-owners of the bar that gave name to the town of Big Bar. The lunch they brought out for us made our day: in case you can't tell, that's smoked salmon and crackers on the left and vegetarian wraps on the top right. The day kept unrolling in the most sublime way, and when we were dropped off in a sea-side park in Trinidad, a buck-skin clad gentleman seemed to be waiting for us there. He welcomed us to Humboldt county with his bamboo pipe and stories about his true hippie life - he spent five years living in a teepee!
Tired from taxing life on the road, the noise of engines, truck stops and stinky exhaust, we went for a walk amongst the world's tallest trees. We think that we saw THE tallest one in the Tall Trees Grove, but we did not have the pamphlet to tell us which one it was. In the four days that we spent in the park, we forded cool streams, walked among giants and strolled on beaches.



The tree on the right in this photo is about three feet in circumference.
We saw elk, deer, newts and big banana slugs.
This rough-skinned newt, as we learned later, is of a very poisonous kind. If we would have licked his orange belly, we would have died for sure. It develops the poison as a defense against the snakes that hunt it. The snakes, in turn, build immunity to the poison, and the newt increases the poison's potency. The competition has been going on for ages.
After we came out of the forest, we met a very interesting and kind person, Jay, a vegan lawyer, who lived in his off the grid cabin in a beautiful valley near Garberville. We stayed with him for three days, reading, resting and eating delicious vegan meals. This is the view from his balcony.
The day we left Jay was the most perfect hitch-hiking day. Charged with good karma and positive vibrations we got to the on-ramp at 9, and as our cardboard sign "SAN FRAN" was half done, two ladies stopped for us. We had our second breakfast (huge American portions) with them at a small restaurant in a small California town. They dropped us off in San Francisco later in the day. Once in the big city again, we did not fret, but called up our friend Urtica, bought some beer and went to her fancy place in Emeryville. We'll stay with her for a week or so, and then continue:)

Telegramma

Made it Sacramento dot Big palm trees here dot Another two day truck ride from Iowa to California dot We are so tired from it dot Pictures to follow Over

Truckin' thru

After spending a weekend with our friends in North Bay we got a ride with the friend of theirs going straight to Sault Ste. Marie. Thank you Lindy!!!
At the border our bags got shaken out, of course, but we made it through. On the American side hitching is, apparently, illegal, or so everybody says. For us, though, it was easy to get about 70 miles covered that day. The next morning a semi picked us up, and we stayed with him for almost two days! Paul was a very kind guy, he gave us a few great tips on hitching around here and tried his very best at rounding up a ride for us using his CB radio.We have decided to take the most southern route we can - I-80 to be warm and dry!
Paul dropped us off in Oskaloosa, Iowa, and from here a friend of his will pick us up tomorrow morning and drive us to Omaha, Nebraska.
It's much warmer down here than up in Northern Ontario!