We woke up at about 7:30 this morning and packed up our things and got checked out.
We walked up the street about half an hour to the Alamo car hire place.
We got our little car, a Chevrolet Cruze, and Darren jumped in the drivers seat to start the day.
After readjusting to driving on the wrong (right) side, we drove over to Sarah and Craig's house, which turned out to be right behind the ukelele shop!
When we found the right place we were welcomed in for coffee and a Hawaiian breakfast cooked by Craig, which consisted of rice with some yummy seaweed based seasoning, scrambled eggs with mushrooms and Portuguese sausages for the boys, and avocado on homemade toast for the girls (Sarah is vego too).
As they are good friends with Ric they sometimes borrow instruments from the store to record with, and it turned out they had the ubass that Darren had been playing, so he picked that up again and had a play while we ate, drank coffee and chatted with the two of them.
After a while, Ric and Monica came over with a big box of pastries for everyone. I was a little bit too full for that though! I wouldn't be surprised if that breakfast gets me through until dinner!
We chatted with them for a bit as Darren kept fiddling away with the ubass, and we slowly convinced ourselves to buy it...
It was meant to be! How else would the exact bass he was playing turn up at breakfast!
We had to start thinking about heading off, so Sarah gave me a coffee to go and wrapped up some pastries for us and we said our 'seeya later's.
We headed over to the shop as Ric opened up and went in to pay for the bass, said goodbye to them and got given a bunch of CDs for free as well!
We got one of Craig's solo albums and a Hawaiian style guitarist called Kealoha.
So with that, the duo CD Craig and Sarah gave us, and the one we got from Chris' band, The Regal Peaches, we were pretty set for driving music!
We said goodbye to Ric and Monica then jumped in the car and headed off to our first stop.
We drove not too far away to a beach called La Jolla. We parked the car and headed down some super steep and pretty stairs to get to the beach which was just perfect, with the sun shining and the blues vibrant.
As we walked around to the stairs we saw that there were sea lions all over the rocks! They were just chilling in the sun with the waves splashing up on the rocks. I think if I were a seal, it wouldn't be a bad place to be!
There were quite a few people there, and you could get quite close to them, but they didn't seem bothered by it at all.
We spent some time there taking some photos and soaking up the sun, then we headed back towards the car.
We stopped at Haagen Dazs for a smoothie then jumped back in the car.
We opted to drive on the 101, which is the coast road as opposed to the freeway, so we got some nicer views, but we also got some traffic.
We listened to the CD's and as one of Craig's songs that was called 'Red Love' played, we got every red light! Then as soon as it finished we got a green light.
Later in the drive we were listening to a Regal Peaches song with the lyrics 'keep on standing in line' when we had to stop for roadworks!
So we kept driving along the beach road through some cute little seaside towns (with what looked like lots of craft beer places) just soaking in the atmosphere.
We passed through a marine base then made our next stop at the beach in San Clemente.
We parked and got out for a nice walk along the beach. To get to the beach you had to cross some train tracks, and just as we were coming up to it, the boom gate came down so we had to wait for the train to pass before getting to the sand!
We wandered along the pretty, packed beach, and past the clifftop houses, and past the lifeguard doing pushups in his tower, then after a while turned back and headed up to the car again.
This time I jumped into the drivers seat and we set off again.
From here the roads were pretty easy as it was just freeway driving, but in a short time we started getting a bit of traffic as we hit the outskirts of Los Angeles.
It was really quite easy to navigate, but as we got closer and closer to the city, the traffic just got absolutely ridiculous and it was bumper to bumper a lot of the way.
It was a long boring stretch of the road, and it ended up taking us almost 4 hours to get to Malibu, which is on the other side of the city. It was insane.
So we were still 3 hours from our destination (a couchsurfing place) and already an hour past the time we said we'd arrive!
We pulled into a shopping center and got some Subway for an early dinner, and found some free wifi where I quickly messaged them the new arrival time.
I had no way to check if they got it though, so we just had to wait and see!
After that mental stretch of city driving, I gave the keys back to Darren and we headed off again.
We stopped again at a random place, called Sycamore Cove, just because it looked pretty from the highway and the sun was starting to go down. I got a few quick snaps then we headed off again.
After this stop the road headed inland for a little bit, where we hit a little more traffic, but it didn't take too long to get through, and the road headed west again.
The sun was setting as we headed into Santa Barbara, and I thought I was going to get a good photo opportunity of the sunset over the ocean, but I didn't realise that the coastline had curved enough here that the looking over the ocean was looking south, so that idea didn't work out!
We stopped here to swap drivers again as Darren was getting pretty tired, so I took the wheel and we headed back onto the freeway.
Not too long later, the road headed inland again as we made our way towards San Luis Obispo, and we drove through some hilly areas, which probably would be beautiful during the day.
The fog rolled in for a while as the road curved toward the coast again, but didn't last long as it went back inland.
So this part of the drive was pretty uneventful, as it was too dark to see anything anyway so we headed straight to our couchsurfers' town, Santa Margarita, which was just a little way from San Luis Obispo.
We arrived in their street, and after almost going to their next door neighbour's house, found the right place.
We went inside and met our hosts, Taylor and Eric, and their friend Sarah.
After saying our 'hi's', they showed us our room and we had a bit of a chat before deciding to go down and grab some beers.
We walked down the street (with their cute old dog, Maggie) and went to go to the bottle shop, but it was shut, so we went up the road to the pub instead.
Sarah took Maggie back home because she didn't have her ID, but the four of us stayed on for a Firestone IPA, which is brewed in a nearby town.
It was quite a nice beer!
The pub was closing, so we only had two beers before heading back to their house.
One of their other friends, Rainie, was there with Sarah (who didn't stay much longer), and we all hung out for a while, and had some good conversations.
Eric and Taylor are planning a trip to Australia later in the year, so we chatted about that for a while, and as they have friends in Melbourne, we'll definitely be catching up with them!
It turned out that Eric was a pretty awesome guitarist, and Rainie was a singer, so it wasn't long before the jam session started!
It was a pretty awesome jam, as we had our three new instruments, and everyone had a go at everything.
It felt really easy and natural just playing music with them! No huge egos and no one taking over, it was so nice!
Their big fat cat, Buck, hung out with us too, which made me miss Hendrix! But we didn't see much of the 3 other cats that were apparently running around out there!
We got Rainie singing some songs from her idol, Whitney Houston, and I spent some time on the wifi organising stops for tomorrows drive (with some helpful input from the guys) and before we knew it, it was 2:30am!!
So we made plans for breakfast and headed off to bed!