We made it.

We have arrived at last in New York, the Big Apple. We are staying in a nice hostel called Jazz on the Villa, which is technically in Harlem.

We successfully met up with Cam in San Francisco and had a good day wandering around with him. We stayed in the city with Cam so we had to bid farewell to Colin and his boat and we set sail across the bay for San Francisco which was cool as there were great views of the Golden Gate bridge and of Alcatraz, unfortunately by this time the San Francisco fog had set in but we got some good pictures. We also saw he windiest road in San Fran and did a load of shopping.

This morning we had to get up at 3.00am to catch our flight to St Louis in a state which I cant spell, begins with an M....Missouri?. When we took of we were able to see the fires which are currently ravaging California and the west coast and when we arrived in St Louis we were able to see the extensive flooding and breaching of Leves, so we really followed our natural disasters today.

The flight from St Louis to New York was delayed but nothing to write home about really. We are currently planning our stay in New York hopefully an action packed 3 days to come.

Not long now till we fly home to see everyone and I think we are looking forward to putting our feet up and relaxing!!!!!!! (and getting away from the crazy incompatence which is america lol) see you soon

And we must also add before we sign off that no-one should come to America. The countryside is nice ... I guess....but New Zealand is nicer. You get charged for breathing and the people are among the most miserable I have ever met. The beaurocracy here sucks because it basically means that noone knows anything and noone can help you. Everything takes days to get done and when you think its all sorted they will be like "so that's $100 please" or "i'm sorry we have lost your bags". A very nice person in Santa Barbara found our USA book and sent it to San Fran for us - or so we thought but when we got to San Fran it wasn't there and they had no idea about anything to do with it. I should stress here that some people are very nice - Colin an his family who we owe a BIG thankyou and Iain at the Venice beach hostel who was actually from Coventry so had to be nice.

Anyway, it's not that bad but its just useless to try and backpack around. A couple of weeks spent in Santa Barbara would be lovely.

Take care, looking forward to seeing everyone, lots of love Tegan and Toby