Dreamcenter here we come

Now explaining what the Dream Center is in on entry is going to be hard work, but if you are really curious, you can have a look here www.dreamcenter.org. We got to the Dream Center on the Thursday night after driving through the worst traffic known to man, the LA highway system. I thought London or JHB were bad, but this is non stop bumper to bumper, 24h stuff. We did get to drive through Beverly Hills though and saw some of the many mansions around the area. Also getting a chance to see the famous "Hollywood" sign on the hill which in it's won right is pretty cool.

Thursday nights at the Dream Center they have a midweek church service which is pretty cool as we were able to go that evening and were blown away by their praise and message, we also met some really awesome people including some from the UK who are over there to volunteer long term. We quickly struck up a bond with them and learnt much from them about how the project works and what they do within the program.

Friday morning was our first chance to help out and we had to pack the trucks for the 'adopt-a-block' outreach. This is where tens of buses drive out to the homeless and residents in surrounding areas in LA to find out how they can help. Our block turned out be an area in South Central LA which is full of gangs and rife with drugs. We helped hand out the food to the needy and spoke to them about any other care they require for themselves and their families. We also ended up cleaning out the trash from their yards and streets to make it look a little cleaner.

On one of the evenings we got to go on a group tour to Universal City where we met Justin Mayo who works at the Dream Center and heads up a program called Red Eye, which is trying to get young people of talent to express them in an environment where they don't have to end up acting like Britney Spears or Amy Majestic Wine Warehouse.

We met some really amazing people here, from converted drug addicts, to ex gang members and leaders and also the people that are helping out to achieve the above mentioned goals. I will not forget these days in a hurry.

Malibu

I haven't mention all the other amazing beaches there are in LA and OC, there are just too many, but if you take a drive down the PCH, you will want to stop at all of them. Beautiful sand and great waves, not bad temperature for winter either (well not the water). Huntington beach is really nice and the sand stretches as far as you can see, great day out.

I hate admin, and returning the car was just that. Once we had finished with all our sight seeing we had to find the drop off spot near the airport and collect our new Hertz car. The Pakistani guy at the counter was a great salesman and got me going on about cricket and agreeing with everything he said that I even said yes to an upgrade. So now we were in a Honda Accord 2.4l tank. It made sense as we had far to go, the other Kia we had in store would not have cut it.

We drove back up to Malibu, to the campsite where we had left all our gear and pitched our tent that afternoon. Malibu is really nice and is pretty peaceful compared to the rush of LA and a lesser extent OC. We had already taken a drive along the coast through Santa Monica, seen the famous S. Monica pier and surrounding beaches so that evening after collection our car we took a walk down S. Monica boulevard, peering at all the shops and stopping at one of the fine Japanese restaurants for some good food and my fav. beer Sapporro as well as Celias fav. beer, Asahi. Two birds with one stone.

Our campsite in Malibu had an ocean view and was a little elevated giving you great views of the bay. Sadly when we woke up you could not even see past the coastline. They had an early what they call "May and June gloom". This happens aroiund that time when the fronts blow in from the sea and don't go anywhere cause there is no wind in Malibu because it's protected by the S. Monica mountains. They just wait for the sun to burn it off.

I still went for a run along the beach passing all these mansions build on stilts right on the water which unfortunately forced me to sing "the foolish man builds his house upon the sand..", for the entire length of my run, couldn't get it out no matter how many times I tried to switch songs, damn you Sunday school.

I also couldn't find Pam Andersons house along the water either.. seen it enough times on cribs so I had a pretty good idea what it looks like. I did see many Pam Anderson wannabe's that morning though.

Camping in the OC

We did a bit of research and found a couple great state beaches we wanted to stay in. First stop Encinitas. This is a very cool little surfing town known for their big waves and laid back culture. We pitched our tent for the evening and went down to the beach to have a look at the southern Californian sunset. It did not dissapoint.

We never spent much time there the following day apart from pizza for lunch, and time on the phone trying to organise a new rental car for the rest of our trip, when that job was done we headed for Dana Point California, to our next stop.

Dana Point is just down the road from Laguna Beach which is a fantastic little village. It has a very European feel to it and the cafes and boutiques make the walks through the streets thoroughly entertaining. With all these fine restaurants here, we decided to go to a diner....?? Well it was in our budget, but please if you are ever in Laguna, don't go to Johnny Rockets, it was terrible.

We ended that evening off with a trip to the cinema. I love these old movie houses in the US with the ticket and concession stands just how they are in the movies you know (you can see i'm loving California a little too much). Watched 'Juno' which was quite good, kind of movie my sister would enjoy, so if you're reading, go watch it.

Had some good sleep last night apart from the noise of the train which on it's own is loud enough, but then to warn all the folk, it blows it's horn. Should have expected it as we had the same issue last night, only worse.

In the morning I went for a run on the beach as I do whenever we are staying near one. There is nothing better than feeling the sand between your toes while watching the surfers and wildlife. On this occasion the wildlife was a pod of dolphins swimming a few hundred yards off the beach. I couldn't run all day and while I was feeding my quarters into the shower machine Celia was busy watching a Minky whale swim by.... gutted I never saw it, but really happy for her.

Time to be off

Sunday was pretty cool as we got to go to Jackie and Nathans church. Had a chat to my dad in the morning as he was going in for more heart shocks the next day and we got to say a couple prayers in church for him. We lazed around and slept till I got word that he was out of ICU and fine so we went to bed.

Morning arrived today & we knew it was time to go. We had been here for 5 days and needed to return our rental car in LA so we had to start heading back.

I was fantastic to have spent these days with Nathan and Jackie in their lovely home and hopefully they'll come do the same with us in SA

Diving at La Jolla

Now before we start, 'La Jolla' is pronounced la-hoya, not la-joller like all you fellow Saffers would say it (just as I did).

Nathan and I decided to go catch some lobster on the Thursday night so we could pig out on Friday.

I hired all my gear and some tanks for us and we went out on a cold spring evening. It didn't all go as planned and within 20min we were back on dry land after trying for ages to to get out past the breaking waves. This was also my first night dive so maybe a step too far for my limited, yet refined experience.

Saturday we tried again, and by day we fared tonnes better. We had two fantastic dives even if the water was only 50°F. There was much to see including Sea Lions, Sharks, Bat Rays, King Crab, Lobster and many other types of fish. It was not actually that cold through your 7mm wetsuit especially if you never resisted the urge, only your face burns like hell from the cold.

Day two

When I had to get up at 5:30AM, I was totally unimpressed and felt like a bus had just hit me. With nothing to do and not even a Starbucks open I drove around The Orange County coastal area for about 1.5 hours killing time while Celia slept as she, as well as being seriously jet lagged, was also coming down with some American flu.

Our only solution was to head to San Diego to see Nathan & Jackie. They were expecting us, but we were a few days early. It was such a blessing to have a nice warm house and a comfy bed to stay in. We spent a lot of time indoors over the next couple of days getting back to full strength while catching up with all the best TV shows online :) The weather outdoors was definitely still winter.

That week went by pretty fast as we caught up with our jet lag but evenings involved many great meals and candid conversations. Good times.

I'm coming to America

We caught our Air New Zealand flight that evening at 7PM on the 18th to Los Angeles, really excited, but also a bit jaded from our NZ trip. All this driving has really made us reevaluate the next two months of our trip. We had planned to do Peru, Mexico & the US, but now seem more to likely to do a bit of Mexico & USA. So farewell to the land of the long white cloud, possum pies and Maouri Clare.

We touched down safely at 10:30AM on the 18th. Now if you hadn't noticed, this was more than 8 hours before we took off. The funny thing about crossing the date line is ....... absolutely nothing and everything that happened that day was increasingly unfunny. If my calculations are correct, we had a 40+ hour day which could easily match my biggest bender ever and I felt worse this time around, guaranteed.

We decided to drive down the Pacific Coast Highway towards Orange County which was a beautiful drive even in our state. We had brought our cheapie $39 tent which we had bought in Queensland and had eyed a campsite in Newport where we planned to spend the night. Turns out this place is like the campsite of the stars with photos all over and a tent site price close to $70... Not today thanks.

Instead we headed for our second choice in this canyon not far form Laguna Beach. By this time it was already dark and the campsite happened to be one of those eco-friendly ones where you have to hike to get to it, on this occasion it would be 3 miles. Negative ghost rider.

Instead we went to the diner for some burgers & beers and decided to sleep in the parking lot of the campsite in our car. The drivers side seat decided not to recline so Celia out of the goodness of her heart took the cramped backseat and let me take the passenger side.

We had been sleeping for about an hour when I awoke to this alarmingly bright light shining in the rear and side of the car. Some ranger had passed through and disliked our idea of camping out there but I gave her my sob story and she said we could stay until 5:30AM by which time the next ranger would be on duty and might not be as kind.

Welcome to America