Austin is not Texas!

People from Austin claim to be more liberal, open-minded and fun loving than their fellow Texan citizens. There definitely is something about the city that made us appreciate it very much even though we didn't meet any real Austinites and even though we saw a lot of former governor George W. Bush dvd's and biographies in stores :-) 

It was the week of Halloween (right that's already two weeks ago) and we were pretty excited to witness a real American Halloween night. We bought some candy, hoping kids would come 'trick-or-treating' at our CS hosts' door as they live in a nice suburb with big family homes. Luckily we bought things we like as well because around eight no kid had banged on the door...So we left the house and had a look in the street. We quickly figured out that dressed up kids only knock on your door when the house is creepily decorated. And lots of the neighborhood families had actually invested in that, some went as far as changing their whole place into a horror house. Kids would walk in through the front door, scream their lungs out to whatever they saw inside and run out the back door a couple of minutes later. It was really terrifying and when a woman asked me if I wanted to come inside, I instantly refused. Another thing that startled me a little was that some kids did the whole candy tour by car. Mum or dad just stopped in front of every house with a pumpkin, let their little spiderman or skeleton out to grab their candy and then dropped them off at the neighbors five meter further. Welcome to America. 

Something Austin is known for in the rest of the country is the 'food truck'. No need to go to a restaurant, just walk down the street and you'll find at least one truck within a mile radius. These trucks are selling pizza, roasted chicken, Thai food, vegetarian stuff, cupcakes and so on...There are more than 2'000 of them in Austin, some have their own spot , others just move around all the time. 

Another curiosity in the city is the bat colony that lives under the Congress Avenue Bridge. More than one million bats call this place home between March and November and every day they fly out, all at the same time to catch insects. This happens exactly 15 minutes before sunset and people gather up and under the bridge to watch them. It's really very spectacular even though the smell of one million bats is almost unbearable!

We spent the last night of our stay with Arvin, a lovely Indian couch surfer. (First two nights, we were hosted by two Mexican girls) For some reason, we started to talk about carrying weapons in this country and he was very proud to show us his own collection: a rifle, an automatic machine gun that fires 40 bullets at once and there was another secret gun that he didn't want to show us. I had never seen all of that from so close and it gave me a very uncomfortable feeling. (maybe because we got a demonstration while watching 'Un prophète', a very dark and violent french movie) Upon asking why he had so many guns, he answered that everybody in his neighborhood had them and that no-one would ever try to break into his house but if one day someone would, he'd shoot this person right away. So beware, criminals of Austin, I am pretty sure our host would love to try all his weapons at once!

Students trashing cars for charity...

Part of the bat colony.

With Arvin, our second CS host in Austin. He brought us to a cowboy bar, unfortunately it was the day after Halloween, so no cowboys were in the mood for a beer.

A little video of the bats flying out. Start watching halfway when you'll see most of them otherwise it will be a bit long.

Weekend in Mexico

Couchsurfing during our trip has given us some of the most unforgettable experiences and we absolutely recommend traveling like this because you'll get so much more out of your trip. You not only get to meet with locals, you'll see places no other tourist has ever been or go to restaurants no single guide book has ever mentioned. We became member of CS a couple of months before leaving on this trip and we've hosted some amazing people in our tiny flat in Geneva. That's how we met Andrea and Roberto, a couple from Monterrey, that was traveling through Europe in February. We promised them to return the favor whenever we'd go around the world and meet them in Mexico. Additional reason for going to Monterrey was that Benoit has studied there for nine months and he's been wanting to go back ever since the day he left.

So we booked flight tickets from Vegas to Monterrey even though I was a little skeptical about going there; I've read and heard so many stories about the north of Mexico being dangerous and violent but our friends assured me that things were better these days. 

Now I can tell you that I am absolutely thrilled we booked those tickets because we had the most amazing time! Andrea and Roberto took us round the city and brought us to the best taco places in town. Such a welcome change after weeks of hard to digest food in the States! On Saturday night, we went for a Halloween party in an old 'haunted' house in the city together with 2'000 other Mexicans. Let me rephrase that to old 'haunted' villa with huge garden and crazy dj's. The finale of our weekend was definitely the barbecue we had at Andrea's parents' place where we were hardly able to stand up after all the food and drinks we had. Andrea's mum gave us a little course 'how to make real Mexican tacos' but I'm afraid we didn't make her very proud. Our tacos came out pretty square and scary. Well, it was Halloween after all:-)

On Monday, we went to see Benoit's old apartment and visited his boss at the company where he interned a couple of months. Before we left the area, we had (again) great food at the place Benoit went for lunch every single day he was working there.

So when we left on Tuesday morning, we almost felt sad about going back to the US. We took a bus from Monterrey to Austin, in Texas and US customs gave us such a hard time at the border. Our bus driver threatened to leave us there and only after Benoit made a huge scene they gave us the silly green document we needed and let us skip the immense queue. Even though the Mexican passengers on our bus had to wait one hour because of us, they all started cheering and clapping and they were happy we made it, saying Americans were a*holes and all that. Aaah, I love Mexicans and so want to go back for a longer stay and more of their delicious food!

This factory in the middle of Monterrey is now a museum/restaurant and they've created a beautiful park around it. I was amazed about how they've managed to turn something that ugly into quite an aesthetic monument.

Girl celebrating Quinceanera. The 15th birthday of girls in Mexico is a huge thing because it marks the transition of childhood into womanhood. Many girls look forward to it for years and dress up like they're getting married. Also their friends have to stick to a strict dress code. 

Mariachi, anyone?

Getting ready for our Halloween party in an old, haunted house in Monterrey city! Sorry, no pictures of the party but it was fun!

The biggest flag in Latin America? It's the Mexican one in Monterrey...

How to make tacos? Not as simple as it looks....

There was only one person in the house who really mastered it, a real Mexican Mum:-)

Benoit in 7th heaven with his bbq meat.

Best salsa I've ever tasted!

Decoration for Dia de los Muertos (day of the dead) on the first and second of November when Mexicans remember and celebrate friend and relatives who have died.

I don't remember the name of everything in this plate. Fact is that I had to take half of it home, too much to finish in once...But so good!

Sugar skulls for Dia de los Muertos. 

Let's end the weekend with some gordita's:-)

Big Sur

We were thinking to drive  back south from San Francisco and seeing the Mojave desert before dropping my father back off in LAX. Little did we know that the drive on highway 101 along the West Coast was going to be that spectacular! We'd read that it was beautiful but we hadn't counted on stopping every ten minutes to take pictures of those mysterious cliffs, covered in mist, ingeniously constructed bridges connecting the hills and those funny elephant seals sunbathing on the beach. When we realized that going to Mojave was too ambitious for the time left, we had no problem to change the itinerary and enjoy the coast to the max. We found some great camping spots and for some reason camping on the coast seemed a little less tiring than camping in the woods. Well, temperatures up to 25 degrees do help of course. Is this what they call 'Indian' summer? Then I just love it!

Because we didn't want to exhaust my father too much before sending him back to my mum, we took it a little more easy during those days. We went for long beach walks and took even longer coffee breaks on sunny terraces. 

Halloween preparations are in full swing here in the US and it's really funny to walk in the many pumpkin fields and watch the locals carefully choosing their pumpkins so they can carve the perfect Jack-o'-lantern. For the kids, going to the field seems a whole event as lots of them are already disguised and lots of family photos are being taken here. Looking forward to experience the real Halloween craziness next week!