Now who could go travelling in the States and not go on a road trip! And if you were planning on doing a road trip, who wouldn't drive Highway 1 on the west coast! Yip, we planned it, we drove it, and this is how it went down.

The plan was to take three days to drive from San Francisco down to Los Angeles. Everything was going according to plan except, in our usual last minute fashion, we couldn't get the ultimate car that we wanted…a Ford Mustang Convertible. Instead, we took the best car we could get on such short notice and it happened to be a classy Buick Lacrosse - an American take on an Audi or BMW. It was comfortable, it was leather and wood clad, it had satellite radio (a must for going through the middle-of-no-where-America) and it had a smooth ride. We now had the car and we had the direction all that was left to do was hit the road.

Our first stop was Santa Cruz. The drive to get there wasn't too long but it was a fun place to stop over. It was quite surprising to get there and see a huge boardwalk playground and theme park. We also managed to find a cool beach bar to chill and watch the hockey team that we had been following win the Stanley Cup. The Boston Bruins beat the Vancouver Canucks in massive fashion by scoring 4 goals in both of their last two games and not letting in any goals in the final game. The underdogs came to play and they were victorious! The main road here for nightlife is Pacific Avenue. It's pretty cool and we would recommend staying closer to here than the beach as it also had some nice looking restaurants and shops, although, they are only about a 15 minute walk from eachother.

The next day was a long driving day from Santa Cruz down to Santa Barbara. The views were spectacular and we have to admit it, driving through the Big Sur with the sea on your side really competes with driving our South African Garden Route. There are plenty places to stop on this particular part of the drive and the drive itself can easily be done over a week, but given our time constraints we had to pick one place to focus on and we wouldn't have been able to simply drive past Pebble Beach - so this was the spot. It turns out, Pebble Beach isn't just a golf course. It's a whole 17 mile drive through a national park that shows you many spectacular golf courses, sea-side stops, mansions, and of course the Links at Pebble Beach Golf Course. Just standing on this historic course was goose bump provoking. We were quite surprised at the lack of US Open memorabilia and focus, but we guess that this is a classy establishment and people who go there know where they are and what it means and don't need to be reminded of it.

We pulled into Santa Barbara in the early evening with just enough daylight to experience the June gloom (a fog that hangs over the city around this time of the year). One night here was definitely not enough. We found great restaurants and bars that were full of locals and holiday makers on the main road in town, State Street. We really would have liked to go to the beach there which looked great. So if you're going to Santa Barbara, definitely give yourself two or three nights there.

Our drive ended off with a 4:30 am wakeup call and a bee-line drive straight to LAX in Los Angeles to make sure we got there in time to drop off the car and catch our flight to Austin.

The drive was brilliant and highly recommended (over 2 days or more if possible) and even the final early wakeup couldn't deter from the excellent drive and experience.

Trek on…Brett and Darren