La Casa de Blues

Red polo tie, black hat with red ribbon and tight, tight black pants with red inserts.

Sounds cringy? No, it's pure sexo!

I feel like I'm at at a Doors concert with Jim Morrison upfront. Only he's singing in Spanish with a very Spanish accent. The other band members have velvet jackets, long sideburns, and are hammering out the music. Rock'n'roll a Espanol.

The audience at the House of Blues knows every Enrique Bunbury song before it starts.

Ol Jim, Janis Joplin (or Janet Joplin as I heard one museum visitor say) and Jimi Hendrix are the subject of an exhibition at the Grammy Museum in downtown LA.

Their music in the 60s spoke to my generation - and I believe still has something to say to us, evenif they all died young.

And now in America, a Spanish band where the lead singer has taken his name from The Importance of Being Earnest (by Oscar Wilde) comes to play in the House of Blues on the strip in West Hollywood.

It's a time when singers of Latin American background are demonstrating about new laws in Arizona which make the failure to carry immigration documents a crime and give the police broad powers to detain anyone suspected of being in the country illegally.

So much today is celebrating the history of rock and its roots - much of it based on white musicians bringing black music to the rest of the world - it's great to be in a place just purely enjoying the music, whether in English, Spanish or Spanglish.

What happens in Vegas stays in...

Elvis called it bright light city. Gonna set my soul on fire.

Nothing you could possibly say or write about Las Vegas, Nevada, USA has not been said or written before. There are no superlatives big enough to cover this strange city in the desert. As a shop attendant in a glamorous spacey, white shop told me in perfect understatement, "Whatever you say about Vegas, it's a crazy town".

The strip is surreal, lit up but still not as alive as it used to be. But it's getting back there.

Casinos filled with cigarette smoke. Men sitting in patisseries smoking cigars, old ladies puffing away as they pull at poker machines. It's about as non PC as you can get.

OK, there's the history...and don't let's forget the nuclear testing not so far away in the 1950s, the Rat Pack, the mafia, the music, the shows, the gambling, the economic crisis....Where else in the world are there poker machines in the baggage area of an airport?

But still women in tight as arse dresses they pull up as they cross the street, old ladies in track suits dragging their suitcases up to the lifts to save a few bucks in tips, squads of young black men in oversized t- shirts, jean-clad 40 somethings carrying their cocktails in plastic cups....they're all here to party.

At a slightly more upscale restaurant with a degustation menu a woman in a dress so tight it could be her second skin tells the waiter she's a vegetarian. He suggests the salmon.

Australian dancers and performers shine here. One tells me the Vegas air is so dry they need to drink gallons of water to be able to sing here. I think about Elvis...did he drink water?

All you needs a strong heart and a nerve of steel... Viva Las Vegas!

Chainsaw Beagles

"Hisi'sk" is the word that means to be uneasy (as in sleep) in the Nez Perce language of north America.

I guess that means the sort of sleep where you have very strange dreams.

Out of 300 original Native languages here Nez Perce is one of only 175 still spoken and only by a handful. But people of this trible - famous for breeding the Appaloosa horse - are working hard to resurrect the language.

In Tahiti I was told that if you dream you are going to die, it actually means something postive and good is going to happen to you.

So when I had trouble sleeping after visiting a B and B in the shape of a giant beagle, I reassured myself that all would be well.

This accommodation and store is the work of a very happy couple who found each other in Idaho. They built it because "it's our land and we can do whatever we like on it".

They make small wooden beagles and other dogs and sell them through the internet. They love the openness of the prairies and pine tree wilderness in their beautiful county that has more black bears than people.

Earlier that day we'd ridden up a small mountain through some of that wilderness.

Then saddle sore we rode into another small, silent Idaho town, feeling like a posse in search of outlaws who'd robbed the railroad.

On our Appaloosas we passed a lone gardener.

"Your garden's looking might purdy," our host and lead rider said as he clipped clopped past.

"Yup," the grey pony-tailed gardener answered, not looking up as he weilded clippers the size of nail scissors on his immaculate lawn.

At the only saloon open in town we met a horsetrainer in a black leather waistcoat and a huge white moustache, who told me the secret to riding horses is you "just urge them on".

As food was done for the day, the barmaid suggested a diner a bit further up the highway for the best burgers around.

"It was just taken over by the tribe," she said, referring to the Nez Perce.

"New Zealanders?" the young man in the diner asked us, after he took our burger orders.

"No, Australians... I hear the tribe has just bought this place?"

"Oh that was a few years ago," he answered.

Time moves slowly in this part of the wild west, I realised as dreams of beagle chainsaw massacres drifted through my uneasy sleep.

Pink Mission

The Calafia Hotel is built next to a 18th century Franciscan mission on cliffs overlooking the ocean, where dolphins surf the waves.

In Baja California, just south of Tijuana it's the sort of hotel that you stayed in when you were roughing it but decided to indulge for a night and pay more than $20 for a room. It's clean, simple and a little rundown. But it serves the best margaritas in the world made by the sweetest barman you've ever met. Breakfasts are also good.

It's also about 45 minutes from the notorious Mexico/US frontier, where border policemen ask you take off your sunglasses so they can see your face and then to, "pop the trunk".

Mexican tourism has suffered of late - swine flu, the drug wars, the economic crisis, poorest borders and a giant fence built to stop illegal immigrants getting into the land of milk and honey.

So what you to do increase tourism? Paint a formerly pristine white hotel bright pink and blue? Well, some of the walls at least.

And that's what the Calafia has done.

But never mind, if you ignore the multi-storey condominium block next door, it's still a gorgeous place to stay. Just don't take out your map on the way there in case the locals think you're a tourist.

Ladyboys and Honeymooners

Well we're sitting in the Piano Bar chatting to a couple of French guys who used to live in Papeete and are back here on holidays and what looks like a very manly woman comes straight up to us, lifts her top and with an enticing wiggle shows her bare breasts. Interesting.

She's actually preening in front of a mirror and isn't interested in us at all. This is a bar frequented by Tahiti's own ladyboys, boys often brought up as girls who look a lot better than some of the women I've come across.

To get in we had to pass a convoy of angry-looking bouncers. One sits at a small table with what looks like a book of raffle tickets. But once inside the atmosphere is friendly, where the music is hip hop meets disco meets Hawaiian guitar.

It's OK for European men to be seen together, my new friend tells me, but not for Tahitians. It's taboo.

It struck me as kind of odd that today Tahiti and particularly resorts on islands like Bora Bora is a hotspot for honeymooners.

Ladyboys and honeymooners? Seedy clubs and overwater bungalows? There's parallels there, but I'm not quite sure what. Let me think about this.

Viva Mexico!

Strangely for a travel writer and journalist I'm always nervous before a big trip. Tomorrow I take off for Tahiti and the US. Fear is part of travel, I guess. If there isn't a bit of adrenalin there then it's hardly worth it.

Usually the biggest fear is surviving the long flight, hoping you'll get an aisle seat (how does everybody else know how to sort that out way before they get to the airport?) and that all else goes well.

I'm hoping this time to visit Mexico - I haven't been there since the late 80s. It's been getting a bad rap lately and violence has increased. When I used to go through Mexico City frequently on the way to Nicaragua, it was a haven for people fleeing from political troubles, especially in Central America. It was a cultured, open, hospitable place and always great fun. Salsa bands, chats in cafes, bus rides to the pyramids. I loved it. I'm looking forward to going back, even if only briefly.

Viva Mexico!