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Sooo after a long trip from san dieago I finally made it to Santa Barbara, Now Santa Barabara is a small beach town, with an art deco kinda feel surrounded by the mountains on one side and the Pacific ocean on the other side. It was by far the nicest place i have been to in the USA. While i was there i met some old lady whom was sooo helpful with everything and was nice with offering her advice in life. she was a cool person to talk to.
After that I headed up to another small town on the pacific coats called Santa Cruz, it is well known for being a hippy and laid back town for travelers and colledge students. However the hostel i was in kicked its guests out between the hours of 11am - 5pm and since it was pouring with rain when i was there with a huge backpack, i wasnt too please..:P. The place Kinda reminded me of the film the lost boys with shady characters i met there. My hostel had a curfew of 11pm aswel meaning that if i went out too late i would be sleeping in the rain. So i was forced to stay in at night and the hostel was full of some very stange characters, One guy was an american high school drop out who spoke like forest gump! and there was a complete dough bag whom loved the guitar and would not shut up taliking about women he slept with. to be honest we all knew he was lying he looked like a homless man and was very very boring. :). i met some american women there also going to san fransico and traveled with them till we got there the next day.
As soon a i got to San franiciso i immeadiatly went out on a bar crawl with hostel. On it i met some english, new zealand and american people. It was a very standard bar crawl and everyone left at 1am. I started to head back by myself but i got lost and ended up having to pay this homless guy to walk me back to the hostle, which was very stupid and very funny. I offered to buy him food in gratitude but he made it clear that he just wanted cash so he can buy some weed. lol i may not have agreed with his idea but i still gave him cash as he did help me get back.
The next day in San francisco I head to the prison Island of Alcatraz. It was a very impressive place with a very harsh history, while i was there i met an ozzy lady i met back in San diego, which was kinda surreal, but its happened so often you eventually think.... very smalll world... and it is :).
later that night i went out with some canadians, english, and new zealand guys to an 18+ night club. As most of them were not over 21 and couldn't get into other places. Now when we were there it seemed like just any other bar.... how wrong we were. Most of the american people where drugged up so badly! and there was more men than women by a long way. We the started to realise that all the women were only getting off with other women ...... and the same was being said about the men..... it was a F***ing gay bar!... called rickshaw lol lol for teenagers! Alarm bells started to ring for me when i saw the lady boys in the men toilet being paid to have sex in the toilets. Im not sure what was more disturbing, the fact that normal looking straight guys where paying for sex or that the bar use to go into the qubical to take pictures and film it, then sell it! Everyone got checked out by the guys in there that night, we tried very hard to attract the women but as you could imagine... it was very hard! but was a very funny place. later on we somehow managed to be outside the United Nations Building and the New zealander tought us the melborne shuffle dance. im not sure what happened to that video, prob end up on you tube at sometime. we then went to find the nearest take away, which was full of homless people, whom did everything they could think of to get money off us, including singing to us! lol. It was agood night
The next day i was very hungover and it was pouring with rain but i still went out regardless of the weather and how i felt. I went to lombart street with all the winding roads and headed down to china town, which looks nothing like china, after being in actual china a few months back! I then just went out with kiwi guy from napier and met up with canadian from the night before and we just drank in hostel on the saturday night as they were giving away free vodka and rum cokes all night. which was sweet as!
The next day was my very last full day traveling, so i decided to make th most of it. I met up with Ozzy women i met a few days back at alcatraze and we headed to place called castello or cartello. i never heard of it but it turned out to be the gay district of san fransico! lol why me! lol anyway we then went to golden gate park but was full of homless people and didnt really feel safe so we left and said our goodbyes to each other. That night i met some irish couple whom had just started their year long traveling, they have no idea how much i envied them and i said my farwell to my kiwi friend.
The next day was a day of waiting, so i made the most of it i spoke to many travelers for many hours in the hostel. Then the last hour before i got on the bus to the airport i went out and gave away almost all US currency to as many homless people i found begging on the street. I left with a smile on my face... :)
In the bus i met the very last person on my trip a new zealand girl also heading home at the end of her travels. we talked and talked and talked about our experiences. we then realises that San francisco looked like the capiial city of wellngton in new zealand (one of my favourite place on my travels) and we watched it pass as by, it was beutiful. we were driven back to our lives while the sun settled around us on the mountains.... perfect!.....
So that was it.... I had finished by journey and was heading home..... I learnt so much traveling it was the best experience of my life.... so far. Every moment had a prupose, even the thoughest moments made me grateful to be alive. I loved evey minute of my life as a backpacker and i learnt so so much about life, myself, others and differnt cultures and ways of life. I thank everyone i ever met in making my journey such a memorable one.
I have an idea of where Im heading now in life as a result from backpacking. Thank you world, I now know this journey will continue, this was just the beginning.
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