• Dates of travel: 16 April 2013 to 25 April 2013

• Location of travel: San Francisco and Walnut Creek (United States of America)

Over the course of April and May 2013 I took a month-long meander across the USA. The main reason was to attend and report on the Coachella Music Festival in Indio, California. The road to and from there was just as memorable. This is part 1 in a series of 5 articles.

All across the nation, such a strange vibration

It starts way out west…

Despite three previous visits to the USA as a tween and teenager, I had yet to experience the sunny California coastline.

This was a glaring personal blind spot—a website in my mind with placeholder images and celebrity testimonials. The US is large, but to have not struck gold (and sunshine) after three hits? You need to get more Pacific with your aim.

One bold click of a button back in January set it all in motion. Bold, because:

1. I live in South Africa. Overseas travel to Northern climes is costly at the best of times.

2. I had just graduated in December and was focusing on my writing before starting a career in construction. The budget was already tight to start with.

3. At the time, I knew no one in my circle of influence who would be going to Coachella music festival. The two-weekend event meant separate tickets for each three-day slot and the chance for missed connections was high.

But we work these things out. I had under three months to make California real after a lifetime of dreamin'. Coachella may have been the primary purpose but once I patched in all the friends and connections I could muster, a cross-country trip gradually materialised, stretching from sea to shining sea, campsite to comfy couch. If you're going all that way, you may as well make it a month.

This is how my first overseas odyssey as an adult panned out.

You're gonna meet some gentle people there

The planets had aligned: a South African friend based in San Francisco had also gotten a Coachella ticket, and for the same weekend.

I found this out not long after riding the initial rollercoaster of post-purchase emotions when doubt and rationality began to take hold like a hangover. There was a couch to crash on before and after the festival and a carful of friends to join for the 7-hour road trip there, where the five of us would camp together. The first point was plotted on the map and I had a crucial link to the festival.

I arrived in San Francisco a couple of days before the festival weekend but it was a jarring welcome to the States via Washington D.C.

Emerging from the 18-hour cocoon of international flight to customs, I discovered that the terrible Boston Marathon bombings had taken place a day earlier, with screens on airport TV's flashing the CNN news headline "BOSTON TERROR ATTACK".

Knowing that I was to be in some major cities over the following month gave me a twinge of anxiety. As a traveler, you wouldn't want to be in the wrong place on your special trip at the wrong time. But while the tragedy dominated the news cycle over the coming weeks, my fears were fortunately unfounded.

The Coachella weekend divided my time in San Fran in two, with the first few days allowing for some sightseeing of the city and catching up with my friend from university days.

He had recently emigrated from South Africa for an amazing job opportunity at Facebook and shared an apartment with two other Facebookers in Lower Haight Street, just east of the famous Haight-Ashbury district: the birthplace of the hippie subculture and the bohemian musical and social revolution that flowed from the 'Summer of Love' in the late Sixties.

San Fran feels small for a major city. Even taking into account its hills, I still found it relatively easy to traverse on foot, in combination with its excellent, but at times conflicting, public transport system (the main service is affectionately called "The Muni").

Haight Street is also walking distance from a lot of cosy bars, so evening sojourns to places like The Page (on my first night there, jetlagged to oblivion) and Smuggler's Cove (a shrine to rum) are safely navigable after a few drinks.

When the lads headed for Facebook HQ on the first morning, I was left to my own devices for the rest of the day. Once settled in and teched up, I stepped out into another country alone as an adult for the first time, with nowhere to be for a few hours, not much money in my pocket, and a vague notion of what to do.

Taking the self-reliant, touristy approach, I sprung into action and tried to see as much of the surrounding streets and neighbourhoods on foot as possible, which saved me money and facilitated interaction with a diverse crowd of locals.

These friendly folk included bike rental employees, music store patrons, homeless street preachers, and local jam bands in the park, to name a few, all showing off the city as both laid-back and inviting while offering an eclectic mix of cultures and expression.

My second afternoon highlighted this spirit in action, as I headed west along Haight Street for some lunch at Haight-Ashbury. The array of colourful shops could've kept me there the whole day, but I had made up my mind that I needed to see the landmark Golden Gate Bridge up close.

Helping me on my way was a beaming bike rental employee, who gleefully handed me a map of the city, pointing out tourist landmarks along the way, suggesting safe transport options back home, as well as giving me a brief rundown on life as a San Franciscan—but yet not once suggesting that I should hire a bike.

Dumbfounded and grateful, I followed her route through Golden Gate Park, soaking in the gorgeous expanse of green and blue and floating by a local jam band, semi-acoustically strumming away some tunes for a gathered crowd on the grass.

The music was pleasant, and I enjoyed sitting with a random bunch of accepting people in a park one fine Wednesday afternoon, but I had a big red bridge to find and stare at soon. Heading roughly north out of one park, I passed into another.

San Francisco is just full of them. The Presidio is a nature-lover’s paradise with rolling hills, trees, and many strategic lookout points over the ocean. The place is a former military base, and one such spot high up on a hill gave me a view of what I suddenly realised was Alcatraz Island, the site of the former maximum security prison.

I was still not entirely sure which direction to go on my bridge hunt, but thankfully a local hiker pointed me towards nearby Baker Beach on the western, Pacific Ocean side of the park and instructed me to follow the coastal trail.

Passing through old concrete beachfront batteries, feeling sand itching in my socks, watching the sun drop into the Pacific Ocean—this was not how I had envisioned my afternoon to be, and I loved every serendipitous twist of it.

101-Wandering To Coachella

The hallowed road to Coachella began on Thursday afternoon along the 101 highway to Indio, with our bright-eyed and bushy-tailed crew enjoying road-trip playlists as we passed the 7 hours inland through the California desert. Little did I know we’d be arriving in Indio to a snaking queue of cars stretching out of the festival's campgrounds.

Maybe it was the midnight hour but the atmosphere was surprisingly jovial for thousands of people who’d just journeyed across the country.

The festival was yet to start, so people provided their own entertainment from the confines of their cars by blasting tunes and cracking open beers in the warm desert night after a long day on the road. I also got to know our crew a bit better (we were an international bunch: two South Africans, one Australian, one German, and surprisingly, a lone American!).

The hours and hours I spent on my feet in the baking sun is the tale told in my field reports from the festival. But man, did that weekend take its toll on me.

Each night, I’d stumble in a daze to our campsite and enter a dreamworld far less dazzling than the reality I just experienced in the previous hours. Days of loud music and bucket-list-smashing experiences had me drained by the time we turned back to San Francisco late on Monday afternoon via the same route.

The return leg was mostly during the day, allowing us to appreciate the transition from the hazy desert views of Palm Springs and its otherworldly collection of wind turbines to the leafy suburbs of Palo Alto and Mountain View once we reached the cooler coast.

There would be time to recover from our revelry before the next leg of my cross-country quest, but I needed to see a man about a bird first.

Eagle Encounters

The Bay Area in Northern California is home to a sizeable eagle population, so when planning my trip, I knew I could see a Golden Eagle up close, as they are not found in the Southern Hemisphere.

A few phone calls and emails led me to the Lindsay Wildlife Museum in Walnut Creek, one of the oldest wildlife rehab centres in the USA, and across the bay from San Francisco. The volunteers there reassured me that I'd be able to see a bird in rehabilitation at one of their twice-weekly shows before I left town.

And I wouldn’t need to go at it alone like with that big red bridge. It’s a small world, as it turns out. The US Branch chairman of my South African high school's alumni society conveniently lived in Walnut Creek, and the gent agreed to take me up on the offer of a lunch meeting and a visit to a wildlife centre.

Birds of prey have long bewitched me, so getting to witness the majesty of Topaz, a 19-year-old female Golden Eagle, from a few feet away was a rather emotional experience, although not a full-on meltdown à la Kristen Bell and a sloth. But I'd be lying if I said that there weren’t tears of awe in my eyes when the presentation began and Topaz, the size of a small child, rested on her trainer's arm.

Watching her interactions with him was surreal, as if they were a ventriloquist and puppet act. However, we could see that the bird was skittish and moving awkwardly. It was a rare off-day for Topaz, and her trainer unfortunately informed us that it would have been unsafe for strangers to get any closer than we did to pet her.

A compromise was reached for a photo opportunity though: the majestic eagle would be fed and bathed in a transparent enclosure in the middle of the museum hall, safely behind protective glass and secure in her own environment. I gladly agreed to this avian arrangement.