'Ossum' West Coast

Jan 21 2005 Perrott Phillips

OSSUM was the first American word we learned. It's their way of exclaiming "Awesome!", the stock reaction when faced with any impressive sight, from a piled-high breakfast buffet to the dazzling lights of Las Vegas.

Even we were "ossum". "You folks from Yerup?", gasped a waitress in a roadside diner a million miles from nowhere.

"That's ossum!"

The trouble is, when they are presented with something really awesome, like the Grand Canyon, it leaves them with nothing else to say. At sunset, when the mountains and valleys contained within the one-mile deep and 18-mile wide gorge turned from pink to purple, people spoke in whispers.

It was all too much for a young Japanese couple who joined us in a £100, one-hour helicopter trip over the canyon. When the pilot mentioned that there were sometimes 12ft high rapids along the Colorado river below, the couple reacted with noisy disbelief. They thought he had said "12ft high rabbits".

Not everyone was overwhelmed by what the guidebook dubbed "the greatest earth on show". For one woman in the group, the Grand Canyon did not live up to expectations.

"It was more impressive in that big-screen IMAX film we saw," she said.

Most of our coach-load of 48 Brits had been there, done that and got the campaign medal. I had joined a holiday for over-50s organised by Saga, which started off at San Francisco and covered 2,200 miles through the states of California, Nevada and Arizona.

We were the usual Saga suspects, with ages ranging from 52 to 90, mainly middle-class and educated. Among us were a high court judge, who kept his knighthood very quiet, a retired artillery colonel and Mrs Thatcher's former bodyguard.

Our tour manager was the urbane and unflappable Algis, whose simple, five-letter name proved oddly difficult to remember. People called him Angus, Algie, Orvis and even - right at the end - Elvis.

It was Algis who coined the phrase "happy rooms" for our regular comfort stops, far better than "biology breaks" used by an American tour guide we overheard.

San Francisco has always been the favourite city in America for British visitors. It possesses that rare quality: charm.

The old-fashioned cablecars - the only official national monument that moves - clang up and down impossible hills, the Golden Gate bridge leaps 1.7 miles across the bay, Alcatraz prison island lurks in the mist and a laid-back

Bohemian lifestyle lifts the spirits.On Pier 39, now converted into a razzmatazz oceanfront tourist attraction with shops, restaurants, boutiques and a carousel at the end, more than 100 sealions bask in the sun on wooden pontoons, honking and barking like cars in a traffic jam.

As in everywhere else in the States, restaurant portions are humungous. A £5 Frisco favourite is a whole sourdough loaf hollowed out and filled with clam chowder. Calories? Don't even think about it.

Nod off in the coach and you awake to totally different scenery. We thundered along seemingly endless motorways, through the bleak Mojave Desert, covered in spiny Saguaro cactuses, and past fields of jalapeno peppers and orchards, heaving with cherries, peaches and nectarines.

Every township, however small, was the capital of something. Gilroy was "garlic capital of the world", Salinas was "salad bowl of the world", Pismo Beach claimed to be the "clam capital" and Santa Maria bagged the title "barbecue capital"'.

We crossed mountain passes and climbed through thick woodlands of ponderosa pines past ghostly ski-stations waiting for the winter snow.

No chance of snow in Los Angeles next day when temperatures hit 86F. Perfect weather for being robbed at pistol point by superstar Johnny Depp.

"$1 for a photo," he demanded, posing on Hollywood Boulevard in full Pirates Of The Caribbean costume.

He was a lookalike, of course. One of dozens of young hopefuls who parade on the boulevard dressed as famous stars, hoping to break into movies. The ultimate achievement is under their feet; the 2,500 brass stars bearing famous names set into the pavement on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. That and the display of celebrity handprints preserved in concrete outside Mann's Chinese Theatre.

They say that a kickback of $15,000 and a good press agent will get you a star.

Handprints come cheaper. A street stall will knock you up a takeaway print of your own hands for $25. Perfect for the rockery.

Our driver, the enormously erudite Big John, was so busy telling us about the food-stealing bears in the 1,200-mile Yosemite National Park that he forgot to prepare us for the biggest shock of all.

The main path in runs straight towards the 8,800ft rock face of the Half Dome, so sheer that it seems to be falling towards you. When the great slab suddenly loomed over us, the whole group flinched.

As we stood in the valley, gazing at the ant-like climbers scaling the monolithic 5,500ft face of El Capitan - some climbers stay there for a week, sleeping overnight in mesh cots pinned to the rock - a woman turned to me with misty eyes. I knew what she was going to say.

"Ossum!", she intoned.

After the magisterial dignity of Yosemite, Las Vegas came as a juddering shock. Here was the garish and the vulgar elevated to an art form. The first neon sign we passed read "cool beer and dirty girls in our mudwrestling bar".

Along the four-mile Strip - a dizzying kaleidoscope of neon lights, fountains, lasers, spotlights and booming sound effects - the casino-hotels stood shoulder to shoulder, each one with its own crazy theme. Palms brushed the base of the immense pyramid of the Hotel Luxor, fronted by a 10-storey Sphinx "twice the size of the original in Egypt".

You could cross Brooklyn Bridge, climb the Eiffel Tower ("half actual size"), board a pirate ship or stroll through a sanitised Venice with moving walkways over the Bridge of Sighs and safety belts in the gondolas.

And above everything, the cacophony of a million slot machines. One of our party, who had been working out "systems" on the coach, walked away with £160. Another became confused when she put in a dollar and hit the jackpot first time. She fed in one more with the same result. She got through another ten dollars before she realised it was a change machine.

"What did you think of it all?" Algis asked, on the way back to the airport. The answer was inevitable.

"Ossum!" we chorused.

Travel Facts

Perrott was a guest of Saga Holidays (0800 056 5880 or visit www.sagaholidays.co.uk) on a 13-night West Coast Adventure coach tour via San Francisco, Santa Maria, Los Angeles, Lake Havasu, Mammoth Lakes or Fresno (according to season), Grand Canyon, Yosemite National Park and Las Vegas. One of the 13 nights is spent onboard the plane).

Prices from £1,249 (from February 16, 2005) to £1,699pp and package includes return flights from London on British Airways, all breakfasts and sightseeing tours at most destinations, insurance and cancellation cover, and a Saga tour manager throughout.

Connecting flights from Manchester, Glasgow, Newcastle, Edinburgh and Aberdeen are free with Saga, as well as free airport transfers by car within the London area.

Travel to Heathrow by coach, rail and private car is also included in package price, as is airport car parking.