Day 43 - Fri 12th Dec - Los Angeles

After a couple of films and a little bit of sleep, I finally arrived in LA - 18 hours after leaving Mendoza.

Despite the fact that my bags and myself were already checked onto the next flight, this is the US so I had to collect my bags, go through customs, out into the terminal, then hand them back in again. This seems completely bizzare to me as I know they are doing it for security reasons, but surely its more risky to open up the bags for more people to get there hands on them to put things in it (me included), when they had already safely been through two flights??

Anyway, after that I was free to leave the airport as I had 12 hours to kill until my next flight!

I had hatched a great plan a few months ago before I left about what I was going to do with my day in LA, and my plan was this; head to Santa Monica, hire a bike and cycle along the beach path and maybe to Venice beach too (thereby re-gaining use of the limbs that were bound to be numb after sitting on flights for that long), find a nice place for lunch, stroll round the lovely shops in the afternoon living the life of a Hollywood star (albeit a slightly scruffy & dirty one).

What I hadn't factored into this was just how tired I was going to be! I got the bus to Santa Monica, strolled around a bit to get my bearings, but it still wasn't 9am yet so most places were closed. I headed to a juice bar for a typically LA health concicous, no-fat, organic smoothie.

I decided very quickly that I was too tired to cycle anywhere and felt like I'd hit the wall of tiredness, so thought I would leave that until a bit later. After strolling around the shops for a while (the sales were amazing, not sure if it was just pre-xmas sales or was to do with the recession but everything was really cheap), I then went for a walk along the beach to the famous Santa Monica pier. I wanted to go to the aquarium that is there but it was closed until the afternoon so I walked back into town and had some early lunch (all you can eat Indian buffet - I'm getting good a spotting these bargains now!).

By the time I had done that and headed back to the pier, and all around the pier, twice, the aquarium still wasn't open. There was about half an hour to go until it opened so I decided just to sit on a bench on the pier and wait as it was quite a nice day. But then I couldn't keep my eyes open and kept dropping off! I thought at that point that falling asleep with all my money, credit cards and passport on a bench in the middle of LA was probably not the safest thing to be going, and that it I was going to be asleep anywhere it should probably be in the airport.

So I ditched the rest of my afternoon in Santa Monica and got the bus back to the airport again. I still had 6 hours to wait!

Surprisingly there is not a huge amount to do in LAX (well not my terminal anyway), sleep became out of the question due to LAX having the most uncomfortable seats in the world ever, the design of which make it completely impossible to stretch out or lie down. Very bored. Very tired, Bored.....bored......tired......bored......tired.............. .....bored.....bored.

If you look in the dictionary for the definition of boredom it says: ["BOREDOM", defn: LAX aiport, 6 hours].

I didn't even see one celeb! They are always on planes. But not there not then.

I did however see a cop going through the airport on a Segway (google it if you don't know what that is) - only in LA!

Finally boarded (boreded) the plane at about 9pm for an OK Qantas flight - but surprised to say the LAN Chile flight was better.