USA Part Two - San Diego

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We were due to pick up our rental car at 10:30am the next morning, and we had originally planned to leave our luggage at the Travelodge, take a couple of buses over to the Alamo rental office near LAX, and then come back to pick up our stuff once we had the car. However, after a bit of deliberation, we decided that we were not really sure whether we would know when to get off each of the buses, and also if it was worth driving all the way back to Hollywood just to go back the same way to get to San Diego. We therefore decided to instead catch the Metro and then the LAX flyaway back to the airport, where we could then just hop on one of the Alamo shuttle buses that show up every few minutes. We could then just take our stuff with us as there would be plenty of space for it on the metro, and the Flyaway and Alamo shuttle would have storage areas for it too.

I won’t bore you with the details of the journey, so we arrived at the Alamo office at about 10am. We had read some horror stories online about how they really can be really pushy with trying to get you to upgrade, so we were quite relieved to find that we could actually just use the self-service machines to sort out the car, which we had pre-paid for already. We just had to input a few details such as our driver’s licenses, home addresses, etc and the machine just printed out a little ticket and told us to go and pick a car and just show the ticket on the way out – we didn’t even have to speak to anyone! We found the ‘Economy’ row of cars and although we had paid for a two door economy car (the cheapest we could get!), the only cars left were four door cars anyway, which would have been more expensive! We had a look along the row and decided on a brand new white Toyota Yaris, 2014 plate with only 2000 miles on the clock!

Craig jumped in the driver’s seat (which was of course on the wrong side of the car!) and we drove down to the kiosk at the exit, where they checked our ticket and our driver’s licenses before waving us through onto the road. We had a little drive around the immediate area whilst Craig got used to driving on the right side of the road, and took a few left and right turns to get the hang of positioning, with it all being the opposite way around! Once he was feeling a bit more confident (he took to it straight away to be honest – all those years of playing GTA must have helped, apart from the whole shooting-and-running-over-people-to-steal-their-money thing…) we put the address of the Good Nite Inn in San Diego into the sat nav and were soon driving along the freeway.

It took just under two hours to get there, and Craig commented on how easy it is to drive over here – you don’t really have to worry about roundabouts as they don’t really exist here, and even on the freeways you can just go in any lane and overtake on either side, though out of habit we usually stuck to the right and just moved over to the right if we needed to overtake. We checked into our room at the motel before walking around the corner to a little café that sold hot dogs that we had spotted on our way around. Or what we thought was just a little café. It turned out that this place was owned by this eccentric Polish guy (apparently called Mario Gringo, though we highly doubt that was his real name!) who liked to collect lots of junk! The place was just FULL of random stuff both inside the café and outside in this little garden/outdoor eating area – it’s hard to describe but the pictures will give you some idea – such as full size Elvis and Marilyn Monroe statues, a couple of campervans covered in rainbow paint, loads of different stuffed toys (including several massive tigers)

We both quite fancied a chilli cheese dog after having one last time we were in the USA, and although this wasn’t technically on the menu (technically there wasn’t actually a menu at all, just a few random food items scribbled around on the walls!), Mario said that it was no problem, that he could make us up some chilli and also put on some onions, pickles etc to make it taste even better. We went to take a seat outside amongst all of the random collections, and Mario brought us out our hot dogs after a few minutes. They were DELICIOUS – probably the best hot dog that we have ever had! The sausage itself was a proper Polish Bratwurst, and it was piled with onions, pickles, cheese and chilli – amazing! We each had a can of Coke/Sprite and it only came to $12 for the lot – we would have paid that for just one meal in Australia! We gave him $15 and told him to keep the change as we had enjoyed it so much, and we loved his quirky little café! He also gave us a piece of paper with ‘Happy Hap’ written on and told us to search that to find him on YouTube – it turns out that he has a couple of hundred videos of himself being his crazy self – search it if you want to see!

We went back to the motel for a rest for a while then later had a quick trip to Walmart (first time going here and man, it’s cheap!) for some food and drinks for the next few days, before getting an early night ready for our day at San Diego Zoo. We had picked up a leaflet with a saving of $4 each on admission, so we used these when we arrived at the zoo the following morning. San Diego Zoo is one of the biggest in the world – it says something when it has a guided bus tour that goes around the park, and also has an ‘Express’ bus as well as a cable car to get around! It really was huge, and had every animal that you could think of.

We started our day on the guided bus tour, which took us on a quick tour of around 70% of the zoo, with commentary from the driver as we went. It was a very hot day (we were in the middle of a heat wave, and when the locals say it’s hot, it really is!), so a lot of the animals were asleep in the shade or in their dens. The polar bears and the grizzly bears were both actually in their pools, which was quite different to see – both are usually asleep in their dens so it was pretty cool to see them splashing around and playing with their toys. Once off the bus we checked our map, planned the best route around the park so that we wouldn’t miss anything, then set off at a leisurely pace.

I won’t go into details of all of the animals that we saw – as I said, pretty much any animal that you can think of, they had it – but one of the highlights was seeing the pandas, which are only found in a few zoos throughout the world. There was actually a mother and baby panda who were playing with each other in their enclosure – rare to see as all other pandas that we have ever seen have either been asleep or just sitting eating bamboo – so we stood and watched for a while. The baby was really playful and would keep grabbing his mother and just clinging on to try and get her to play, so she would go into her pool knowing that he didn’t really like the water! He would then run off, climbing up the trees dotted around their enclosure and then clumsily climb/fall back down before running and rolling around the floor – so cute to watch! We also saw a cheetah and a dog that were being taken out on a walk over to a VIP interaction area – each of the cheetahs had been paired up with a ‘buddy’ dog when they were young, so they could learn from the dogs how to interact better with people, as dogs are naturally much more domesticated and friendly towards humans.

Our route took us all the way around the park and eventually back to the top of the park, where we caught the cable car over the park back to the entrance. We thought the zoo was fantastic – definitely one of the best that we have been to, and by the time we had finished, we had spent almost 6 hours there without really taking any breaks – it really is a place that needs a full day to explore!

We didn’t really have anything planned for the next day, so we skyped our families in the morning before taking a drive to downtown San Diego later in the afternoon. We drove along the esplanade and along the harbour, then headed towards the end of the peninsula that was across the water from the city, although the view was not as good as we thought with the huge naval base taking up a lot of the view! We instead drove up the coast, stopping off at the edge of a small beach where there were a few people surfing. We watched for a while then drove a little further along the cliff edges until we eventually saw the ‘Seaworld’ tower looming up ahead. Knowing that we must be near our motel, we went back to our room, knowing that we would be returning to Seaworld the following morning, and we both got an early night ready for our day at the park.

We bought our tickets online the night before so we were able to go straight to the gates just as they opened at 10am. Our first stop was the only roller coaster there – a launch coaster called ‘Manta’. The queue line took us through a few tunnels filled with Manta Rays (we had experienced this a couple of years ago at the ‘Manta’ ride at Seaworld in Orlando), and we were able to walk straight onto the ride as there was no queue. The ride starts underneath a large screened tunnel, where several projected manta rays ‘swim’ around above your head before you are launched out of the tunnel and into the many twists and turns of the track. We both really enjoyed the ride, so much that we actually went on it three more times in a row as there was no queue at all so we were able to just cut across from the exit around to the front of the non-existent queue!

The rest of the day was spent walking around the animal exhibits, seeing sea lions, penguins, fish, dolphins and killer whales throughout the day. We also went on the ‘Wild Arctic’ ride, which was a simulated helicopter ride through a snow storm down to ‘base camp’ in the Arctic. Again, we had actually been on a similar ride in Orlando, although it wasn’t as rough as we remembered, thankfully. Once we had ‘landed’, we walked out to the arctic animal exhibits, including a polar bear (although he seemed to be hiding) and some Beluga whales, where some people were taking part in the Beluga whale interaction experience, where you can pay to swim with them. We also watched each of the shows, including the ‘One Ocean’ killer whale show, the ‘Clyde and Seamore’ sea lion show, and the ‘Blue Horizons’ show with dolphins, pilot whales, birds and also lots of diving and acrobats executed by costumed performers. There was also a show called ‘Pets Rule’, where cats, dogs, birds and even pigs performed various tricks for the audience – all of the animals had been unwanted pets that were rescued from shelters, and it was incredible to hear that some of them had been abandoned by their owners as they were apparently not able to be trained – if only they could see them now!

Our stay in San Diego had come to an end – we would be leaving early the next morning at 7am to drive back towards Los Angeles and up to Six Flags Magic Mountain – thrill capital of the world!

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