lake tahoe

April 1, 2014 No Comments

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Lake Tahoe, California

I woke up feeling fine, my cold having neatly passed onto poor Dylan in the night. The night before we stayed up until the date ticked over for the first time in months. We chatted to our fellow hostel mates from San Fran, picking their brains about their city. One was a young college student doing re-writes for his screenplay, the other a Filipino born first time skier taking advantage of the last now drifts on the mountains.

The next morning we woke to a homemade breakfast of strawberry muffins, freshly baked bread and orange juice. This and the walls of books, and lush indoor plants were tipping Lake Tahoe hostel into best hostel ever territory, alas no delightful animal companion though. Devon, our fairy god-baker merrily chatted to us while we devoured muffin after muffin, there was love in every bite. “When I’m not in the mood for baking I can taste the difference”

We delved into discussions of sustainability and economical inequality and I love the way she described the situation. “I feel society is like a pot of water on the stove, it’s boiling now and any moment it could explode over the sides.” I think that tension is what people concerned with sustainability in whatever form feel on a daily basis, most people feel nothing.

Then another relaxing day of mostly solo people/dog watching on the beach while Dylan looked after himself reading a book on Samurai Gardening, or at least that is what the title lead me to believe. Young things cavorted through hula hoops, children played the age old game of bury your friend to his neck in sand and skim boarders glided and sometimes stacked (to everyone’s internal delight) in the lakeside pools.

Travel

Kings Beach

March 31, 2014 No Comments

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Lake Tahoe, California

After a lazy morning at a sharehouse on the hill with bonus puppy (cutely named bear), we descended to a more conveniently located hostel at Kings Beach. I’ll let you visit tomorrow, but until then welcome to Lake Tahoe. This is the holiday we didn’t even know we needed until we arrived. Oh how much I had missed water! Spring bulbs were slicing green blades through the earth and early daffodils glowed in the gorgeous sunlight.

We were there due to a offhand comment that could have passed me by, I’m glad it didn’t. One of the twins in New Mexico had said this would be my perfect town, when I had mentioned my dualing desire to live in the forest and by the beach. Water that meets the mountains, that is so clear you can see to the bottom. It was just how he mentioned and it had a new organic grocery, that became out go to in an instant for fresh juice and deliciously naughty treats like chocolate brownies and palm sized cookies.

Dylan kicked his legs on the pier while I strolled, drinking it in. Two kids were busy digging to china, so proud of their 2 hour deep hole they demanded their mother take a photo, she lacking the imagination of youth she refused. Pine trees incongruously grew out of the sand, pinecones littered the beach and bobbed lazily at the shore. Dogs ruled the beach, more than one had a pinecones in the mouth to the delight to all passersby.

We returned to the hostel, Dylan exhausted, but I wasn’t ready to call it a night. I felt the call of the water again and for perhaps the first time in our trip I ventured out alone. I walked for hours, people watching. I was waiting for sunset, uncertain of staying, but I was glad I did. Oh the endless sky and the colours on the water. This was a magical place.

Travel

Santa Fe

February 25, 2014 4 Comments

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it’s the vibe of the thing

Our day started at 5am waking up in the only tent in a caravan park next to a highway. Driving through the darkness was a relief from the monotony of desolate flatness, a road lined with signs for Indian Casinoes and truck stops. In the blackness even the power stations took on new form, trussed up in fairy lights ready for a show. Tavener violins soared on the radio as light began touching the horizon. The ground began to swell and we silently sailed past dark masses, like islands in the dim light. The landscape was changing.

On foot in Santa Fe, hot sun and strong winds in winter. We reached an iron gate over an arroyo, intricately decorated in iron hummingbirds and pinecones. We couldn’t find the path to the house so we just walked the dry creek bed. The house was adobe like all its neighbours, but with a garden filled with creaking wind sculptures: dolphins, birds and ballerinas. we cooked lunch on the camping stove while we waited for our host Christopher, who arrived in a car with flapping metal birds on the roof.

He was all white haired British bluster because the well pump had died that morning (what killer timing!). It’s hard for Victorians to get their heads around wells, coming from a land of drought watertanks are just the norm. He told us that they had no use for a water tank as it never rained, the neighbouring arroyo told a different story, but we let it lie.

Christopher was a fascinating character, as eclectic as his house, decorated with art and trinkets from all corners. Born north of London, but spending ten years living on a boat in Ibiza, a place he gleefully informed us where anything goes, apparently there is a night club filled with foam up to your neck and there are no rules for what happens under the bubbles. He met an American wife, now absent, and moved to America, finding Santa Fe the only place palatable, being like no other city in the world.

Town was a world of adobe, rugs and gemstone necklaces; geared towards the tourist, but lovely. The bells of the cathedral chimed and a flock of birds wheeled around and around overhead, sun gliding over their stomachs on their downward roll. Boutique beer and gourmet pizza over the town square, a tireless busker strumming on as the sun kissed the horizon to sleep.

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