Menyeberangi Lautan Pasifik

"The great gift the world has for the humankind is the vast amount of education it can give through its diversity."

"It's not wrong, it's just different."

Continental United States of America stretches across four time zones and if you include Alaska and Hawaii, that would make six time zones. I figured, if I couldn't find any kind of diversity in this country, then I'd be hard pressed to find it anywhere else.

After many goodbyes to Davis and its wonderful people, my study exchange officially ended on 22nd March 2007. Thereafter, I am the serial USA city - hopper, sent from Malaysia! So here began my long (arduous?) journey across the states. The first few weeks would be spent traversing the longitude of the Western coast.

Seattle - I'd call it the Taiping of USA because it showers everyday was the first stop. It's located all the way north along the Western Coast, just an hour drive from Vancouver, Canada. Yuting and I took a long train journey from Davis on 22nd night itself. But it isn't the longest train journey we would be embarking on yet =). I bought a USA Rail Pass that covers a whole month of train travel to anywhere around the states so it saves up on my transportation budget.

Yuting would be seeing 17 cities altogether, she counted. I would be seeing 11 as I am leaving for home earlier than her. Big cities, small cities, mission cities, beach cities, rainy cities, inland cities, we've got them all! The best part of traveling on the train is the enroute sceneries. You could see the changing landscapes as you move North to colder Washington from warm and sunny California. Central California around Davis is flat, like the Netherlands but you can see the mountain ranges in the distance. Sometime late-February, the flora in Davis had started blooming. We had many cherry blossoms and the weather was just perfect for evening strolls with just a t-shirt on. It was getting warm and the temperature in the previous weeks had been hitting around 20ºC.

Moving up Northern California, the last recognisable town that the train stopped at was Redding. Following that, the train passed through the region of Mount Shasta, which I call the "red-soil forest". There were tall temperate trees growing side by side greyish-blue understories. Sometimes the train would pass through tunnels bored through a mountain. After a series of tunnels we finally entered the state of Oregon, where the first stop was the region of Lake Klamath. Supposedly the only way to get to the Klamath Reserves is through means of water transport, like kayaking. Oregon is really like the farmers land. We passed largely yet developed regions aka natural reserves, and usually the train tracks are high up in the mountains! A lot of times, we can look down and see towns and settlements on the plains below the mountains. What a pretty sight! We left Oregon after the Portland stop, which is the state's capital.

After that, we were reached the state of Washington, where the trees were still bare and the forests have that Debussy-impressionism-painting kind of look. Clearly, spring has yet to descend on Washington! We braced for some cold weather in Seattle. It was 14ºC. On the second day that we were there, it actually got sunny (no rain, wow!) but the sunlight were most of the time being blocked out by the tall skyscrapers. And there's the northern wind blowing down the streets, making it not-so-warm after all.

caption: Yuting and I, upon arriving at Seattle

As I am typing this, we have already ended our Seattle stop and are enroute to San Diego - as south as you can get on the Western Coast. In fact, the train route that we are taking is called the "Coast Starlight", which spans the entire coastal length of West USA. We are fortunate enough to be taking the entire route, which starts from Seattle, terminates at San Diego. However, thus far, I haven't been able to see the Pacific Ocean. Hopefully, there would be some oceanic views later as we near Santa Barbara or Los Angeles.

San Diego is just minutes away from a taste of La Mexicano, where the closest Mexican city is Tijuana. This train trip is supposed to be 37 hours but as usual, we are running 2 hours late. (Our arrival at Seattle was delayed 3 hours.) But still, I am looking forward to some real nice warm weather, a real beach and maybe some Salsa! =)