Actually, it was an old event, exactly three days before the Fall term began. The idea of going to Mystery Spot (I had no idea what place that was) was initiated by Astha. She was so excited to visit that place that she encouraged me, Elda, and some of her friends from India to join in the trip with her. From what I'd learned from Mystery Spot, it was an uncanny place with a so-called strange magnet field. It is said if we stand straight on its ground, it'd look like if we stood leaning sideways.
Interested by that idea, Elda and I decided to join.
The day started when Elda, Astha, and I met up at Valley Fair mall. After a quick breakfast with McD, Astha told us that today, one of the trip's participants (one of her friends as well) was celebrating his birthday. So she bought for him four cupcakes and we were expected to wish him a happy birthday.
Okay, originally four cupcakes. But Astha asked us to eat the extra one aka smallest first
The challenging yet interesting thing is, that friend came from India, and we were expected to wish him a happy birthday in Hindi. In that language, Happy Birthday is "Janam deen mubarak ho". Elda and I practiced the phrase together until we sounded as fluent as real Hindi, with Astha as our guides as we kept on muttering it on the way to the bus stop (where we would meet the birthday guy and his friends).
It was probably the most awkward meeting ever since Elda and I hadn't ever met him yet. Elda and I held the birthday cake as Astha pointed which one the birthday guy was. We went on "Janam deen mubarak ho!" while handing him the cupcake box.
Stunned? Pretty sure he was. lol.
Anyway, there were four guys coming to join us. They were: Yash (the birthday guy), Milan, Anooj, and Pratiek.
So there started our journey to Santa Cruz. The journey took a while since it was quite far to get from Cupertino to Santa Cruz. First we needed to get on 23 bus to the intersection of San Antonio and Bird. Then we took a nonstop Amtrak bus from the intersection directly to Santa Cruz.
The Amtrak arrived shortly after we got off the 23 bus and trust me, it was the most convenient public bus I'd ever got on so far in the US, especially since it got a free wifi inside it. But the bus was fully packed with people going to Santa Cruz so my friends and I had to sit in different seats. :(
Anyway, we got off at the first intersection after the bus exited the highway. After taking a rest for a while in a small restaurant at the corner of the road, I switched on my Mr. Google map device to get the direction to the Mystery Spot.
The device said that the intersection we got off was the closest we could get to the site, and the rest of the path, we had to walk for like five miles. It was friggin' far, in case you don't know.
This is the road we walked all the way from the busy intersection to the rural side. Not a boring walk, since our sights were refreshed by this exciting panoramas. We even stopped for a moment or two to take pictures.
Yay! We were almost there!
The entrance to the Mystery Spot was a narrow slope. Cars still could access through it though.
Walking to the entrance didn't take a while, but as soon as we got there, we realized how much energy we'd spent for the long walk we took. We possibly had to call a cab to get back to the intersection after finishing a tour in that tourist attraction.
Anyway, good thing Elda and I saved the burgers we bought in McD for lunch, because that was when we felt extremely hungry and there were hardly no food stalls all around. We took a rest for a moment before buying the tickets (which was only $5.00! Even though it might sound pretty pricey for you, it's actually considered quite cheap for a tourist's attraction admission fee).
Then all we had to do was just waiting until our tour number was summoned, and that eventually happened sooner.
The tour guide led us into the location of the so-called "Mystery Spot" and performed some demonstrations. It's kind of hard to explain here, but the demonstration basically revolves around the strangeness that surrounded the place.
In short, there was this demonstration where two people were to stand facing each other. One stood beyond the border of "Mystery Spot" and another one inside the "Spot". Their heights constantly changed when they switched positions, even though the platform they were stepping on was flat.
Soon we walked all the way up and entered a leaning cabin. It sort of reminded me with Rumah Miring at Dufan.
I have a picture of me standing straight but it looked like I was leaning. Anyway, Elda's picture is better, which shows a good example of what I'm talking about. Mine is a bit blurry
We made a group picture taken by this nice tour guide.
Pretty much, we took pictures in the cabin and saw the amazement of the tourist attraction. It was a short tour and we were to return back to our starting point and were given out stickers and merchandises.
Before we left the site, we asked the tour guide to once again take a picture of us standing on this uncanny platform.
Before we left the site, we asked the tour guide to once again take a picture of us standing on this uncanny platform.
The tour guide told us to stand like below, and took a picture of the formation. He told us to see it and see if we something odd enough
It wasn't like really amazing or something that simply could make your jaw drop. So I'd say $5.00 as the fee was equal to the attraction it offered. No wonder it wasn't so expensive.
The boys then gave up on walking back to the intersection and especially the sun was about to set. So we decided to call two cabs to take us to the intersection, where we would switch to Amtrak bus heading back to San Jose.
On the way back to San Jose, suddenly Yash informed both Elda and I that he invited us to his birthday dinner at Pizza Hut near school. Elda and I hesitated at the offer once, thinking his friends might mind about us there. But Yash and Astha convinced us that we were very much welcomed for his dinner and they promised would talk in English instead of Hindi.
At the same time, Astha wanted to buy some tickets for tomorrow's Step Up 3D for the her and the boys (I'm not really into Step Up, so I decided not to join them). Anyway, Elda and I accompanied Astha to AMC Cinema while the boys went up to Pizza Hut first to make the reservation.
Then, from AMC, we caught up with them there and once we got there, the pizzas were already served.
So we had a great time munching on our pizzas. Astha happened to bring up the topic about our countries, and the boys uttered that they were interested about Indonesia. So here Elda and I exuberantly explained about all great stuff we should boast about our country. We did that as requested though.
Well, we called it the day shortly after and returned to our apartment.
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