California Here We Come...

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Our next point of call was the southern Californian City of San diego. This is a smallish city located near the Mexican boarder with a vey apparent Hispanic influence. It seemed to be a nice introduction to the heavily anticipated sunshine state, and the sun was definitely a-shining. We decided to make the most of this and headed to a beach with the American football. It was nice to be back on the terrain we’d longed for since Florida, although a nice sandy beach was slightly spoiled by a harsh wind that made it more suitable for surfing than relaxing. Nonetheless we had our game, with me and Mike practicing plays on a nice green next to the beach. We also made time to check out the town, and despite it being nice looking, we found little to do in this obvious off-season. The highlight of our time in San Diego was that it was the turn of the English to cook the evening meal. On the menu was a personal favorite – Bangers and Mash. Mike was in charge of the Sausages and onion Gravy, and Max the Mash potato. Anyway after cooking for 3-4 hours (FYI it’s not easy on a camp gas cooker and for 14 people!) everything seemed to be going swimmingly, until the simple task of serving up sausages end up with 25 of the 28 on the floor of the fresh outdoors, this in front of all the people impatiently waiting to devour them. So for most it was mash (very nice) and onion gravy, with the occasional few venturing bravely in to a washed cooked sausage.

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Another drive in the minivan the next day, and we found ourselves in a Hollywood Hostel. Knowing that we were to return to LA in the near future, we decide to put off any major site seeing at this point. On the way in Matt drove us to a nice viewpoint of the famous Hollywood sign for some photos and provided a brief in car tour of Hollywood so we could get our bearings. In the evening we, along with our group friends, decided to walk along Hollywood Boulevard, where all the names of the famous are littered in stars on the pavement tiles. The particular part of Hollywood that we saw didn’t have the glamour and class that we’d been expecting; it was in fact particularly dirty and had quite a few homeless that forever nagged the tourists. Wanting to get off the street, the majority of the group (aka the male contingent) elected to once again eat at Hooters, which ended up providing a good entertaining evening although was cut short by many of us having slightly upset stomachs. Damn Mike’s Sausages!

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The proceeding day we actually split up believe it or not, Mike went to Santa Barbara for the day, and I opted to go with the Danes and Jan to Universal Studios. At first I was very excited about the theme park as the sun was still expelling hot rays and well, it was being very generously hyped up by the others. It was after the hefty entrance fee was handed over, and the introduction announcer said declared that “although the park in Orlando has all the rollercoaster rides…we have some live set tours of desperate housewives” My head dropped and I was beginning to regret it. Despite this I pleaded with myself to have a good time and headed towards the best and the part of the park I was most looking forward too – the Jurassic Park section, which has the better of 2 rollercoaster’s. It was closed. Walking around on lengthy tours trying to make a day of the attraction, (we were to be picked up at 6pm by Matt) the only light was that upon entrance we were rewarded with an all you can eat pass, and in turn it was the restaurants that we spent the majority of our day making our money back. In Santa Barbara Mike saw some squirrels and had a nice meal, the better of our days we decided.

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The trek ends. Our final night in the tent  in Santa Barbara and our final long distance minivan ride, and we were heading to the Golden city of San Fransisco where we would say our goodbyes to our fellow trekers.