Louis going on record

for what it's worth, and for the sake of my own safety as well as the protection of the aforementioned 'Oregon girl's' feelings, I'd like to dissociate myself from all views and opinions expressed in the previous post.

I quite liked her...

"THE OREGON GIRL" (i warn you. the following content is unsuitable for those with squeamishness or weak stomachs.)

i feel guilty that louis has done all the blogging so far. he has covered pretty much everything there is to talk about except for one thing. the oregon girl. my god. i still wake up with a cold sweat when she decides to pop into my nightmares. she introduced herself and apart from the massive winter boots and dress that looked like it was made out of cobwebs she seemed normal as any world traveler is. we started talking about where we had and been and what we did back home and she said that she had been kicked out of her house for selling heroin. ok, fair enough, didn't bother me too much. i then asked where she lived now and she said that she lived in a "house" she had built a mile or so away from the her family home. still not totally weird but getting their. i shrugged it off and starting seeing images of the leatherface dude from the texas chainsaw massacre. thats (!!) where i'd seen those boots before... i inched my numb behind a couple inches farther away from the "the oregan girl". i had sort of stopped listening when i heard the words "bamboo and seal skins" pop into the convo. i asked her to repeat and she said that her "house" was made of bamboo and baby seal skins that she "found" dead on the beach. i threw up in my mouth a little at this bit and swallowed hard. eesh. i had a bit of a cold sweat at this point.

i ignored it and we started talking about normal things like pot and music and beer etc... the oregon girl had remained silent for the last half hour and i wondered whether she was trying decide which of us would look better as her door mat and whether she would use a blunt axe or chainsaw like her (most likely) relative. she had spent the time eating the leaves out of a potted plant and drawing on the wall. the drawings were actually pretty good. they were sort of caricatures but of inter-bred species. she had a walrus with tits and and old man's face and fish with a woman's torso. so maybe she was just a very eclectic artist. i started to relax and asked her where she had acquired her dashing winter boots. she said that she had lived in a dumpster for a week and that some had thrown out these "perfectly good" winter boots. apart from being mens size 11 she said they fit pretty well. i quickly said good night and hid under my covers for the duration of the night.

the next morning was our departure from peru and we spent an hour talking to our newly made friends and getting facebooks etc... the oregon girl returned. she remained in her cobweb dress which was now slightly brown and covered in what looked like...(think of something gross). as she wedged herself between the wall and me i jumped and went to make myself a yummy breakfast bun with a strong cup of coffee. i returned outside where they were talking about japan and thailand and as if waiting for me to arrive she suddenly exclaimed that she had once smuggled spiders in from japan. (i shiver as i write this). i asked sarcastically what other wonderful pets she had had and either not noticing or ignoring my sarcasm she admitted that she had had a pet squirrel. normal enough and stupidly i relaxed. while i was munching away at my bun she started talking about how her squirrel and given her and her crackhead boyfriend scabies and then died. lovely. someone asked what scabies was and she enlightened us. "scabies is basically where bugs crawl under your skin and lay eggs as they tunnel there way up your leg or whichever appendage they have chosen. i yakked and swallowed my bun for the second time. and chugged my coffee trying to wash it down. i stupidly asked how you got rid of scabies and she said that you basically zap the areas the eggs have been laid and then slice open the area and spoon it out. she then lifted her dress a bit and showed us the scars from the "spooning" on her legs, which had enough hair to compete with chewbacca. as if trying to prove that she could beat chewbacca in a hair contest she stretched and gave us a nice view of her underarms. the women of the amazon would have made her queen in less time then it takes to say scabies.

5 minutes later we were in a cab to the airport, i sat in the front trying to get rid of my nausea by inhaling some "fresh" peruvian air. she still haunts my memory and my dreams...

California Dreamin'

Please accept our apologies and gratitude. If you’re still managing to follow this blog, you are among the most loyal and patient people that walk this earth. When it comes to writing these entries, frequency isn’t our forte, and the most recent delay has overshadowed all the others. As much as I’d like to explain away our internet inactivity with thrilling stories of being trapped in the wilderness without a glimpse of civilization, I’m afraid the oohing and ahhing will have to wait. The real reason for our unforgivable neglect is that, having been so well looked after for the last two weeks, we’ve been lulled into a happy stupor which doesn’t lend itself to travel blogging (not least because it’s playing hard and loose with the word ‘travelling’).

I’ve just read the last blog and scoffed at my innocent naivety concerning the flight which we were all set to get on to Mexico. In fact, the 24 hours after that entry were possibly the most unpleasant of our trip so far. I hate to admit it, but it was pretty much entirely my fault. Having been entrusted with the not-so-challenging task of guarding the passports, I passed on said responsibility to the hostel reception desk (I expect the more experienced among you will have figured out the punch line by now). Of course, we inevitably forgot that we’d left them and drove to the airport bidding a fond farewell to the hostel, passports and all. We didn’t realise the fateful blunder until check-in and five minutes later I found myself in a cab, trying to explain to the driver in Spanish that I’d pay 150% of the fare if he got me to the airport and back within the hour. He managed it, and while I ended up overpaying horribly for a ride, it was much cheaper than renting a racing car with similar adrenal results. During the taxi ride there were a fare (get the pun?) few near-death experiences, including two drag races, a flight from the police and a bumpy ride across a restricted stretch of land which I think was a dug-up building site. Anyway, we got there and back in about two-thirds of the time it took for us originally to get from the hostel to the airport, and I was pleased but panicky.

Needless to say, we did miss the flight as they wouldn’t let us check in less than an hour before departure. So (here’s the crunch), after a couple of hours of negotiating and heavy breathing, they allowed us to get the next flight at 6am the following morning (this was at 3pm in the afternoon) on the proviso that we paid a penalty of $150 each. We looked at all alternatives, including some rickety looking inter-continental buses but ended up swallowing the bitter pill and paying the fine. It was an unwelcome dent in both our meagre budgets and we weren’t best pleased.

I wish I could say the misery ended there, but alas a night spent in an airport is rarely problem-free. After wincing at the chunky penalty, we decided we needed some comfort and sought refuge in McDonald’s, the adolescent’s universal home-away-from-home. An hour later, I had a crippling stomach-ache and (I’ll try not to be too graphic about this) an hour after that I was locked in a cubicle with my head over the toilet, praying that I had food poisoning and not some exotic fungal disease. Luckily, it was the former, and I expect my mother will be doubly relieved as it naturally put me well and truly off Big Macs for a very long time. So that’s enough about the airport, but we arrived in Mexico City feeling tired, dirty and burdened with sickness.

Fortunately, we couldn’t have found a better place to recover. After being collected at the airport by Cosmo’s biological father (long story – those of you who aren’t in the loop can either overcome their curiosity or seek to satisfy it by talking to Cosmo), we were taken to his beautiful family home in the city. Travelling can be tiring when luxuries are so few, but entering into this home was like stepping into a warm bath after a long hard day in the cold. The food was wonderful, the shower was hot(!), and we even had our very own local tour guide to show us around in the form of Cosmo’s bio-pa (I find that’s the only way I can refer to him without feeling the need to support it with paragraphs of explanation).

Mexico City was surprisingly great to visit. Having heard tell of its soaring crime rates and suffocating pollution (apparently the air is only classified by the WHO as ‘breathable’ an average of four days a year – fun fact courtesy of Alice Simison PhD), I was expecting a lethal rat race too busy and too dirty to be appreciated by an observer. On the contrary, there were some real gems for the traveller. One highlight was the unrivalled Anthropology Museum, one of the best museums I’ve ever seen displaying artefacts recovered from all the civilizations to have populated different parts of modern-day Mexico over the centuries.

Another beauty is the main square in the city centre. Apparently, the invading Spanish decided to build their cathedral right on top of the religious monuments of their predecessors, meaning the square is at once a gleaming cathedral and an ancient archaeological site, provoking – I would imagine – an endless debate between historians and religious authorities. As it stands, the cathedral dominates and only a small corner of the square has been cleared for excavation, but it’s both exciting and upsetting to think that such a wealth of culture remains irrevocably trapped under perhaps the most potent symbol of those that destroyed it.

Walking around the Centro in Mexico is actually stunning. A whole network of well-preserved old fashioned streets has been completely pedestrianised so that, contrary to my expectations, aimless wandering (which is really the only way to soak up a city) is not just possible but actually very pleasant. As well as the beautiful buildings, there’s also a natural phenomenon to observe. According to our omniscient tour guide (although the more geologically-minded among you should feel free to confirm or deny this), Mexico City is built on the floor of a dried-up lake, meaning that the earth beneath it is unusually soft. Over many years, this has caused some parts of it to sink further into the ground, and several earthquakes have actually wiggled the whole place about a bit. The results are unnervingly steep slopes which evidently weren’t there when the streets on said slopes were built, giving you the sort of feeling I imagine an ant encounters when crawling across an un-ironed table cloth.

Burghard (the bio-pa – having said that, I do hope he’s happy with his unofficial title) and family gave us a perfect crash-course, filling us to the brim with local food and showing us all sorts of places, including the local contemporary art museum and all the must-see monuments and such of the city. As if that wasn’t enough, after a few days sightseeing, they packed us along with their luggage in the car and took us on their family holiday, taking us one step closer to heaven. We were taken to Banderas Bay, staying for one night in Las Juntas and the rest of the time near Puerto Vallarta. It’s difficult to describe how beautiful it was. Suffice to say that we had a private beach, the weather was warm but not stifling, and the water was refreshing but not cold. We learnt that Tequila didn’t always have to be ‘slammed’ with a pinch of salt and a slice of lime (who knew?!) and that whales migrate all the way from Canada to show off their majestic heads in the temperate Bay. Cosmo had the time of his life bonding with the previously unexplored half of his gene pool, releasing his inner eight-year old with his vastly more mature step-brother Sebastian, who’s also eight. I expect he’ll want to write a lot more either privately or publicly about his thoughts and feelings on the experience, but it was a real joy to watch him run around like a puppy dog, bio-pa and step-bro in tow. So Mexico was perfect, and we were feeling like pampered princes when we got on the flight to Los Angeles.

It is a fact universally acknowledged that any gap-yearer in possession of a healthy dose of curiosity is in want of a so-called ‘cultural education’. To achieve said education, one adopts the ‘when in Rome’ policy. So, to cut a long story well, not short, but shorter, two hours after landing in the US of A we had spent an extortionate amount of money, eaten lunch at Burger King and were driving around in a rented four by four (seriously). I don’t really know what we were expecting (a celebrity on every corner and a guided tour by Miley Cyrus probably) but we were jaw-droppingly disappointed when we landed in LAX. The hostel we were staying in was close to the airport as we were waiting for my mum and didn’t want to overspend on a cab-ride to the beach, and it turned out to be a hotspot for what I think the locals call ‘trailer trash’. This place made Butlin’s look like the Field of the Cloth of Gold. While there was nothing specifically wrong with it, it completely lacked class and possessed zilch of the fun backpacking vibe that we got so used to in hostels throughout South America. So, we decided to get out of there and quickly discovered that trying to get around L.A. without a car is like trying to cross the Atlantic in a dingy.

So, we rented a car from a suspicious-looking rental office connected to our hostel and ended up with the kind of car you can only find in North America. Neither of us had a driving license with us (I don’t even have one yet) but they were happy to give us the car on our Provisionals (perhaps because that’s far too big a word for Americans to understand – I don’t know) and we were off. If the place had a ‘culture’ in the true meaning of the word, then it escaped me, but it does have one thing going for it: glamour. The whole place is charged with high spending, and everything from the Beverly Hills mansions to the polished paving stones looks expensive. We did have a good time driving around Sunset Boulevard, convinced that every Tom, Dick and Harry was in fact Tom Cruise, Dick Van Dyke and Harry Houdini and we even saw Samuel L. Jackson in the flesh! Cosmo found his Shangri-La in the tattoo parlour which hosts ‘LA Ink’ and almost wet himself when he bought a skateboard deck and calendar designed and autographed by a girl previously unknown to me named ‘Kat Von D’.

After a couple of days of boisterous (as far as I’m at all capable of that characteristic) messing around in the most celebrity-rich city in the world, my mum came to join the party. Thank God, as I’m positive one week of California alone would have drained our bank accounts into overdraft. Having said that, the boisterousness apparently didn’t need to end with the arrival of a maternal figure. The next morning at the car-hire place, Cosmo and I discovered that Avis was offering a special deal on Chevrolet Camaros (for those of you who don’t know what that is, either watch ‘Transformers’ or Google it and hold your breath). Persuading her to go for it was stunningly easy – perhaps because we told her it was a family saloon – and half an hour later we were revving a V8 down Hollywood Blvd feeling like we had officially joined the high-society so visible all around us.

So by now you may have noticed that the California experience and the oh-so-profound-i’m-finding-myself-gap-year experience are incompatible. But hey, we’re taking a break for ten days. Speaking of which, that brings me neatly on to probably the coolest thing we did in L.A. One of our (my mum’s and my) old neighbours in London has been a loyal follower of my modest acting career throughout school, and has always been generous enough (and good enough at acting herself) to shower me with praise whenever she sees anything I’m in. In that vein, she passed on to my mum the email address of her cousin who works in film production in L.A. just so that if we were ever in the area we could meet up and talk about the glitz and glamour of the film industry. Well, we went to the area and we got so much better than that.

After a culturally responsible morning at the Getty Centre (a superb art museum in the Hills), we indulged our more superficial but equally enthusiastic fascination with celebrities by visiting Warner Brothers Studios and getting a guided tour of all the different sets. Alex (the cousin) works for Legendary picture which, for the film buffs amongst you, is the company behind such titles as 300, The Hangover, The Dark Knight and, most recently, Clash of the Titans. There was a museum in the Studios which had all the original costumes and bits and bobs from the movie sets of some real classics, including clothes worn by the entire cast of The Departed, the Spartans’ red capes from 300, Johnny Depp’s Willy Wonka costume and Heath Ledger’s Joker suit. Probably the coolest thing in the whole place was a telegram written by Jack Warner after he’d just read the script of Bonnie and Clyde, saying that he thought there was no way it could ever make a successful movie. On either side of it were the shot-up costumes of Faye Dunnaway and Warren Beatty. How cool is that?! Any condemnations of the cultural poverty of Los Angeles were redeemed in the glorious hour and a half spent in Warner Brothers Studios, which left us starry-eyed and giggly.

The next morning we left L.A. for a glimpse of its arch Californian rival. San Francisco could not be more different from her sister, and although she trails in her shadow when it comes to pop music and film industry, she offers so much more in the way of beauty. San Fran is an undeniably pleasant place and every street corner is so picturesque it just begs to be painted. The hills actually are as steep as they’re rumoured to be and the cable cars do actually work. We spent our only full day in the city walking around the fisherman’s market, enjoying the views and browsing the stalls which were a refreshing break from the big superstore feel of L.A. Feeling somehow integral to its production (no idea why), we felt compelled to watch Clash of the Titans. It was almost as hard convincing my mum to watch it as it was to get her to rent the Camaro, but she eventually conceded and obediently put on her 3D glasses. Ironically, Cosmo and I were both really disappointed (sorry if you’re reading this Alex – for what it’s worth, we quote The Hangover on an hourly basis) and my mum thought it was great fun.

So we finally left the hustle and bustle of big cities and took to the Californian countryside. After leaving the city, we spent a night with some more of our old neighbour’s friends, who showed us the local area, including the Google head offices and Stanford University. We’ve been staying in Carmel Valley since Monday and will be back in L.A. tomorrow afternoon. Everything around here seems intensified with beauty and, while none of it seems untouched, it all seems very well-respected and there’s a rarely-visited beach round every corner. It’s very quiet which, of course, has its down sides, but a spoonful of peace seems necessary after the hectic lifestyle we’ve grown used to recently. As for security, we started feeling pretty safe after discovering that Clint Eastwood was the local governor (/Sheriff)!

Wow that was long. If you’ve got this far then I suppose I owe you an even bigger apology and even more gratitude than when you started. Having separated the wheat from the chaff, we’re now truly left with the most loyal and patient people that walk this earth. I think Cosmo wants to write something about a creepy girl from Oregon, so you may have to read even more soon. Anyway, I hope the titan length of this post is redemption for my neglect over the past two weeks.

Love you all. If you need us we’re on Cosmo’s phone number – 0035679879090.

xxx