Candy and Damian USA Aug/Sept 2007

We landed in Fresno, a smallish airport that serves both commercial traffic and private aircraft. Now this is where the fun began...

We had established that there was a bus service in Fresno which we would use to get to the Amtrak Station. Once outside the airport we found the bus shelter. One of the bus routes would take us past the Amtrak. A short while later a bus came along and we asked if it would take us to the Amtrak. The driver pointed out that the bus stop we were looking for was just outside the airport, by the traffic lights. So we trundled down the road with our luggage, all of about 200 metres and found the bus stop. The bus pitched up on time and the very helpfull bus driver (lady) explained our options. It seemed better to hop off this bus along the route and catch a connecting bus which would go right past the Amtrak. So far so good. We got off at the stop in question to wait for the other bus....

At some point both of us started to wonder what if the bus didn't come? We were stuck at the corner of some road with no other means of transport. Well we waited and waited...we knew the bus was supposed to come along the other side of the road, do a round route and return to where we were. No sign of the bus! When the time came when it should have been there we knew we had better do something. Across the street was a garage and shop. I went across to ask if I could phone to call a taxi leaving Candi with the luggage. The owner didn't seem like he wanted to be too helpfull, but at least let me use the phone. Called a taxi who said they would be there soon. We crossed the street with our luggage and stood at the garage getting more and more frantic as there was no sign of either the bus or taxi. We had 20 minutes to catch the train...the ONLY train that afternoon to Merced. Then suddenly someone called out from a car parked at the traffic lights. A friendly mexican american and his wife pulled over, said we looked lost, asked us where we were going and offered to give us a ride to the Amtrak. Wouldn't happen in South Africa! Boy were we thankfull! They sped us down the road and got us to the station just in time...or so we thought.

Now the next bit of fun. It became apparent that there was a problem with the train...it had hit a car at some crossing, killing some people and was now being delayed for 2 hours! We had made it to the Amtrak by the skin of our teeth and now we were going to miss our bus to Yosemite! The ticket office lady told me that if we were late for our bus and we bought our ticket through them they would guarantee to get us to Yosemite. So we took that option. Well the train did pitch up 2 hours late and eventually got us to Merced. It turned out that there were a few passengers on the train also going to Yosemite and so the Amtrak organised a shuttle bus to get us all there. The bus trip took about 2 3/4 hours and we arrived at Currie Village, Yosemite in the dark at about 9pm California time. Now consider that we had got up about 4:30am in Orlando which is 3 hours ahead of California time, we had been up for about 20 hours!

Well to finish this saga on a positive note it turned out that the wooden cabins in Currie Village had been over booked and they had to give us a cabin with a toilet and bath, which normally would cost about $40 more. We had originally booked one without. We were very thankfull that we had our own shower and toilet that night!

Moral of the story: Don't rely on small town public tranport!

Photos of Yosemite: