Big Sur and the Cook Islands

Suppose we are in an island in the middle of the Pacific where all the phone and internet connections may be done by satellite… that could explain why we haven’t given any sign lately. But you know, we are alright, people here call these islands Paradise and I can’t think about any argument against it. Yes, I’m talking about the Cook Islands. But let’s get a bit back on time. I think I left you in San Francisco, such a beautiful city, but then we saw the Big Sur, this is, we drove in highway one, a highway by the sea that connects San Francisco and Los Angeles. We made it in four days, stopping at every point for the views. First, a coast broken by not so pacific waves, fuggy little towns, ghost trees, and then the spectacular mountains by the sea, the road zigzags between green mountains and from these heights the ocean looks infinite. We stopped in some national parks and saw the biggest trees, the redwoods and cascades over the sand in inaccessible beaches. And we passed Santa Cruz, Monterey, San Simeon, where we saw zebras by the road, Santa Barbara, Ventura and finally Los Angeles. L.A. was as much fun as San Francisco was beautiful. I never drove in a city of ten million inhabitants, but it’s not hard, you just have cars around you all the time and if you get traffic you can spend more than one hour in crossing dozens of streets not covering even one tenth of the city. I mean, that’s just amazing. Then we went to the beaches of Santa Monica, nice, and Venice, interesting, where we saw the sunset while watching a spontaneous drum playing, with old hippies and others dancing. And our hostel offered to us spaghettis for five dollars and going out to see the real Saturday night, which was a good one (except for that we were just in our backpacker clothes and this was a superfancy Beverly Hills club, but who cares).
The step after California where the Cook Islands, Rarotonga and Aitutaki. We arrived with all the backpacks and walked under the first rain of the hurricane season until we got soaked (because they told us it was five minutes to town and they of course meant it by motorbike) but after this, everything was alright. One thinks Rarotonga, with the deep green jungle and the beaches is perfect until one sees Aitutaki, the island of the big lagoon, which is one of this places that makes you loose the capability of surprise. Then it’s just transparent waters with white sand and as soon as you start to swim you enter small worlds of corals with colorful fishes of all sizes. Here they make the Survivors series and express weddings, and I wouldn’t care doing any of them (but seriously I didn’t). So we just swam, read, ate fish marinated in coconut, pawpaw, learned to open the coconuts… Now we are in Rarotonga again and we crossed the island with a quite funny buddist guide, nearly 70, 15 sons, that showed us the properties of Belladona and other plants, and the island, just as green as a tropical island gets. The perfect islands, a pity that they are just in the other end of the world.

Carta desde Santa Barbara

Os escribo desde Santa Barbara, ya llevamos un par de dias conduciendo un Ford focus por la costa de California, por unas montanias verdes al lado del mar, preciosas. Tambien hemos visto redwoods, los arboles mas grandes del planeta, que dejan sin aliento, sintiendote como una hormiguita, y luego una cascada cayendo sobre la playa. Pero lo mas curioso ha sido ver una horda de cebras al lado de la carretera. Y por supuesto no es que bebamos mucho vino sino que se las trajo el multimillionario Hearst (quien inspiro la peli Ciudadano Kane) el siglo pasado. Ayer visitamos su castillo en lo alto de la montania y vimos esta ciudad en compania de una entraniable medio abuela mia rusa. Santa Barbara tiene mar, montania y unos bonitos edificios de la epoca de los espanioles. Pero he empezado por el final, antes de esto hemos pasado por un Halloween de sustos en Londres (dejo abierto el misterio), volado encima de montanias blancas, Groenlandia y Canada, y caminado arriba y abajo las cuestas de San Francisco. Y no puedo dejaros sin contar que SF es una ciudad extraordinaria, con casitas victorianas en las cuestas que suben los tranvias, gente abierta que se para a hablar contigo y le dice a su perro que hoy no muerda turistas, restaurantes de todo el mundo ( en el viaje hemos probado coreano, vietnamita e indio) y por supuesto el puente, desde la playa y con la luna llena detras. Os contaria mas pero con este aparatito tardo una vida en escribir y a pesar del jet lag, que es poco, ya toca levantarse. Y ahora, proximo destino, Los Angeles.

From London to San Francisco

I was going to upload a great picture of Greenland from the plane but
I can't from the Iphone (anybody knows how??). Anyway, after our
departure,in London they received us in the passport control with a
"that's lovely" and we had dinner in a Korean restaurant. Then we went
to an English pub full of witches and pirates. And we flew 10 hours
over ice, Greenland and Canada and arrived to the most beautiful city
I've seen in the US, San Francisco