Beach Bums

---

3 hrs drive saw us to San Diego - its really relaxed, lots of surf dudes and beach bunnies. We checked in to the Ocean Beach Hostel - spent the afternoon on the beach sleeping. Woke for the free BBQ at the hostel at six. Chatted to loads of people and made our way to a bar.

Steve is twenty one in September - unfortunately that isn't good enough for state law and so we looked to see what else we could do. The hostel has received so many complaints that they don't allow drinking anywhere after nine. The bars are all ID crazy - one of the girls at the hostel said that down on the beach there are often fires which people gather around and party - so we went down to look for one. There were loads - the first one was already occupied by loads of kids. The biggest one looked cool - loads of pallets were being piled on and the fires were high. There were quite a few of us going down there - 7 english and 1 canadian, we had a fair amount of drink - it's cheap in the US. We settled down with the guys around the fire - most of them were homeless - sleeping on the beach - we shared our beers and pretzels, and chatted. Most of the guys on the beach seem to have had bad luck, now have very little money and no chance of getting work, but don't want to go home - or where they grew up anyway. And if your going to be homeless it's better in Southern California where you don't freeze at night, its still cold but you can live through it. So I hadn't expected to spend the night with the bums on the beach next to a fire - but it certainly was worth it - if I do it again I'll bring more food. I expect I'll see much worse situations, when in Central America.

We had taken this detour to San Diego to meet up with a guy who was definitely wanting to see the Grand Canyon - he bailed on us - anoying but what can you do. The Grand Canyon is still a must see and we have the car for a few more days.

---