Finally some sun

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The drive down to Santa Barbara was a better one being that the sun finally started to come out and I realised why we have air con in the car!! Getting to the hostel was great, my first glimpse of what I had always thought of as "California" with palm trees and a proper beach!! The hostel was only 2 blocks away so on arriving we went for a walk around the area. The beach was full of birds, the usual gulls and loads of huge pelican's! The beach itself wasn't the cleanest but was still the nicest one we'd seen so far. We went for a walk along their local pier, full of the usual restaurants and tourist shops when we spotted a shop selling FISH & CHIPS. We thought wow proper fish and chips that would make a nice dinner, so Nath went to investigate only to find that no it was deep fried fish but the “chips” were American style i.e. fish and CRISPS!!! - Oh well.

The hostel had got some bad reviews on line so I wasn't expecting much, and overall it was ok certainly not the worst hostel ever as described by many, maybe I’m getting more tolerant? Unfortunately being the stupid person that I am sometimes, at some point when booking this hostel instead of booking two beds in the four bed dorm I had booked all 4 beds! The hostel policy was to have 72 hours notice of changes so there was nothing I could do. Luckily whilst we had to pay for all four beds the first night, they let us into a large mixed dorm on the second night at the usual price. So the first 4 bed room was big as we had it to ourselves but with just two problems 1) our glass swing door which opened out onto the car park meant there was no internal door to the corridor and toilets, so at one point at 3am we both had to get up and walk through the car park to use the bathroom, and 2) since all the rain the previous nights the floor near our bed was soaking and very smelly - oh well.

The next morning we bumped in to Anna, the girl we had met previously on the California Zephyr, it seemed she was going the same way as us so I offered a lift to LA and Vegas. That day the sun was really hot so we had a wander round and headed for our catamaran boat ride I had booked the previous night. It just took us up and down the bay for a couple of hours but was really relaxing and felt like we were on a summer holiday more than a world trek (and it was pretty cheap too). From the sea we could see all of the surrounding mountain range and the clear brown patches where the recent fires had been. We also passed lots of seal lions, resting on buoys and other little boats that had been left anchored out at sea. They had pretty much taken over some of these vessels as their "turf", I guess it’s the Californian equivalent of us parking our car too long and finding it covered in bird shit. There were only a few of us on the boat, no one that was very chatty, except one guy how looked a bit like Will Young. I came back from the boat a shade darker (red) at least on the arms, if I don’t get some colour on my lower body soon, I’m gonna look like some kind of stripy sweet (humbug) when I get to Fiji.

That evening with good meaning we were planning on going out to see the sights of town, but after chilling in our new dorm room, we both ended up falling asleep early - how sad are we?! There were 12 bunks in this room so it got really hot and yet again I seemed to be the only female in a mixed dorm room, so lots of half naked guys (good times) and lots of man noises/smells (bad times)!

The next day we were due to leave for LA but had decided to go kayaking in the morning before we left with a company called Captain Jacks. They got some good reports on trip advisor and some of the trips were expensive so we were glad to find an offer on the kayaking where one of us would pay $30 and the other only $15. However the cheeky bastards don’t tell you that they then add a $7.50 tip each to the actual price (and that’s without the tip you might give to the guide on the day) so in the end it was no cheaper. WARNING RANT APPROACHING……. That’s one thing with the USA we’ve had to get used to is all this tipping. I personally hate tipping and back home won’t do it unless the service was exceptional. Now I know I’ve never been a waitress so am sure many of you may disagree but I don’t see why in some professions you should get a tip for doing your job. If you’re not doing it to the best of your ability then why are you dong that job? I would never expect a tip for doing extra well at my job!! However I appreciate in the US there doesn’t seem to be a minimum wage so waitresses get a very poor wage and rely on these tips, but I still feel it should be up to us to decide who gets what and how much. (I’m also a little sick of people being overly nice but not meaning it!) When people add it on without advertising or as though it is compulsory that pisses me off. With all this said, I stupidly just went along with it without question, thus annoying Nath as I’d already wasted enough money on my miss booking in Santa Barbara - so from now on I will try and remember to question everything rather than be a “yes” man. (Ok, rant over now)

With all that said the kayaking was great, it was a 2 hour trip where we went around the marina (paddling under a huge catamaran) and then headed out about a mile into the sea to some buoys to see the sea lions basking in the sun. After about an hour and 50 mins I was still unable to steer the kayak in a straight line but fortunately it was a two man kayak and Nath was behind me correcting our direction or we wouldn’t have got anywhere!! The “kid” that was our guide was a typical California dude; all that was missing was for him to say “cowabunga”. Although we were seeing the same coastline as w did from the boa there was something great about floating in a huge expanse of water and watching the world go by. I must admit to being a little nervous at not being able to see the bottom and being told there was a shark breeding ground further out from the islands that surround the coast of Santa Barbara. I was desperately trying to remember what I had seen from the blue planet guides with Richard Attenborough and I’m sure seals are dinner for sharks or whales or something so if they were lying around without a care in the world I figured we must be safe!! Generally I think this kid was pulling our leg!! Wet and sweaty we returned to the hostel to collect Anna and head to LA. She was hung over and it took me a while of constant conversation making to realise she just needed some sleep, so we left her to it, dribbling down the window and snoring (only joking, Anna).

We left the hostel without having had any dinner because they again shut the hostel for most of the day, I guess for cleaning (manager sleep time!!!) so we ended up enjoying a lunch of apple, biscuit bar and a handful of nuts - thank god we would be enjoying proper dinners for a few days at Rayleens. Now the sat nav was a star buy as there was no way we would have been able to navigate round LA without it, as neither of us had figured just how big LA is!!! Think big and then add a small town you know to that. the hostel we were dropping Anna off at was in Santa Monica (the other side of town to where we needed to be (doh - we’d offered now) and apparently was only going to take an hour and half, however we had arrived on the outskirts of LA at about 3pm on a Friday so joined the other million commuters leaving early for the weekend. It took 2 extra hours just to get into LA and then when we plotted our route back out to our stay in Los Alamito the half hour quoted was again wrong. So by 7pm we finally made it to Rayleen and Rob’s house - phew

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Photos

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Nath with a bunch of "anchors"