California here we come

Singalong if you know the words.

In the last few days we have hit the OC, Orange County, to check out the vibe at the homes of some of our favourite and least favourite TV shows.

We started with Newport, land of yachts, yacht clubs, harbours, harbour clubs, recreational water vehicles, 17 year olds not driving daddy's Merc but driving their own, perma-tans, perma-shades, Balboa island, beach bars and a nicer atmosphere than expected but still nit nearly as friendly as the hidden opulence of Venice's canal houses to the North. Huntingdon beach was party central, the place to park your RV (we have seen so many huge coach-like 6 wheeler RVs pulling their own SUV's - not the other way around!)...HB had some Brighton vibe, great people watching... Laguna beach was a bit older, artsy, hidden in the hills, but charming. And Long Beach was a bit too cruise-harbour and tourist friendly. We are now in LA's central beach land. We haven't seen much of Redondo to the South and Manhattan to the North but we are staying the only hostel in the whole of southern LA on Heromsa beach (proviso: there is an HI scout-style hostel at San Pedro point open high summer only).

The Surf bay hostel is very cool. It is the second building from the beach on Hermosa's happening Peir Avenue, a parade of just-hip-but-friendly-enough bars, stores and restaurants on the short strip perpendicular to the sea. The streets behind rise up towards the Pacific Coast highway and there is a small town feel. The hostel has 8 Finns (including a certain Laaksonen), a half Finnish worker, and at least 3 more people continuing on, like us, overland through Central America. Like every other private hostel the Internet terminals are unusuable, the free wifi is actually whatever unprotected network you can pick up by standing in the window and the TV is dominated by the two resident American sports fans (I secretly love this part). Kitchen is good - we were definately the annoying-cooking-and-wine-couple last night - but the hostel has one over-riding...let's call it a feature. With a club bar downstairs and two live music bars in the next two buildings, both shooting low frequencies out of flat roofs and skylights straight up to our window, we have felt like we are sleeping on the dancefloor until cut off at about 1AM the last two nights. I like to think I have high tolerance for noise and we are going for it for another night - and tonight it has to be that we can't beat 'em and must join 'em. The weather has gone cloudy which has conveniently enabled us to get to planning and researching getting through San Diego and Tijuana on the border and working out if and where we want to go in Baja in Mexico.

Yesterday we gave the car back and we spent 6 hours in USPS, UPS, Fedex and on related issues arranging for our snowboard bag to be sent home. It was a bit of a saga. Our original bag that I got from Jarno wasn't really up the task and was damaged on the flights to Canada. We got a new bag cheap in Whistler, a bit bigger and bit stronger, and with wheels. However, I had researched sending our 160cm bag bag back cheaply by USPS but our new 183cm bag just exceeded USPS limits so instead of $200 we had to pay $570 with Fedex. We went the torturous process of filling it with clothes and expendable items to lighten the load and we sent back over 40 kgs. We still have a lot of stuff but at least now we are more confident we have the items we had in our mind's eye. We both have bought things like lightweight trekking shoes, light water proof jackets, great socks etc. And I have bought some incredible hoodies for like $15-20 each. We had to send a lot of new stuff home and wish we could go straight back shopping to Vegas - it really was a paradise. Now it's time for a break while we count the c-c-c-c-ost of our great adventure so far.

Big up yourselves, the Deli