Nilesh’s Posterous

On my way back from Los Angeles to San Franciso, on Priscille's advice, I took the exit for La Jolla Beach and it was so worth it. Wonderful beaches, wild sea lions and numerous varieties of wild birds. It was among the most beautiful beaches and scenery I've been to in California.

                       

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Couple of weeks ago, on my way to Los Angeles last week to get my Argentina visa, I stopped by the Monterrey Bay Aquarium as I had a free ticket for it. I had never been there and I always heard it was one of the nation's best aquarium. It was indeed very nice and they had a special "The life of seahorses" exhibit which was the highlight !

         

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Mauritian National Anthem

Glory to thee, Motherland

O Motherland of mine.

Sweet is thy beauty,

Sweet is thy fragrance,

Around thee we gather

As one people,

As one nation,

In peace, justice and liberty.

Beloved Country,

May God bless thee

For ever and ever.

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Sent from my iPhone

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Yesterday night, went to Kan Zaman to have some food and drinks with friends before I leave for my travels. It was great and we had the best seats of the house to be able to see the Belly Dancing performance. The food was so-so, but the belly dancing, atmosphere, music played and company of good friends was wonderful !!

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March 12th 2010 is the Mauritian Independance Day Anniversary (42nd Anniversary). We celebrated it in the Bay Area today with a pot luck lunch and gathering of all the Mauritians of the Bay Area.

We had some 40 Mauritians from all over the Bay Area - San Francisco, San Jose, Hayward, Fremont, Sunnyvale etc.. Always great as usual to meet up with all the good friends and share good foods and laughter. This time, we had some pretty good Mauritian Food - Anju and Mrs Rajkoomar had bothed cooked Vegetarian Briani !! That was so delicious and one of the most popular dishes in Mauritius. It's a major pain to prepare due to the extensive preparation stage. It was great to have some of that hard work they put into making it.

We also had the usual Gato Arouille (Grated Taro Cakes) and Achard Legumes from Yvette, Gato Piment from Aruna and multitude of cakes/deserts and other food by everybody else. Had a very wonderful time in good company and this time we had 3 new families that joined the party for the first time ! We finished off by singing the Mauritian National Anthem. Here are some pics of the delicious food and company that we had :)

                   

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 I had booked a rental car to come down to Los Angeles and thinking that my visa might take a week or so to process, had booked the car till Saturday, but visa was processed in only 2 days and I had the choice to either come back to San Francisco or stay around and explore Southern California. First day I drove down to Ocean Beach, which is technically a suburb of San Diego I think. It was a very nice quiet little beach town with lots of hippies, artists and great waves on the beach. Spent one night there and really enjoyed the chill atmosphere. Next day, I decided to drive further south and go to Tijuana, Mexico and have dinner there. I parked on the US border and walked the bridge over to Mexico. Mexico has an open gate where anyone can just walk through without any immigration. It's only when one comes back to America that they need to do immigration.

Tijuana is a very interesting city. As most border cities, there is a lot of activity, shopping, people, crime etc.. I did not at any time feel unsafe though. From all the reviews I read, it made me initially scared to be going there alone, but the people were actually very nice. Maybe I just look Mexican and they did not bother :) I did get to speak some Spanish and it was nice being able to practice some of the things I've been learning. I spent only some 3-4 hours down there. Did not do much. Just browsed around, had some street food and got a piercing. Who can beat $1 (12 pesos) tacos with all the sides and toppings u want, 10 pesos Freshly made churros, all that while listening to some local bands playing Mexican music on the street. I had a good time and will go back sometimes and explore more !

                 

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This my travel itinerary for my upcoming South America trip as sketched on the map.

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I have been busy planning a trip to go down to South America and live and work from there for a while. I have been thinking to work on a few startup projects and iphone applications. I thought if I have to do that, I might as well do it from South America than doing it in high-rent San Francisco. So, gave my 30 day notice to my landlord and moved out of my apt last weekend and all packed up for my trip. Now most of my belongings are in my backpack, my scooter at Sabine's place and some clothes and books at Pravin's.

I finally finalized all the travel plans, secured all my visas, bought the tickets and ready to go on to my 6 month travel adventure !

While I am excited about the trip,it's a little scary too at the same time - so many unknowns in a long term travels + I don't speak any spanish too.. (but that should be fun) :) While, a big chunk of the trip will be mostly touristing it off, I will also be working on a couple of ideas and iphone applications while down there. I figured if I had to do these, I could as well do these from South America rather than from SF.

I'll be leaving San Francisco next week to travel within the US for 1 month and  then depart to South America for the big trip on April 7th and back to San Francisco on August 28th, just in time for Burning Man !

I'll share the dates and places that I'll be traveling and if any of you want to join me on any wing of the trip, would be great to travel with some friends !

Here are the dates when and where I'll be..

April 7th -> April 21st : Colombia (2 weeks)
April 21st -> May 12th : Peru (3 weeks)
May 12th -> July 11th : Argentina (2 months)
July 11th -> August 14th : Chile (1 month)
August 14th -> August 21st : Costa Rica (1 week)
August 21st -> August 28th : El Salvador (1 week)

I researched quite a bit for the tickets to buy and all and believe it or not, I got this itinerary for under $2000. Basically I bought two one way tickets and the other countries happened to be stopovers. The two tickets I bought were Miami -> Argentina and Chile -> San Francisco. I researched flights and their stopovers on the STA Travel trip planner, where u put a city A and destination B, and it gives u all the airlines that travel that route and where you can get free stopovers. Then I went to the airlines sites directly to buy my tickets. If the stopover is along the way and u buy a multi-city ticket in that order, you will get the stopovers for free. But if you do it in wrong order, fare prices are very high !

I had to get visas for Colombia, Peru and Argentina and fortunately Chile/Costa Rica and El Salvador do not require visas from  Mauritian passport holders. It was a catch 22 getting the visas though. I had to actually buy the tickets before I apply for a visa, but if I don't get a visa, I can't travel. Fortunately though, I managed to get all the visas that I needed. Peru and Colombia had consulates in San Francisco itself and that was easy enough. But for Argentina, their consulate is in Los Angeles and one need to have a personal appearance in order to apply for the visa. So, I had to come down to LA to apply for it. Visas are expensive and with added travel costs, it does add up to quite a bit on one's travel budget.

As usual, I'll be blogging about all my travel updates at http://blog.dosooye.com/ ! In the lower right corner, there's a subscribe button and u can subscribe to the blog without joining the site and each time I write a post, it'll send it to oyu by email.

If any of you have been to any of these places and have tips/recommendations/advice/friends from there, please do share as I don't really know people in that part of the world and would be good to know some locals :)

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I was driving on Saturday evening to go to the East Bay, when I stumbled upon the Chinese New Year Parade on Market St. I parked and got a few shots before going to the East Bay. The Chinese New Year Parade of San Francisco is among the biggest in the non-asian world. It was a huge procession with lots of floats and participants. I was very impressed for the short time I got to enjoy it.

           

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