Cruising California

We've had some great highlights of the trip in the last three days. Incredible coastal views as we drove. Some perfect weather. Crazy, opulent, wonderful Hearst Castle (zebras grazing in the California sunshine and all!). Beautiful Santa Barbara - a morning run on the beach (yes, BOTH of us), breakfast on the beach and whale watching. Re-living Tim's sailing memories in San Diego.

And the lowlights? Deciding to drive through LA rather than around it as we had originally intended. We knew we should avoid it but since we were there... We definitely won't go back. If I ever win an Oscar I'll ask them to Fedex it to me. Just too many people, crazy traffic, beat-up roads and lots of general tackiness. One good thing was that Jack Bauer was clearly not in town, as we weren't incinerated or captured as suspected terrorists and tortured...!

We spent this afternoon back in Mexico, crossing the border at Tijuana to become tourists again.

In some ways it feels as if the road trip has just begun - we're spending a lot of time in the car, staying in some cute and some not so cute motels that we find along the way.

Tomorrow we head for two nights (we listened to you, Nelly!) in Las Vegas. It will be sad to leave lovely California behind. We've had a great time discovering it. It is very like South Africa - many parts identical to the Cape (Cape Town, winelands, Garden Route) and KZN (Durban, Umhlanga, the Midlands, North Coast, Underberg and the Berg). That gives an idea of how beautiful it is here.