WEEK 19 - AUSTIN, TEXAS TO DURANGO, COLORADO - monday 30 august and tuesday 1 september 2010

today we headed out at 7.30am to return our rental car and pick up a new one [saves us money on the insurance somehow!] the lady at avis is sooooo nice! i asked how much it was to upgrade to the corolla because the nissan aveo is so crampt and she upgraded us for free! wow! so cool.
so we are zipping along in our nice silver corolla sedan S model, and its better on gas than the smaller nissan. we have a 16 hour drive ahead of us, so we made the important stop at a cafe to get breakfast [porridge yum yum] and a coffee, before heading off to durango. we drove from 9.30am [well joseph is driving, im the tomtom reader] until 10pm when we crossed the border into new mexico. we had driven 800km! [with important coffee stops along the way of course!]
and a guy with a mattress nearly flying off the roof of his car!

the sunsets as we were driving were so pretty, i took these photos with my point and shoot, so sorry if they are crap.

we stopped at the truck stop where we freshened up as best we could, we have bought some nice ‘shower in a can’ santising wipes, and cleaned our faces and teeth in the very nice and very free truck stop, and settled down to sleep in the car. its like camping but more crampt! :) joseph was out like a light, but i only managed about 3 hours sleep, so annoying! we set off at 5am towards colorado, stopping at a truck stop for more coffee!
throughout the morning i managed to grab my camera from the boot, and take some nice scenic pics for you guys of the new mexico terrain, try and guess where it turns into colorado :)

we arrived at the hostel at 1pm on tuesday to find that check in is 3.30pm, so we popped back into town to look around, get lunch and work out our game plan for tomorrow.
at 3.30pm we finally got to check in. this is the cleanest hostel i have ever seen! its amazing! its like youre staying at your friends house who is an obsessive compulsive cleaner. so great! we treated ourselves to a lovely hot shower then crashed out at about 5pm till 9pm, then said hello to the other people staying in the hostel, and went out and grabbed some dinner, then collasped into our snuggly cosy beds :)