California dreaming...

AREA RECAP: Southern California

Route: Cayucos, Goleta outside Santa Barbara, San Diego, Los Angeles

Highlights: Smoked fish tacos in Cayucos for $6, R23 through a desert-like mountain range that popped us out in Malibu, great bar in Gas Lamp District and discovering the Mission beach in San Diego, eating seafood on the pier at Santa Barbara, lady walking down the street in Santa Monica with a bird-cage hat (including a live bird inside), panoramic views of LA from the Getty (incredible centre with an exhibition on James Ensor), LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum of Art) with the lamp-posts installation and Japanese exhibition, La Brea Tar pits that are an archaeological  fascination (as the bones of animals including Saber-toothed Cat and American Lion that were trapped in the tar have been preserved), a man with a giant snake wrapped around him along Hollywood Blvd, driving around the ridiculous neighbourhoods off Rodeo drive, great Korean pork ribs in Korea town, the beautiful Japanese garden in Balboa Park.

Lowlights: Toll violation for not having a tag that we didn't know we needed and where paying cash or using a card was not an option. Traffic in LA, in general, is shocking. (I think we actually spent more time in the car on LA highways than we did exploring what LA has to offer). People throwing coins into the Japanese garden fountain despite the sign "NO COINS" just below it. After glaring a few people down, we managed to stop a few potential coin-throwing offenders and are now the self-proclaimed "Coin Police". 

People: Really diverse group of people - either stinking rich or terribly poor.

Oddities: Never actually spotting the Hollywood Sign despite a rather impressive attempt of riding around looking for it. Back-pack-fold-out-chairs (or "sitchels" according to Jono).

Jono & Jo’s totally objective and no-way subjective rating scale: 5 palm trees out of 8.

Reminds us of: the sprawl of Joburg.

Total distance travelled: About 2005 miles