The American Tour (1)

And so on Monday, Syndy and I set off to meet the rest of the tour mates to start our Western Wonder with TrekAmerica. We took a taxi as the assigned meeting place was a hotel nearby, that was my first time in a taxi in America and I also noted there was this sign saying all drivers only carry $5 in change (how believable is that?).

It was a hassle to get my tour booked as this tour company although operates in USA but based themselves in UK. If you are outside UK and booking from Asia, they refer you to their Korean partner instead. I just thought they should just invest in a credit card payment system than having to do a fund transfer to Korea! Even though I had a UK account, they didn't allow me to pay! Absurd. But somehow Matt from TrekAmerica was patient enough to call and resolve my issue. Thankfully. It made me a happy customer to be going with them definitely.

Syndy's decision to tag along was very last minute. She couldn't make up her mind so her husband did it for her. I don't know whether it's a good thing or bad, we did travel together before with the Fab 4 or maybe just a day or two with just two of us. But going on a tour with her for a week sounds like a challenge. Her over-mothering nature and attention-seeking behaviour just sometimes drove me up the wall. Read on to find out!

We met up with Josh our guide, it was his first tour with TrekAmerica (I think) and I bet it must be very stressful finding the ways around things. But I thought he did pretty well for a first time! Our group consisted of 3 x Korean, 2 x English, 1 x Scottish, 3 x Dutch, 2 x Swiss and us, 2 Singaporean. Syndy thought our guide was quite cute, I had no doubt if she had more crushes on the guys in our group as well :P

So we started with a drive along Beverly Hills and then stopped to take a snap of the Hollywood sign from afar. Initially I thought we were driving up to the signboard, it was a little disappointment it wasn't, but we were in this mini Hollywood town with the footprints of the celebrities. We stopped by a lot of hypermarts along the way to stock up food and drinks to make our sandwiches and meals. I didn't mind at all because I could go crazy in just supermarkets!

Our first stop was a camp site along Colorado river where we would set up our tents for the night. The last time I camped was during my secondary school days, probably 15 years ago! Setting up the tent for the first time was a task but then it just got easier and easier every time. Soon it was all up and we settled in and watched a lovely sunset before dinner. I heard from Angela that her guide never cooked for them but we were extremely lucky Josh did that for our first night. He made awesome pasta! For that, I could have a crush on him, LOL.

We also had a roster listing whose going to be cooking or cleaning the coming days. After dinner, we just sat around the tables sharing stories. John, one of the English blokes, had this entertaining app on his iPad that could tell us the name of the stars by pointing it in the sky. It was our third day in America and jet lag had began to set in for us. Syndy was definitely hit by it, so I decided to turn in early with her.

We woke up to a beautiful morning, I had a little stroll and was greeted by many friendly faces. I also found out Josh did not slept in a tent, he laid under the tree when we saw him in the morning.

After breakfast, we dismantled our tents and moved on. We went to this little English town with "London Bridge", it didn't impress me of course.

Then we had a stop along the historic Route 66. Now that was more interesting, even though everything looked set up but it was like in a movie. It was also this place I started to my souvenir coin collection. I used to do that while I first went to London, but I can't remember where are those coins now! I don't know how long we spent there, but we also made and had our sandwiches there. Then we had some time to walk around the cool "houses" along this road. Most of them are souvenir shops selling anything that has "Route 66" on them! I feel regretful now for not getting some magnets.

It was a lot of hours on the road. I couldn't remember when I was awake or asleep. I think it's a good thing being able to sleep anywhere, I had no problem napping in our mini van. But Syndy isn't anything like me, she would be screaming or mothering the other tour mates... or just doing silly things like taking pictures of me sleeping. I suspect she was high on sugar, maybe from too much fruits we stocked up in the vehicle. LOL.

Our next stop was Grand Canyon... so stay tuned for more exciting stories.

Note: Trip was in May 2012.