Awesomes
Let me tell you about the awesome night I had last night. As regular readers may know, I met a whole bunch of cool people in New York and had loads of fun there. One of them, a Scottish girl named Sarah, is doing pretty much the same trip as me, and it just so happened that we were flying to Fiji at almost the same time so we said we’d go together. I hadn’t really given it much thought until I got to LA when I emailed her to see if she was still up for it, and she said yes, and gave me her flight details, so I could change mine.
A few days ago, it transpired that she was coming to San Francisco, and would be there at the same time as me! Meeting people when you don’t have cellphones is remarkably hard, but eventually we did manage to be at the same place at the same time. We went to a place called Lori’s, a 50’s style diner with all the trimmings that you’d expect. The desserts were amazing and I thought I was going to die after my hot fudge sundae.
Afterward we ambled back to her hostel, just a few blocks from mine, but, as we found out, a few blocks through a scary area of SF, full of homeless people. We walked as fast as we could and when we got to the hostel it seemed like a weird safe house from the outside world, which, I guess, it was, and this feeling was enhanced by the fact that San Francisco is actually pretty cold at night and the hostel was cozy and warm. Once inside we set about planning our trip to Fiji, going through guidebooks and brochures, talking about where we wanted to stay and what we wanted to do, and ooh-ing and aah-ing at pictures of perfect white beaches and amazing clear water. by the end of the night we’d decided that we wanted to do pretty much everything available on the country and see every island, so we weren’t much closer to actually booking anything, but at least we had a feel for what was possible. Sarah wants to visit the villages and take part in tribal dances, I want to swim and learn to dive and take a bike out around the islands, we both want to get rid of our ridiculous British t-shirt tans and start looking like we’ve actually been traveling. By the looks of things we’ll be on Fiji for about 10 days, with 7 of it devoted to island hopping, and the last 3 spare for diving and loitering on the main island.
It was so nice to see a familiar face out here, five thousand miles from home, and it was especially cool to talk to someone who’s doing the same kind of thing. Another familiar face is entering my story today though, because I’m staying at my old friend Jeremy’s house. I met him in college and lost touch with him a bit when he moved out here last year, but I caught up with him and will be crashing on his floor for a while. Hooray for that!