San Diego

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San Diego is my last US stop and it will be a chilled out one as I been trying to see as much as I can for too long and I basically need a rest. On arriving in San Diego, I was straight away hit by the heat, it is hot here and it was only 9.30 in the morning. I’m lucky I'm here at all, if it wasn’t for saras wakeup call I would still be asleep, our shuttle was collecting us at 6am, Sara was off to Hawaii and me to San Diego I was awoken at 5 past six after she convinced staff to let her into my room to tell me that the shuttle was going to leave without me, so I jumped out of bed, luckily I had the foresight to be all packed the night before and just made the shuttle. The airport wasn’t far away but at that time in the morning it was mainly business people and I got strange looks when I arrived into the airport still in my PJ's but I didn’t care I made it on time and that’s what was important. So on arriving in San Diego I checked into my hostel and had a quick look around, the hostel is slap bang in the middle of the Gas lamp quarter where all the pubs/clubs/restaurants are so its great for people watching, that night I met up for dinner with Jacinta, Brian and Aoife who live about 45 minutes away, it was great to see them and was even better to have a meal that didn’t feature pasta and tuna, I will be forever in their debt - Thanks guys, dinner and company were both superb.
The next 3 of us from the hostel went to San Diego Zoo, this zoo is famous world wide mainly for its breeding programmes, its a great zoo, made even better as they have a new baby panda - it was great and though smaller than I thought it would be was well worth the visit, after that we headed back and decided to hit the town after all it was Saturday night. We ended up just staying in the first place we went to as it was Saturday night and everywhere had a cover charge but we had fun even though the music was in the most random mix ever, you were never sure what was going to be played next.

The next day I had a quick walk around the harbour and Balboa park before heading back to the hostel to head to Tijuana with a load of the guys from the hostel, Tijuana is just over the Mexican border and is known for young Americans going there for legal cheap drinks, cheap cigarettes, prescription drugs without of course the prescription. We had a few drinks and then headed to get something to eat and copious amounts of tequila, it was a really fun night and the tequilla did make me happy until i got mugged, then i wasnt happy anymore, they got my cards which was a massive pain but this situations happen and I don’t want to dwell on the bad things so on to the next thing. The next morning I spent most of the morning trying to get my money and cards sorted before heading back to LA to catch my flight to the Cook Islands, my time in America has come to an end and its on to the next stamp on my passport. Raratonga here I come

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