Yeah! They let me on for another half hour...

May 16, 2008 12:26

Alright, so after Rick and Tina picked us up and took us out of Penticton, a very lovely french girl named Pascale pulled over and took us a way's out of town to a fork in the highway. I think it was one of the first times a girl picked us up alone. Girls don't give you rides very often when they're alone, sort of a security thing. There have been some very good exceptions, though. Generally, you want couples if you're a couple and a lone male driver if you're anyone, because they usually wanna talk.

Standing at the fork in the highway in the middle of nowhere, we could look out over highway 3 going east and west and highway 97 north where we came from. From here, we could choose to hitch-hike west back to Vancouver via Princeton and Hope, or out East to Grand Forks, Trail, Nelson and the Kootenays. We choose the braver route and put our thumb out to go east.

Around dusk, Mark, a very chill french hippie dude with dreads pulled over and took us down the highway to a campground outside of Oliver. $4/person/night. That's a friggin steal! Everyone there was francophone-it was a camp for french fruit pickers. All night, the site about 50 feet away from us was blaring metal, french punk and french folk music-some very, very good tunes. We were comfy and warm and safe for the first time in a while. There was tent sex... Twice. We thought of socializing, but not knowing Francais would likely get us no-where.

The hike back down to the highway didn't take nearly as long as I thought it would. Another girl picked us up and took us into Oliver-Kat was her name. She had some good music, a couple bands I recognized patched onto her denim jacket. There seems to be a lot of punks around this area. That pleases me greatly.

We took a little stroll through Oliver. It's a very small town with a lot of wineries. We stopped at a BCL to sample some of the area's fine exports. A 750mL bottle of 13% White wine puts you back about $7.50 here. We got the 1.5L for 14-something. In season, we heard you can get a bottle of the year's wine for four bucks! Insane man.

Hiking out of town, we caught a ride from a Franco surfer named Sam from the Island. Apparently he came out here with his dog to visit friends and his van broke down on the Vancouver Island ferry. He had to hitch with his dog most of the way, and someone ended up GIVING HIM A CAR. Three months of insurance thrown in, too. Why can't WE have that kind of luck? So there the three of us were, crammed in with his dog Oochie, he took us to Osoyoos, to a beach where a couple of his friends were hanging out. We caught some rays, drank our whole bottle of wine and I took a dip in the murky Okanagan water.

Osoyoon seemed like a pretty nice town, beautiful and chill. But it was time to move on to the next town, so we hit the highway...

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Okay, now I'm REALLY out of time. Check back in a day or two for updates!
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