Yosemite

After a long time on the coast, now we want to discover the inside of the country. Big highway direction Yosemite! Big trucks, 8 lines highway, 98°F,39°C, desert and no air conditioning, that was how we started our trip in the countryside.

After a long drive, we realised that all the campgrounds in the park were full and sleeping in the car is totally illegal… The one with vacancy was only for tents. We knew that the previous owner of the van let a bag in the trunk of the van which looked as a tent bag and we kept it (we thought: you never know…). That was the moment to try it! We stayed there 3 nights sleeping on the ground, and that was enough. The van with its 20cm mattress is way more comfy!
Except that, Yosemite Park is beautiful. We hiked every day during a few hours to see: Cliffs, waterfalls, rivers, wildness, snow and even once we walk up at 5.30 for a 25km (17ml) hike to the top of “Half Dome”.
Half Dome hike is 1’400m elevation gain and you need to book a permit to go up. It’s a lottery, but we lost… So we decided to stay at the bottom and ask all the hikers with our big sign if they hadn’t two extra tickets! And that was the way we could go on the top!
Fortunately we did it, it was very hard and so hot (45°C, 120°F) but gorgeous! The worst part was the last part when we had to climb on the rocks with cable because of the steepness. But the scenery on the top was just amazing!

Santa Baraba

It’s a small and crazy town! We arrived there on a Thursday night and didn’t know what was going on that night. So we went straight to a bar and asked the friendly waitress where we had to go that evening! The answer was pretty easy: “Tonight stay downtown so you can see it and for the rest of your stay here, go to Isla Vista in the University district.”
That’s what we did! This same evening, we had a fun party with a lot of new people we met. There we met Elena and Daniel, two very nice people with who we hung out on the beach, playing beer pong in a bar and they even showed us the nice places to see in town.

Isla Vista:
It’s the university from Santa Barbara, approximately 20’000 students and 99% party guys! Sounds good no?
Once there, we cooked our pastas in the van to be ready to start a strong night. While drinking a beer there, we met our “neighbours” which invited us for happy hours and brought us after to the good house parties on Del Playa Street! They were even so friendly that they offered us a shower and a sink to clean our dishes!

The waitress was right; Isla Vista is like “Projet X”. In every second house you can find a house party all week long. Lots of people, red cups, loud music (concerts and DJs), crazy people, beer pong tournaments; that’s how it looks like every night. Everybody is so friendly; you can just bring your beers and party with them all night!

During the day we went surfing as much as possible but unfortunately the ocean wasn’t that happy to have two hangover guys in it and decided to be very flat and no good waves! Anyways we decided to go a bit sightseeing and see: State Street, courthouse, west beach, the Wharf, a few art galleries, funk zone…
After a few days there, we had to do our laundry before going a few days in the wilderness of Yosemite Park. So we went to the Laundromat in Isla Vista. Anthony and Jaqueline (two students) saw our van there and checked our blog… After 2 seconds, they jumped in the Laundromat building and asked us: “Do you need a coach and a shower?” And there we went; we had a nice evening with them and all their roommates. A real bed on which we slept as kings with awesome scenery on the ocean, we were there like hotel guests!

 

Central Coast

After have found a solution to fix our tire we are ready to take the road again! First stop: Santa Cruz!
The coastal road is really gorgeous! After have bought a surfboard as cheap as possible, we went direction the ocean for practicing! Unfortunately after 1 hour the board was already half broken… Damn! Ok we pay to fix it, we want to go surfing as soon as possible. 2 days later… BAM, broken again Sh** (the shark was stronger!!). This time we have to buy another one.

After Santa Cruz; Monterey and Carmel! The atmosphere is really different! Carmel is like a big retirement centre for old rich people! We let you imagine 2 young guys taking a shower under a junk handled on a tree between the Mercedes and Cadillac with all the high-class people looking at us…

Direction Santa Barbara on the highway 1, once again the landscapes are amazing with cliffs and ocean!

We saw a big black truck next the road and stoped to ask what happened. Those poor travellers broke down out of gas... We always have an emergency junk of gas in the back of our van that we gave to them. With that they could drive a few miles until the next gas station!

 

The VAN !

We are writing a small article about our van and how we live in it. We are two guys living in a 3m x 1,80m, and it isn’t easy! We have to cook, sleep, drive, hang out, brush our teeth, wash the dishes, take showers… all that in our beauty! It’s pretty weird but also beautiful because you never wake up or stay more than one night at the same place; we never use twice the same toilet, never hang out with the same people. We meet so many different people and that makes our trip so crazy! Old guys, rich people, homeless people, students, hitchhikers, families!

A few stories:

On the road:
When we are driving, people pass us just to look at us, to honk, to laugh at us or just to say a quick “hello”! Lots of people also just take a picture and ask us if they can help us to find the right way! (we should ask them a couple penies for every pickture so that we can eat something else than pasta.)

Mornings:
Once you wake up, the first thing to do is brushing our teeth. Our restrooms are the sidewalk! Sometimes you don’t care when you are in the middle of nowhere but in the middle of downtown it’s sketchier. People go to work and you are there in underwear and everybody is just smiling, they should think: What are those crazy guys doing!

Parking tickets:
Sometimes we wake up with the noise of the windshield-wiper slapping the window! It’s a cop who wants to give us a ticket… we jump out, (in underwear) and try to explain our situation and usually after 2 minutes he takes the ticket back! Pfff we are lucky

The van,
It’s a Chevy van20, 1989, 150’000km and it drives still perfectly! We left Canada 6 weeks ago, and we’re already 5’000km on the road with no problems with the engine or anything else! We trust it and it’s gonna bring us to the end after another 5’000km! We’re crossing our fingers! The only problem is the noise of the brakes, when we drive in the city, we hope that all the traffic lights are green. One red light is enough to wake up the entire neighbourhood.

San Francisco

It is the end of all those small towns we stayed until yet, now it’s San Francisco! We arrived there and had to find a safe, quiet and free park place… That took us 6 hours and not downtown but 40min from downtown by train!  Anyway it was safe or almost… (read until the end and you will know what happened!)
We took all our stuff for one week, our  bikes and jumped in the train. We wandered by bike through that big city and looked to book a hostel. We let our bikes 3h locked against a fence, when we came back Steven’s bike wasn’t there anymore! Stolen !
The first impression was pretty bad… Second bad news was that all the hostels were pretty expensive or out of our budget. So we found a cheap hotel. Fortunately that was just one night: homeless people were taking hard drugs in front of the door and getting back after party at night was pretty sketchy!

A big thank you to Arnaud and Fiona (2 swiss friends) who rescued us and invited us to their  residence for a couple of nights ! They were also perfect tour guides, showing us the city and having a good time: Haight and Ashburry, golden gate park, Mission district, Embarcadero and other district, Lombard Street, Telegraph hill…

It was also an opportunity for us to meet all the students from the residence. We were even invited to join the official barbecue with all the students! Amazing sunset and after a nice fire until the cops came with their shovels to burry our fire! An epic moment, enjoy the pictures!

Many crazy parties with all our new friends, amazing spots for sightseeing and chilling, history with the visit of Alcatraz, naked people in the streets… In San Francisco you never know what could happen.

After 6 great days it’s time to grab our van back! We thought that it was a safe spot where we parked… Unfortunately not everybody likes our van. The kindly neighbour had the good idea to flat our tire! Nice way to show that he didn’t really like the presence of our beauty in front of his yard.