Sitting here at LAX waiting to continue our ‘road’ trip to Fiji. Thought I was finished with blog entries for the USA for a couple of weeks but I just couldn’t leave the last two days out!

My previous entry was written before breakfast at our B&B in Santa Barbara. Shane and |I entertained the other guests with tales of our African misadventures. After breakfast we headed down the coast road again towards LA.

The beaches are more crowded on this stretch. Could be the 17% unemployment that populates the beach with surfers on weekdays.

\Names like Ventura Beach and Big Sur make you want to break in to song. Well, almost anything makes me start singing as my poor friends and family well know. Kept expecting the Beach Boys to break in on the scene!

In Malibu there were jeeps, volkswagon vans, beat up rust buckets and no available parking in the ‘free’ zones with well oiled and tanned people getting ready to ride the waves.

In Santa Monica we took a side trip to see the Getty Villa. This time it wasn’t the home we saw but the building he had constructed to hold his private art collection. Now Shane and I have been to museums many places throughout the world yet we have not seen such incredibly preserved pieces before. From tiny bronze statues with minute detail from 100-400BC (and I’m talking needle thin detail with no broken bits) to the glass perfume flask circa 1347-1403 BC…. Again not broken. Even ancient wine urns that were not reconstructed from shards but again fully intact. There were hundreds of examples just like these. If the Getty Museum in LA is like the Villa then we will have to ry to get a visit in some time.

Crazy white knuckle driving through the LA freeways till our turn off to Temple City where YinYin lives. We were advised to hit the highway early so, with time to kill, we did a little trunk rearranging, shopping, walking and getting the feel of this area of LA County. Nice family kind of feel to the place.

Seeing YinYin again was such a treat. We talked and talked and ate and talked and laughed and ate again. So good to catch up with her. We are looking forward to coming back for her wedding in March and catching up with her family yet again. (Thanks YinYin for the hospitality! And the yummy fresh crab)

Next stop Fiji!