Breakfasts in America
Some of you know that one of the main goals of this trip was to decide if we wanted to live in Chile, Denmark or anywhere else in between. We both like to spend time outdoors, especially in mountain areas, so visiting USA and Canada was the final stage of this first trip in order to make a decision about it. We decided that road tripping would be the way to do it and hired a motor home as it seemed to be the most convenient way to make the trip.
We took a plane from Seoul at the end of March and after a short stopover in Beijing, where I almost lost my passport (I forgot it next to a drinking fountain), we made it without problems to Los Angeles. We spent one night in a hotel and the next morning we went off to pick up what would become our home for the next 58 days. We rented a 19 foot motor home, the smallest of all, and we were actually quite happy to have done that, after realizing how tiring it is to drive it on normal roads with a lot of cars. It must be a nightmare to drive a longer one. We baptized it ”The Gypsy Wagon”, because it was so wobbly while we were driving and everything we kept inside was jumping around, squeaking or making noises, so we felt as if we were gypsies riding in an old stagecoach.
First stop was San Dimas, northeast of Los Angeles, where we spent the night and had a barbecue with my former colleague Nick and his family. It was really nice to catch up after so long. The next day, we headed towards Las Vegas where we would get our first glimpse of the ”RV Campground lifestyle” we would encounter the following two months. Let's just say for now it is not like the ”outdoor” kind of life we like....it feels more like living your life parked in a mall parking lot.
Las Vegas was quite fun because we got to see the locations where three of Carsten's favorite TV shows take place. We visited the ”Pawn Shop”, ”Rick's Restorations” and ”Count's Kustoms” and it was very interesting to see; we even got to see Rick in his shop. After lunch we decided to visit the ”National Atomic Testing Museum”, in order to go full circle on our ”Atomic Bomb” trip in Japan. It was quite shocking to be honest. We were assisted by a guide, an old man who used to work in one of the test centers in Nevada, who kept on showing us pictures of the ”nice and beautiful atomic bombs that our country built and which are the only way to prevent wars in the future”. In our opinion, this man should be candidate number one for a free trip to the Hiroshima Memorial Museum next time there is one. This would be one of many cultural shocks we were about to get in USA. It seems like people from the US are always scared of everything that is outside their borders, so they always need some kind of ”protection”. We must not forget that defense is an industry, so using the media to keep people scared and supportive of weapon development is always good business for the defense sector.
In the night we walked along the Strip, which is the area where all the casinos are, and we visited the famous Bellagio and Caesar's Palace. Neither of us are gamblers, so we just went in to see what they looked like, we didn't bet on anything. The Bellagio has a nice water and light show outside at night.
After Las Vegas we began our way into USA's national parks, but before we got there we stopped briefly at Hoover Dam. It is funny how everything you see in the USA always reminds you of movies....so obviously, when we got there, ”Superman” came to mind. Goes to show how old we are, because probably the new generations think about ”Transformers” when they are there. Hoover Dam traps the water of the Colorado river, which is a vital source of water for seven states in southwestern USA. As in many other countries, USA has had a strong drought the last 11 years, so the dam was quite low, but this will probably be reversed in a few months, since snowfall in western USA and Canada this year reached historic records, as we would later discover when we traveled further north.
Continuing our way we reached Grand Canyon National Park. We didn't know, but we reached it just on time for Spring Break, so the campgrounds were full and we had to find spots outside the park to spend the night. We used several phone applications to find these spots and it worked like a charm. We saved a lot of money using free campgrounds around the USA and they turned out to be the most beautiful spots, as people kept them clean and most times they had very beautiful views, unlike the paid RV campgrounds which were always ugly.
Our first glimpse of Grand Canyon was next morning when we hiked the Bright Angel Trail. We started early and it was still cloudy, but after half an hour it started to clear and we had a beautiful day with the most amazing views. We walked to a place called Plateau Point, where we had a great view of the Canyon and the Colorado River and we enjoyed it very much. We walked 18 km that day, so next day we wanted to do something more relaxed, but we ended up walking almost the same distance again. Grand Canyon is one of the most visited parks in USA and they have roads that are only accessible with the park's own buses; so to visit some of the areas, we walked a lot between bus stops. Overall, Grand Canyon was awesome and we enjoyed our stay a lot. We will definitely come back one day, but not on busy days and definitely not in the summer, as temperatures can reach up to 46C in the shadow!
The visitor centers in all of the National Parks are fantastic. Marketing is really one of the areas where the USA excels. They have video rooms as big as cinemas where you can watch movies about the parks, they have all kind of graphical information about the parks, they are starting to make phone applications with electronic guides to the parks, they have junior ranger programs to get kids interested in nature, not to mention all kind of souvenirs you can buy. We could really learn a lot from this.
For our next stop, we had to choose between two roads to take and we chose to drive to Monument Valley and skip Zion and Bryce Canyon National Parks. Monument Valley is located inside a Navajo reservation in Utah, actually right at the border between Arizona and Utah. The first night we slept there was quite cold, it was snowing and we were worried that the fresh water pipes and tanks of our motor home would freeze, but luckily it didn't get so cold after all and everything turned out fine. Next morning we headed into the park and decided to take a tour, since it was the best way to see the area. Before the tour we visited the visitor center, where we learned that many Navajo Indians were soldiers during WWI and WWII. They were used to deliver messages in Navajo, which could not be deciphered by the enemy.
Will, our tour guide, was Navajo and his family had lived in the reservation area for 18 generations. Today, only 11 families live in the area. He showed us around and told us about his experience participating as extra in many movies that have been filmed in the reservation (Indiana Jones, several old westerns, The Lone Ranger, etc). Today, much like anywhere else in the world, Native Americans are poor, have little access to education and less work opportunities. Most men end up joining the armed forces as there are very limited possibilities of work for them in the region. After WWII many Indians were recruited to work in the Uranium mines where the government obtained the uranium for the atomic bombs they were producing during the Cold War. Before that, they had to protect their land from the Mexicans, back in the day when Utah and Arizona belonged to the Mexicans.
North American Indians from New Mexico and all the way to Alaska, all come from the same original group of emigrants from Mongolia, so they can all understand their languages. Will explained to us some of their traditions, such as wearing sole less shoes ”because our children need to discover the world as it is, we cannot change it with our steps”. Native North Americans didn't leave petroglyphs for the same reason: ”nature cannot be altered”, which was the same principle of indigenous Australians, also nomadic people. We learned that Central American cultures where the ones who made the petroglyphs in North America, so when you see them, it's because Mexicans were there. Native Americans also knew the concept of DNA many generations back. Every person is related to four clans: the clan of the mother, the clan of the father, the clan of the mother's parents and the clan of the father's parents. You are not allowed to marry into any of these clans. Young children need to stay together with their grandparents because that is how they pass on their traditions. The land doesn't belong to anybody, ”that was why when the white men came, they just took it, because they understood it didn't have an owner, so it was free to take”. Not much different from what happened to indigenous tribes of other countries. Will said for Navajos the word ”History” was referred to as ”His story not our story”, meaning that all history we know in the ”white-men” world has been written using white-men words and seen through white-men eyes; it has nothing to do with the way Indians tell their history. We had a good time talking to him and were happy to have taken the tour.
After our visit, and after stopping at mile marker 13 on Highway 163 to see the place where Forrest Gump got tired of running, we left the reservation and spent the night in an area named Valley of the Gods, which was very beautiful. Next morning, we continued our trip to the north of Utah and visited Arches National Park, close to Moab. Utah and Arizona have thousands of sandstone arches along the Colorado Plateau where millions of years of sea salt evaporation have developed these curious stone formations. We hiked around the park all afternoon and the following day, and it was very interesting to see.
We continued our way into the Rocky Mountains, where we started to get bad weather. We had a lot of rain and snow close to Vail and Aspen, as we crossed the mountains and headed north. We stopped in a small town called Grand Junction in order to do our weekly shopping and to find a place to sleep. We got lost trying to find a RV Camp to spend the night and instead we ended up at a trailer park asking for directions. Trailer parks are quite common in the US and this is where low income people live in their trailers. The people we talked to in Grand Junction were actually quite funny and they reminded us of ”Cletus” (from The Simpsons) family.
Next day was very long, as we tried to reach the entrance of the Rocky Mountains National Park. It was a long drive, the weather was not very good and it took forever to find a place to stay. We couldn't stay in the park because a storm was coming that night and temperatures would reach -16C, which for sure would freeze the car's water pipes, so we needed to stay in lower ground and away from the wind. The weather was still not good for visiting the park and the only road that crossed it was closed, so we visited briefly the next morning and then we decided to continue our trip to the north. We believe the best time to visit this park is probably at the end of summer or beginning of fall, when you can see the Elk mating season, also know as ”the rut”. While we were visiting the only green trees were the pine trees, so the views were a little boring and there was not much wildlife around. We continued our trip north and after a few days we arrived to Boysen State Park in Wyoming, which was not part of our original plan, but it turned out to be a place where we would end up spending a lot of time.
Boysen is a park in the Wind River Navajo Indian reservation. It was next to a lake and had very nice views. It was the first time on our trip that we were able to sit outside and enjoy the views even for a short while. We spent the next days in Thermopolis, a thermal area city close by, where we used the hot springs and saw the first bison on our trip. We also visited Wyoming Dinosaur Center, which was a huge surprise, as we were able to see real sized dinosaur skeletons. We saw ”Stan”, a 12 mt long T-Rex, ”Jimbo” a 37 mt long Supersaurus and an 18 mt long Camarosaurus among many other skeletons. It was then that I made the connection between all the pump jacks we saw in the northern states and the dinosaurs. So many dinosaurs...of course that is the reason why North America has so much oil.
We found out that there would be a Powwow in Riverton on April 15th, so we decided to stay a little longer in the area in order to see it. A Powwow is a social gathering that Native American communities hold. During these events they meet, dance, sing, socialize and honor their cultures. It was a public event and anyone could join, so we decided to stay and check it out. To pass the days we decided to travel north to Little Bighorn, which is a National Monument in the area where the battle of the Little Bighorn took place. In June of 1876, Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians led by Crazy Horse and inspired by the visions of Sitting Bull stood against the US Army's 7th Cavalry led by Lt. Col. George A. Custer and they won the battle. This battle took place while the US government was celebrating their 100th anniversary of independence from the British, thus, the defeat of the battalion led by Custer, who was the Civil War's most famous officer, came as a real shock.
Back in 1868, the US government had signed the treaty of Fort Laramie with the Indians, guaranteeing Lakota ownership of the Black Hills - the most sacred of Native American territories- and hunting rights in South Dakota, Wyoming and Montana. In all these lands white people were not allowed unless they had the consent or right of pass from the Indians. The government later broke this treaty by sending Custer into the Black Hills to ”find out whether there was gold in the area”. Custer found gold, he announced the discovery publicly and the government told the Indians they could not prevent people from venturing into the Black Hills searching for gold. White people started to enter the area by the hundreds looking for gold and this started the war. The defeat at the Little Bighorn gave the US government the excuse they needed to launch the campaign that in the end completely defeated the Indians. They eventually took over their lands and put them in reservations. In June 1980, the US Supreme Court ruled that the government had illegally taken the land from the Sioux and ordered a huge monetary compensation for the market value of the land readjusted by more than 100 years of interest. Still up to today, the money lies in the bank, as the Sioux have refused to take the payment and demand that the US government returns the territory to them.
Continuing our trip, we headed to the small town of Cody, famous for its Buffalo Bill Museum. It was interesting to see, but unfortunately we had little time to see all four exhibitions, so we only managed to see one of them. William ”Buffalo Bill” Cody turned from being a frontier scout, into a soldier in the American Civil War, into a bison hunter and then into a showman, when he developed his ”Buffalo Bill Wild West” show. He toured the world with this show and even made a presentation for Queen Victoria in England back in 1887. He respected Native Americans and their civil rights and employed many of them in his shows, in order to show the world the human side of the ”fierce warriors”, so people would understand they had families and culture like any other people. Sitting Bull, the famous Lakota holy man and and leader of the Lakota's, joined Buffalo Bill's tour for some time after the defeat in the Indian Wars and after being forced to live in reservations.
After these history lessons, we went back south to head into Riverton. We spent most of the next day doing ”home” work, doing laundry, shopping, etc, waiting for the Powwow to start. ”Indian time is anytime” as they say around here, when we went to check out the place three times and the Powwow had still not started. We had seen pictures of outside Powwows and we were hoping this would be the same, but the outside ones take place in the summer. This one was inside a gym and the atmosphere was different. We were the only white people there and people were very kind to help us around so we could see and understand what was going on. It was very colorful and lively and we enjoyed it quite a lot. There were specific dances for each group (men, women, children, boys, elders) and it was interesting to see. We hope we can see another one in the summertime someday.
Finally after about a week around the Thermopolis area, we continued our way into the next park: Grand Teton National Park. We stopped in a small town called Dubois to have a coffee and started chatting with the waitress and the owner of the place, a guy from New York who had decided to move there and he loved it. The girl was from Wyoming and she told us how in Wyoming kids receive hunting and gun firing classes from 3rd grade on. She lived one year in Colorado but she didn't like it because she got a USD 175 fine for not having her dog on a leash...She told us that ”Colorado is the place where people from California go to when they want to feel in the wild west”.
After a good coffee, we continued our way and finally managed to get our first glimpse of the Tetons, a famous mountaineering area, which reminded us a bit about the Cuernos del Paine in Chile, because they rise up so steep from the flat ground level that surrounds them. Unfortunately for us, again, winter was still too present and the southern area of the park was completely closed for hiking. Instead we had to settle for driving around the northern area of the park, taking pictures and talking about planning a new trip in the summer when the roads are open. We saw a few moose up close and will definitely go back as the area was amazing. The Tetons park is linked together with the southern part of Yellowstone through a small park named the John D. Rockefeller Jr. Parkway. Rockefeller, son of the founder of the famous oil company, was a philanthropist and had a special interest in conservation. Over the years he bought thousands of hectares of land in Jackson Hole, the Tetons and southern Yellowstone, which he later donated to the government so they would turn them into National Parks. I remembered all the opposition and strange theories that came out from the Chilean media when Douglas Tompkins, an American businessman and former owner of Esprit and North Face, purchased land in southern Chile years ago saying he wanted to preserve them and turn them into a national park. Reading what Rockefeller did, it is very clear to me that Tompkins' behavior was not strange at all. Philanthropy is not uncommon in USA and it is definitely something our South American tycoons should learn from.
Our next stop after the Tetons would be Yellowstone National Park, the first national park in the world, established in 1872. Since the southern entrance of the park was closed for the winter, we had to drive all the way to the northern entrance and this took a few days. As we approached the park we saw our first heard of bison and we got very excited. When we arrived to Yellowstone we stayed at Mammoth campground, which was the only open campground at that time of year. Immediately, we went for a drive and managed to see a grizzly bear and a black bear that afternoon. I was hoping to see huge herds of bison, but it's not really like that. As usual, humans are responsible for the near extinction of the bison. At the beginning of the 1800s, the population of bison reached almost 60 million animals. In an effort to strip the Plain Indians of their food and their way of life, and thus reaching the extinction of the Indian culture faster, the US government promoted the ”sport” hunt of bison and the population was depleted to near extinction with only 300 wild bison left by 1893. Today there are around 150.000 bison (mostly from farms) and only around 5.000 of them live wild in Yellowstone. So, we saw bison often, but not really big heards; only 15-30 animals together at the most.
Over the days we spent in the park we saw three grizzly bears, a pack of wolves plus one lone wolf, one black bear, two moose, tons of bison, elk, etc. We spent one whole morning looking at wolves, hoping they would do some hunting, but we were not so lucky. We also managed to do some hiking, the first one in bear territory, and we must say it was quite stressful. We enjoy the silence and to listen to the sounds of nature when we walk; but in bear country you need to talk or make noises all the time. You need to make sure bears know you are there, as you don't want to run into a bear and surprise him, or especially a mother with cubs! We also had to learn how to use our bear spray, which luckily we never had to use in real life.
We were lucky to be in Yellowstone on the week when they would open the road to the south where you can see Old Faithful and all the other geyser areas, which are really beautiful. Yellowstone National Park is located on an old volcano's caldera, the largest volcanic system in North America. The current caldera was created by an eruption that took place 640.000 years ago and it was 1.000 times stronger than the eruption of Mount St. Helen in 1980. Two thirds of the world's geysers are located in Yellowstone, so we spent two busy days trying to see all the Basin areas. We saw Old Faithful in action a few times and we were lucky also to see the Beehive geyser in action, which is very infrequent and stronger than the Old Faithful eruption. Our favorite area was Porcelain Basin, because it had very diverse colors and shapes. Many of the dramatic pictures you see from the geysers in Yellowstone are taken from the air, so our pictures don't look the same, but we were happy about the experience anyway.
When we left Yellowstone we stopped at the Montana Grizzly Encounter, a bear rescue and education sanctuary, which turned out to be the only time we would see grizzly bears up close. The sanctuary has five bears, all rescued from terrible captive situations, which had reached a stage where they could not be returned into the wild. The sanctuary does a lot of work educating children about bears, especially schools from the area, as it is normal to find bears roaming around in Wyoming and Montana. In the parks we visited before , we had been told how to act around bears and in bear country in general, but here we got more detailed information about the two types of bears.
Basically, black bears are smaller, they weight around 200 kg at the most, and if you are far enough away from them you can try to scare them off by making loud noises and standing on rocks to look bigger. Most times they will avoid the conflict with you and run away. A mother with cubs is another story, as she most likely will see you as a threat and charge you if you are too close. If that happens there is no other way that to use your bear spray or fight back with everything you got.
Grizzly bears....different story, and if you see one up close, you need to be as quiet and ”respectful” as you can, slowly walking backwards without making eye contact while ”sweet talking” it, and hope that the bear will lose interest in you. If he doesn't and instead decides to charge you, your bear spray better work. Otherwise, you will have to play dead face down on the ground, protecting your neck with your hands, until he is finished attacking you and thus consider you an eliminated threat. If you instead are stalked by a Grizzly and he then charges you, the only way to hope to see another day is to fight back, which in the case of a 400 kg animal, sounds like an impossible endeavor.
Bears have poor eyesight but an incredible sense of smell and can smell a raisin from 5 km away. They normally stand up when they smell something interesting, so the standing position is not an attack, but rather a ”research” position. We were told a story about a girl visiting Yellowstone who used scented shampoo to wash her hair and afterwards went to sleep. During the night a black bear entered her tent licking her ear trying to find out if she tasted as good as her strawberry shampoo smelled. Lesson number two: when in bear country, avoid all perfumes and scented toiletry.
All over the parks in USA and Canada they have bear proof boxes in the campgrounds where you need to store your food. Our RV was safe, but there had been stories (and pictures) of bears tearing the cars apart to get to the food inside, so you really have to be careful. Not so much for yourself, because it's unlikely that you will be attacked by a bear, but because of the bears themselves. If they get used to coming to the camps looking for food, they become aggressive when they don't find it, and when they get aggressive they need to be put down in order to protect the people. All because of our own fault, because we couldn't keep our stuff secure. The most important animal lesson learned during our world tour: wild animals need to be kept wild so they can survive, thus DO NOT FEED THEM!!! This was stressed out continuously in the national parks while we were in Africa and Australia as well, and we should always keep it in mind when it comes to wild animals in all countries.
After Yellowstone, we continued our trip north and stopped one night at Glacier National Park. There are two scenes in Forrest Gump when he is running across the country and runs by a lake with beautiful mountains in the background. This is St. Mary lake in Glacier NP, but it looked very different when we were there. There is a famous road that crosses the park, along the lake, called ”Going to the sun” road (the one where Jack Nicholson is driving in the beginning of ”The Shining”), which normally due to snow opens only in early May. This year, due to heavy snowfall, the road was covered by 23 meters of snow and would only be opened at the end of July. So, we only spent one night there, in the only campground that was open. We were lucky to see the lake and mountains on the day we arrived, because next morning it was cloudy and raining again. We were the only ones there that night.
Next morning we got up and off we went to the Canadian border and Calgary, where we stayed with a friend. Canada, and Alberta especially, is not having an easy time with the currently low oil prices, as most of Alberta's economy is based on oil and gas. Nevertheless, we found Calgary to be a beautiful city, good food and cafes, with lots of parks and sporty people running around. Canadians take pride in their sports and are very sporty and fit people in general. This was a huge contrast to what we saw in the USA, where today all supermarkets have electric trolleys for ”handicapped” people, which is really just a polite name for the extremely obese population in the country. When you are so fat that you need to take an electric trolley to do your grocery shopping, something is seriously wrong. We have seen a lot of fat people during our trip and Japan was the only country where we didn't see a single obese person. Until we got to USA, the biggest person we had seen was a trucker somewhere in northern Australia, where we actually wondered how he managed to get up and fit inside his massive 18 wheeler truck. But the USA is a whole new level when it comes to obesity and the worst part of it is that people seem to be OK with it. We always compared our supermarket purchases with the ones of others, and with the amount of sodas, frozen pizzas, frozen processed food in general, ice creams and candies they buy, it's no surprise they can reach those levels. Again, a whole industry is based on this. People eat more therefore they get sick more often, therefore pharmaceuticals and hospitals make more money, etc, etc. We have never seen so many TV commercials for pharmaceutical products or heard and seen so many financial products, insurance, legal advice or real estate dealers as we heard on the radio and saw along the roads in the USA.
Anyway, let's go back to our story...Calgary was great, we stayed with our friend a couple days and when we left we took a brief stop at Calgary's Olympic Park, which was quite interesting. We promised our friend to come back another time for the ”Calgary Stampede” which is a full week of rodeo related events that should be quite fun. Rodeos are held in the summer in North America, so unfortunately we couldn't see one this time.
From Calgary we started the drive to what would be the highlight of our trip to North America. Banff and the Icefield Highway to Jasper National Park. I think it is safe to say that I have never been kept at awe with the views for such long a distance. It's around 280 km of enormous, majestic and beautiful mountains, one after another, rivers, glaciers and glacial lakes. Again, because it snowed so much this year, most of the lakes we could see where covered in snow, so it just reinforced the idea that we need to come back here in summertime. We actually made the decision that Jasper will be our plan B in case our new life plan in Chile doesn't work out. It is just simply so beautiful, and we hope some of the pictures can reflect this, as it is one of the most beautiful areas we have seen in the world and we really enjoyed this part of our trip. Lat: N 52°54'27.9900" and Lon: W 118°03'42.7356" is the furthest north we reached in North America.
After Jasper, we had to make our way back south, so we decided to stop in Penticton to visit an old friend of Carsten who has been living in Canada for many years. Penticton is a small pretty town in the Okanagan river area, which is the new wine area of British Columbia and they also produce a lot of fruit. We were surprised to see how good the weather and temperature of this area was. After days of sunny but cold weather, we arrived here and it was sunny and warm. We had a good time with our friends, playing Mountain Jenga and riding ATV's and from there we continued our way towards Vancouver. At that point we had to decide which places we needed to cut short on our trip because we were running out of time, and since all people had told us that Vancouver is a very rainy city, we decided it would not be a place for us to live anyway, so it made no sense exploring it this time. Instead, we continued to Vancouver Island, but before that, we had a forced stop in the small town of Lillooet. We were stranded there because the night before there was a thunderstorm that turned into flooding and closed roads, so we couldn't go through. It turned out that Lillooet was right by the Fraser River, which is known for its enormous white sturgeons. Carsten had been talking about sturgeon fishing ever since I known him, so we found a guide, got a good deal and went fishing the next day. He caught a 7 foot (208 cm), 275 lb (137,5 kg) river monster and both him and the guide were very happy.
After the fishing adventure we continued our way and arrived to Vancouver Island, which turned out to be a very neat place, but for us it was too neat and perfect. Kind of like a place where you go for vacations when you want everything to work out, not a place where you want to find surprises. It was cool to see, but it still didn't beat the mountains we had seen in Alberta. We met a funny couple on the island while we were sitting on a bench eating an ice cream and watching the ocean. They saw our car and were surprised that we had come all the way from California. When we told them we came from Chile they were even more surprised because they were about to visit Chile, so we gave them a lot of tips of things to do. That example is one of the main differences we found between USA and Canada. As soon as we crossed the border into Canada, we could tell that everybody we talked to (in supermarkets, shops, street, etc) seemed to be better educated and have a better understanding of the world around them than people in the USA. Many people in the USA, and we visited ten states on this trip, seem to be scared of the ”outside world”.
During this trip in North America, we began to understand why people from the US always travel around the world in organized tours and groups. Again, another industry. The “fear industry” that the media helps to create, allows for the defense industry to develop and the tourism industry also benefits from that fear. People are scared of traveling alone and always need somebody to guide them. All signs that you see in USA tell you that the places are extremely dangerous, that the animals can kill you, that you need to be careful, etc. When we arrived to the Canadian national parks, we were surprised we didn't see many signs regarding bears, so we asked the rangers if there actually were any bears around. The answer was “of course, we are surrounded by them, you just need to know how to act around them; it's normal around here”. A very different attitude towards the issue.
I was surprised though that most US people we talked to knew where Chile was and some knew we have mountains, unlike many other countries we visited where people had no idea that there was a country named Chile. We had some funny experiences in the USA by people commenting things such as ”you must visit Lake Tahoe, it is the deepest lake in the world” or that there are ”350 billion inhabitants on the planet”. Then again, I think if you visit rural areas in Chile, we are not that different when it comes to ignorance and lack of education; but it was just interesting to see the difference between people in the USA versus Canada because it was so obvious.
Traveling in these ten states also made it very easy for us to understand why Donald Trump was elected as president. His team was just better at understanding the kind of language he needed to use in order to get these votes. Arizona, Utah, Idaho, Wyoming and Montana are states that depend on farming and oil. They are suffering from the current low commodity prices (grains and oil and gas) and are very far away from the “modern times” that people from the rich coastal areas of the USA live in. When Mr. Trump says he will open the old factories and give them their jobs back, these people really want to believe him. It will be a hard awakening when they finally realize that they didn't lose their jobs because of the Chinese, but rather to technology, and that it is very unlikely that these jobs will reapear unless Mr. Trump wants to go back to how things were a 100 years ago.
Getting back to our trip, from Vancouver Island we caught a ferry that would take us to Port Angeles in the USA. We also decided to skip the visit to Seattle because it was a detour to another rainy city and we really wanted to arrive to Yosemite National Park during weekdays. We knew if we arrived on a weekend it would be a nightmare with the amount of people visiting. So we rushed through the states of Washington and Oregon, which was a shame because what we saw along the drive looked very beautiful, but we also had rain all the way, so they were not the best of days to visit. We originally wanted to drive to Mount Rainier, but the road was closed due to snow, so we decided to drive straight south and reach Redwood National Park as soon as possible.
This stop was really nice and while we had seen big trees (Douglas Fir) on Vancouver Island, the redwoods were special. These trees have existed in the coastal areas of northern California for 20 million years. The oldest ones standing today are around 2.000 years old and they are the tallest trees in the world, reaching a hight of more than 110 meters. The Douglas Firs we saw on Vancouver Island could grow up to 90 meters tall, and the Sequoia trees, which can grow thicker than redwoods, does not grow quite as high either. Before the Californian Gold Rush, in the mid 1800s, redwoods covered more than 800.000 hectares in coastal California, but 96% of these trees were logged to be used in the construction of cities, especially in the San Francisco area after the big fire of 1851. Today the park covers only 53.000 hectares. We walked around it for two days and had a great time. You feel very small and humble walking around between these trees and it made us miss our big Alerces in Chile. Funny enough, nobody we talked to knew that Alerces existed and that a country outside USA had trees older than theirs.
Some days later, we continued our trip south and crossed Napa Valley, which, again, was very touristic and full of people, and seemed to me less modern than I had imagined it to be. I was hoping to get some ideas for our wine region in Chile, but we didn't really find anything very surprising. Maybe people like their wine areas to look old and traditional after all. Finally after some days of traveling we managed to arrive to Yosemite.
Yosemite had been on my travel list for as long as I can remember. Back when I was a teenager I used to rock climb with my best friend and we dreamed about climbing El Capitán one day. I don't have dreams of rock climbing anymore, but hiking around and visiting the park was absolutely a must on our North American trip and we saved it for last hoping to get better weather. This park, much like Grand Canyon, is one of the most famous ones in the USA, so – of course – it was full of people even on a weekday. The roads are quite small and only goes one way, so it is cumbersome to drive around because everybody is constantly stopping to take pictures and selfies. There are no parking spaces anywhere, so visiting the visitor center quietly, as we had done in many other parks, turned into mission impossible. We had to settle for a quick stop to get a map and an idea of the routes we could walk the following days, as we had decided to leave by Saturday morning, thus only allowing us three days in the park. We obviously had to get out of the park to find a place to spend the night, as it was impossible to find a spot inside. That afternoon we took pictures of El Capitán (amazing!!!), the Tunnel View which is the usual ”Ansel Adams – black and white Yosemite picture” you always see, and we also drove to Glacier Point, where you have a great view of the valley. The next two days we hiked around and enjoyed the views and we also managed to walk to the base of El Capitán to see it up close and look up the 900 meters high vertical wall. Yosemite is truly a beautiful national park and we were lucky to arrive at the time when it was warmer and the waterfalls where at their fullest. It was wonderful to see and we hope to be back someday. Not in May, because it turned out that it is also peak season, since the waterfalls have so much water at this time of the year.
After Yosemite we had a few days to kill before returning the car in Los Angeles, so we decided to drive to Death Valley. We had been told that because of the heavy rains, we could probably see something like a ”flower desert” as we have in Chile some years, but that didn't happen. Death Valley is a lot like the salt flats of San Pedro de Atacama or Uyuni, except that it is situated at a much lower altitude. Actually we stood at Badwater Basin, which is the lowest point in the valley, and in the US, and it lies 86 meters below sea level. Death Valley is the place where the highest temperature in the world has been recorded....57 C in the shadow and around 93C at ground level. When we were there, it was 45C (113F) and we were boiling during the day and also during the night, as it only went down to around 30C (86F). Hinkley, the city where the water plant from the Erin Brockovich movie is located, lies south of Death Valley, so we didn't want to drink any water from around here.
From Death Valley we drove slowly towards Long Beach and after sleeping quietly one last night in the Angeles National Forest close to Los Angeles, we had to drive into the city and the madness of traffic, which is not fun when you are driving a motor home. We were happy to kiss Los Angeles goodbye and to catch a plane to Miami for our last stop in USA, before heading back home to Chile.
Miami was sunny, warm, friendly, Latin American and it feels more like home for us. It is interesting how much Miami has changed over the years, because Carsten and I were here more than 10 years ago and back then, we both would have thought that we would have prefered to live in California. Today, after having driven around California for many weeks, we can say we would much rather spend time in Miami. Life seems much more relaxed and laid back here compared to how it seems to be for the stressed Californians.
We came to Miami because I have a cousin who lives there, so we came to spend time with her and her husband. While we were there, we did a short trip to Orlando to visit the Kennedy Space Center (KSC). For me it was very interesting because I hadn't been there before, but for Carsten it was a real bummer because, due to bad weather, they canceled the launch of the Space X Falcon 9 space rocket that we wanted to see there. He felt like a kid that had been robbed all his Christmas presents.
You can't help to notice that the exhibitions and movies in the KSC look old and outdated. Not surprising if you consider that back in the 60's, NASA received more than 4% of the Federal Budget, which was reduced to less than 1% back in 1975 and for the last ten years, this percentage has been reduced to less than 0.5%. In a way it's very sad to see, because it seems like at that time there was a common human project, that the USA was leading in order to do something big for humankind. Today our world has been reduced to personal consumption and money spending, there is no project that is more important than ourselves. We buy things we don't need to impress people we don't know. It seems like there are no more Kennedys to lead a change, no more Sagans to look at the stars and understand where we come from. Today NASA is running a recruitment effort to find people who want to travel to Mars and in a way we are saying ”we don't care what will happen to this planet, we will leave it behind and settle in other worlds”. I think the plan of the USA is to put everybody in a spacecraft and make them live there, as it is portrayed in the animated movie Wall-E. Sad, but maybe true.
While in Florida we did a short trip to Key West. It has been raining hard in Florida the last weeks and we were lucky to have one good day in Key West, which we spent walking around visiting Ernest Hemingway's house. It was interesting and made us wish we had rich uncles who could buy us such a nice house and pay for our safaris in Africa. Unfortunately we don't have that luxury, so we need to go back to work soon!
As some of you know, we decided some months ago that we would head back to Chile and start our own business. Hopefully that will work and if not, we will always have Jasper! After traveling around the whole world, we decided that Chile, Jasper (Canada) or South Africa, are the only places (so far) where we would like to live.
This first trip around the world was a fantastic experience and only made us start planning the many more we want to do. Going out, exploring new places and meeting new people has always been a big driver in our lives, but to have the chance to do it for so long and to really be able to compare different places and different cultures, has been a real gift.
We learned that our world is not so big and we the people are not so different from each other. Many of our fears and wars could disappear if people could travel and explore more, trying to really understand and be compassionate and respectful of other peoples life and their challenges. It has been overwhelming for us to see how quickly we are depleting the planet of all resources, cutting down all the trees in the Amazon to replace them with cattle ranches, fishing all the fish in the Asian oceans, killing all the tigers, elephants and rhinos so we can use them as medicine, etc, etc. Education, technology, knowledge and awareness of what happened in our own history are the only things that can change our future and lead us to a peaceful world. Nature will always continue to exist, it is us, the people, who will disappear from the planet and leave nothing for future generations to see and enjoy. As Carl Sagan once said: ”Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity -- in all this vastness -- there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us. It's been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.”
We would like to thank the Naseri family for a great welcoming to USA. Thank you also to Jennifer for opening her house to us and showing us around in Calgary together with Darren. Thanks again to the Pangø's for a great weekend in Penticton and many, many thanks to Macarena and Matías for sharing three weeks with us and showing us your piece of paradise. We enjoyed the Everglades and Marco Island very much and we look forward to seeing you all again soon.
As we get ready to head back home, we would like to thank once again our families and all our friends who supported us, read our stories, shared thoughts and ideas with us and helped us to move forward. To us, this trip is only the beginning of many more to come. For now we go home and we are looking forward to that new adventure!
Big hugs, Claudia and Carsten
