We travelled with a company called Green Tortoise Tours based in San Francisco. Theyre an old hippie kind of company set up in the seventies. They do tours, all off the beaten track across the States and even down into Mexico including Baja. There's usually two drivers and all the seats flatten down into beds sleeping around 30, hed to toe. We certainly stopped at San Diego to pick a couple of people up, LA also. I think it took us a couple of days to get to Tijuana, then we stopped in Ensenada. From there it was another couple of days travel to a private bech by the Sea of Cortez. Very remote, in fact we had to walk the last 6 miles as the bus couldnt negotiate the dirt track down to the beach. We stayed there, camping on the beach for five days, it really was truly amazing, the Sea of Cortez is a very special place and in terms of ocianography hugely important. We spent the New Year period in the capital, La Paz before returning up along the Pacific coast camping on beaches as we travelled. At one point we visited what is claimed to be the original Hotel California (or at least a replica built next to where the original burnt down) in a really lovely small artists village, Todos Santos. Green Tortoise Tours are still operating and doing great trips from San Francisco, if it's adventure you're after and dont mind roughing it a bit, they tick the boxes...
It was great weather. We flew out of a cold and grey Manchester mid December to a cold and grey San Francisco, I was hoping for slightly warmer temperatures, it was California after all. But three days driving south day and night made all the difference. I did though end up having reconstructive surgery on my achilles tendon when I got home in mid January and in plaster for 13 weeks. I guess I should have got some treatment when I got the injury and not spent the following two weeks hobling around Baja and San Francisco, not to mention cycling arond La Paz over the New Year and swimming with sea lions in the Pacific with flippers on. Not ideal when your achilles tendon is hanging on by a thread.
Baja was great fun in 2008, except for partially rupturing my achilles tendon whilst dancing on a remote beach by the Sea of Cortez with a crazed French lesbian who was on her honeymoon and dressed as a lion on Christmas eve. I had to crawl back to my tent and face the pain on Christmas morning.
My first major adventure didn't go too well. It was the late sixties and I somehow found myself under armed guard for five days in Montreal airport with the threat of going to Quebec prison for 28 days. It didn't help when my friend who I was travelling with set the airport toilets on fire as a protest..... After five days in the airport during the day and various hotels at night they finally decided to put us on a plane back to Manchester. How my friend, Roger got away with his antics, (torching the airport toilets was just one of them) I'll never know. I remember the detective who was in charge of us saying to me as we were leaving, "in this job working for immigration, I see all sorts of people from all over the world," then pointing at Roger he added, "but I've never seen anyone like him before."...
Footnote... Roger remained a very good friend until he sadly past away earlier this year, but was an amazing character right to the end...
In keeping with the thread, an update on my cycle ride today. Leaving my home its about half a mile to the town centre where the rivers Goytt and Thame meet to become the River Mersey. Picking up the Trans Pennine Trail, a coast to coast cycle path that runs alongside the Mersey almost all the way to Liverpool I head towards the leafy suburbs of 'trendy' Chorlton follwing the river. Eventually I reach the pretty Fletcher Moss with it's amazingly diverse and beauful botanical gardens. There are still signs of the recent floods here from when the emergency floodgates were opened to take the pressure off the rapidly rising Mersey turning Fletcher Moss and surrounding golf courses into temporary deep lakes. From here it's on to Chorlton Meadows and Sale Water Park. A quick cycle around the lake before my final stop for a bite to eat at the ever popular Chorlton Water Park. It's around this area that Ring Necked Parraqueets are to be found in large numbers. It's impossible not to notice their distinctive calls, and more often than not you hear them before you see them. I'm sat by the lake at Chorlton Water Park now ready to head back. I'll go though the centre of Chorlton with its trendy bars and pavement cafes to join an old disused railway line that has been converted into a well used eight mile cycle/footpath through the suburbs of South Manchester, known as, The Fallowfield Loop, or 'Floop' as it's sometimes called. I'll come off the Floop to go through the recently created Highfield Country Park, then I'm back in Stockport for a short ride on road taking me back home from the opposite direction I started from. A good short ride taking in good a diverse scenery and almost all entirely off road.
Great thread Lindsy, one that would take considerable time for me to even scratch the surface. I'm out cycling in beautiful watm springtime sun at the momenent, but may come back later to read some of the replies anf add my own.
I've noticed in the States "what's up?" means what are you doing, or what's happening. Whereas in the uk it means what's wrong or what's the matter. So if an American was to ask me what's up right now, I guess I could cover both meanings and reply, " nothing, it's all good, I'm off out cycling for a couple of hours.
What's the point in assuming that. when they almost certainly dont?
But, for auguments sake, if an alien force were to treat the history of humanity as a clinical case history of a single human being, they would probably present a disgnosis of, chronic paranoid delusions, pathologically liable to commit acts of extreme violence and cruelty against any other human being who he perceives as an enemy. Crininally insane with a few brief lucid intervals. And then maybe conclude were are a lost cause with an incurable psychogical illness.....Best leave em to it....
bodleing2 Forum Posts (6,132)
RE: Highlights of your place and or travels (if any)
We travelled with a company called Green Tortoise Tours based in San Francisco. Theyre an old hippie kind of company set up in the seventies. They do tours, all off the beaten track across the States and even down into Mexico including Baja.There's usually two drivers and all the seats flatten down into beds sleeping around 30, hed to toe.
We certainly stopped at San Diego to pick a couple of people up, LA also. I think it took us a couple of days to get to Tijuana, then we stopped in Ensenada. From there it was another couple of days travel to a private bech by the Sea of Cortez. Very remote, in fact we had to walk the last 6 miles as the bus couldnt negotiate the dirt track down to the beach. We stayed there, camping on the beach for five days, it really was truly amazing, the Sea of Cortez is a very special place and in terms of ocianography hugely important.
We spent the New Year period in the capital, La Paz before returning up along the Pacific coast camping on beaches as we travelled.
At one point we visited what is claimed to be the original Hotel California (or at least a replica built next to where the original burnt down) in a really lovely small artists village, Todos Santos.
Green Tortoise Tours are still operating and doing great trips from San Francisco, if it's adventure you're after and dont mind roughing it a bit, they tick the boxes...