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After the bustle and excitement of Mexico City, I traveled to LA. This time I cheated and bought an Airline ticket. Areo California, a small Mexican Airline. Arriving at Mexico City Airport at 6.30am was one of the most confusing experiences yet. despite speaking some Spanish I could understand very little, as with all public places the public announcements were completely muffled, unintelligible and spoken in the bored tones of someone who doesn't really care anyway. Eventually I made it to the one monitor that actually had my flight details on it, and caught the flight. On the flight, no meal, no movie, not many other passengers, but I was given a small bag of
pretzels.

I decided that this time I would stay at Venice Beach, hopefully meet someone or some people that would want to go to Universal Studios, and wander up and down the beach and marvel and the freaks who congregate in the area. Well the hostel, Venice Beach Hostel was really quiet on the first day, and after 3 months in Central America seemed incredibly expensive. I went to the local shop and refused to buy the cornflakes at $4.99. The USA is expensive.

The following day I woke up and phoned Qantas. Would it be possible to bring my flight forward? Yep would tomorrow be OK? - I didn't expect that at all. It didn't even cost anything, there is only a fee for changing the itinerary and not the dates. So I took tomorrow, and changed the dates on some of my later flights. The aim to gain more time in New Zealand at the expense of Hawaii and Fiji.

I saw the freaks. They were entertaining but not as much as I had hoped. I visited Santa Monica, a really expensive district, didn't buy anything in the huge shopping plaza that covers most of the center. In the evening the VB Hostel was completely transformed from the previous evening. It had suddenly become very cool. A couple of guys were playing guitars and singing, so I brought down the Martin Backpacker Travel Guitar and joined in, had a really great evening, met some girls who would have gone to Universal Studios with me, but alas I had already changed my ticket. At 5.30am I awoke, packed once again in the dark, and caught buses to the Airport. I could have had a better time in LA than I did, but I'm glad to be on the move, having arranged my trip exactly the way that I want it now.

Aloha Hawaii - Later LA.

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