Austin was cool, a friendly, attractive city with lots of fun stuff to do. A highlight was heading down to the river a sunset to see 1.5 million Mexican Free Tailed bats fly out from under a bridge to go hunting for the night, a truely impressive sight. Spent a fun day on Saturday at Barton Springs which is a huge natural pool in which you can swim, do crazy dives off a spring board, and generally chill out in the sun. We achieved the impressive feat of passing a ball between ourselves 30 times without it falling in the water, it only took us about 2 hours! Also got a bit of cultural stuff in visiting the Capitol building, which is very impressive, similar to the one in Washington and actually taller. They have portraits of all the former govenors of Texas there, including of course, George W. Bush, who now wears attractive purple glasses and a green moustache thanks to a bit of subtle graffiti! Had a couple of cool nights out in Austin too- me and Mike saw a very good Country/Soul band. The only bad point of Austin was the hostel which was run with alarming similarity to a prison camp- we were locked out of our rooms for most of the day- some crazy woman had the gall to come in and try and wake me up before 10:00 every day. Its meant to be a hotel for goodness sake!