The first thing we did when we woke up was look out of the window and see the Ocean! Hermosa Beach is such a lovely place, everyone is happy and smiling, noone has a care in the world! The boardwalk is lined with multi million dollar properties which look amazing and there are loads of people riding bikes, skateboarding, rollerskating..all in the sunshine! We couldn't wait to get to the beach so we headed straight there after having some breakfast (free of course...

Another photo from Hawaii here - we'll change them all once we get our photos on here! Early start for us today...and a very long day travelling. We boarded our first bus at Moneterey at 7:15am...and arrived at our final destination at 9:30pm. Fun! Not a lot to say about the first few buses - we got to Salinas in time to catch our Greyhound bus to LA which took 8 hours. It was ok though, we were sat together and spent most of the day reading and listening to our...

Today we got up early-ish and enjoyed another free breakfast at the hostel. We had a couple of hours to kill before we had to leave for our Whale watching trip so we walked to the local grocery store to stock up on food for our lunch and dinner that day. Back at the hostel we made our packed lunches and then got the bus to Fisherman's wharf to check in for our trip (every coastal resort here seems to have a Fisherman's wharf...). On the wharf we found the office...

Got up at 9:30 today and started the search for a payphone again, having bought a new phone card. Laura phoned Lee and Claire and I got through to our Mam! We had to check out of the hostel by 11am (or they'd probably arrest us...maybe!) but the bus wasn't until 1:30 so we had a slow walk to the station, collected tickets, got some (very early) lunch and sat waiting...and waiting.. for the Greyhound. The bus to a town called Salinas was fine, then we had to take ...

Today was our last full day in Santa Cruz and we both woke up suffering with our sunburn, plus I had the beginnings of a cold - we can feel your pity for us poor travellers! We found out on Facebook this morning about the birth of our new niece, Rosie Bailey - congratulations Lee and Claire! So Laura went off to find a phone, without much luck. Eventually we headed down to the Boardwalk again, this time to cath the Big Trees and Pacific train to see the giant r...