Friday night we drove the four hours from San Francisco to South Lake Tahoe just over the stateline between California and Nevada (driven by my cousin - first driving practice is later today in Matt's aunties enourmous truck!)

We arrived just before midnight with Ian, Sunny, John, Stu, Sharona, Stephanie (who we are endlessly grateful to as she allowed us to stay in her luxurious cabin for the weekend), Pardis, Carly and Joe; ten people + beer + gambling = one heavy weekend! Contrary to the 'well get there and sleep' story we had been fed Ian decided we should all hit the casinos straight away, and as they never close this is what we did. As soon as you step foot inside you are hit by a wall of neon and noise - a very exciting entry into the world of casinos. Ian showed us the ropes, kate immediately fell in love with the slot machines amongst all the other tiny women, and I tried my hand at blackjack, where i would have won a fair bit but inevitably the free beer (as long as you are playing at a table you are supplied with endless free beers), unnatural-pumped in oxygen and my cousins stubborness to leave led me to lose all my winnings.

Awoken politely with a plate of bacon prodded against our faces by my drunken cousins brief exit from the casino (he came home for one hour to make breakfast then immediately returned to see out the remainder of the first 24 hours of the trip) we gingerly made our way to Zephyr cove - a beach on the side of the lake. It was abso-bloody-lutely amazing. The water is crystal clear, on all sides of the lake you see mountains covered in enourmous green trees, and the water itself is saturated with flakes of gold; in each litre of water i would say there were about 30-40 tiny flakes of gold. You couldnt ask for a better hangover cure! We swam, lounged around, fell asleep on the beach (big mistake - i missed a small strip of skin on my side all the way from my armpit to my waist - it is now an angry shade of red/purple, along with one eyelid and one foot; woops!) and swam some more. We returned to the cabin early evening, everybody had a nap as we were living on 2 hours sleep, then barbecued some steaks and some chicken, had a few beers and hit the casinos once more!

That night everybody in our group all ended up playing at the same craps table, and despite being the worst roller in the history of the world (i threw the dice off the end of the table at least 4 times, and combined with my excellent ability to roll a seven - the one number that make everyone lose, it meant the dice werent the only thing showing snake eyes on the table!) everybody, including me and kate, ended up winners for the evening.

Sunday we breakfasted as any self-respecting Ron Burgundy fan would - steak... :) Everybody hit the beach and the more energetic of us played beach volleyball for the rest of the day. We ate our body weight in burgers at the Hard Rock cafe in one of the casinos and frittered away all of our winnins trying to repeat the successes of the night before - but overall i think we ended up only slightly down - so considering the number of free beers the casino gave us i dont think we did too badly!

Last night Stu drove us back down south to my aunties house/mansion/can-be-seen-from-space-its-so-huge palace where we are going to stay for the next few days, swimming in their pool, relaxing in the hot tub and eating the many varieties of fruit growing in the several acres of garden. As previously mentioned later I will be driving my aunties enourmous truck as driving practice for a potential roadtrip we are planning next week - details to follow later.