The crazies on the bus go round and round, or at least they seem to in Monterey!!

Our greyhound bus arrives in Salinas and then we have to hop onto a bus to take us to Monterey! But we must have just arrived at the same time all the day attendees were kicked out of the funny farm!!

Most people boarded the bus in an orderly fashion and found a seat, and then boarded a gentleman who was very insistent at showing the bus driver his ticket at least eight times to make sure that the driver knew that he was allowed to get on!!

The bus then stopped at Marina terminal and off got the driver, newspaper and all, and headed off to the toilet! And so we all waited! And we waited . . . And we waited! And then another crazy flipped out!!!! A lady just across from us suddenly declares from her gummy mouth, "this just gets worse!" . . . "they expect us to all breathe in the same air! DISGUSTING!". Some of what she was saying wasn't quite audible due to the lack of teeth, but it was clear she was unhappy! She then got up and forced the front doors open!

Another bloke at the back then pipes up with "I think he might be constipated!!" while all the time the rest of us slightly more sane individuals tried not to laugh!!

A relieved driver returns and once again we are on our way, although there are slight rumblings throughout the bus about it now being late!!

We then stop to let Mr ticket show-er off the bus and had to wait while he did another display of showing his ticket to the driver to still insist that he was allowed on the bus, and to thank him for getting on the bus etc etc, while a very stroppy woman got on!

With a few sniggers we start to move and stroppy woman decides to explain to the bus "He's retarded!"

A little further on the driver stops at a stop where a group of french are waiting, one climbs on to ask about another bus and the driver kindly starts to explain that they need to be on the other side of the road! While all the time Mrs stroppy is saying "If you are getting on the bus, get on!!"

Thankfully the rest of the journey went without a hitch, we found the right place to get off and just had a 15 min walk to our motel with our very smiley owner.

The next morning we awoke to torrential rain! Knowing that we had a 40 min walk to any of the Monterey sights we put off going out for as long as possible before donning all our wet weather gear and heading out! By which time the rain had stopped and the sun was shining!!

So sweating under our jumpers and rain coats we arrive in the very pretty and quaint town centre of Monterey. After looking around the pier and town we head to an all you can eat pizza buffet!! A buffet of which Ollie can eat ALOT of!! So while we wait at various times for the restaurant staff to replenish the pizza selection, we can see outside that the rain has rolled back into town!!

Rolling Ollie out of the restaurant there is only one logical place to head to shelter from the rain, the Monterey Aquarium! Unfortunately however everyone else had decided it was also the best place to head on their Thanksgiving weekend!

And so we walk around the exhibits with the swells of Americans, throwing our eyes up in despair at some of the ridiculous comments that depart from their mouths . . . "Oh My God, are they actually real?"

The best display of stupidity was the group of Americans watching a tv screen of a seahorse swimming around and it taking them a good five minutes before they realised that they were not looking at the real thing!! You'd think the head of the seahorse filling the 42" screen would have given it away fairly early on!!

By the time we get out dusk has arrived and so we head off on our hour plus walk back to our motel.

The next morning was gloriously sunny but exhausted from all the walking the day before and knowing we had a lack of clean clothes we decide to have a lazy one before we have to head off to Santa Maria the following day.

Arriving in Santa Maria felt like a mistake right from the start! Firstly it was dark, which never makes it easy to navigate your way to your motel, and then upon finding the rundown establishment the owner, who appears not to speak much English, says he has no record of any reservation, and to top it off, the free wifi advertised doesn't exist and so we can't even show him the confirmation!! So exhausted we pay for the four nights that we had decided to allocate for Santa Maria, mistake number two!! Especially when we later find that we have been charged $60 more than our reservation through booking.com!

After some food and some booze we head to bed only to be woken at 5am by the owner and his wife, who resided next to us, opening and closing every cupboard in their kitchen (which is apparently adjacent to our bed), cooking what sounded like a feast for 5000, and then washing up all of the pots and pans used! This in total took them four hours!!

After a little bit of sleep we arose and very un-English like complained and asked for a new room! Apprehensively we moved our bags to our new room and headed off to find out what delights Santa Maria had in store for us . . . Nothing, not a jot! The place is dead! There is absolutely nothing there! So that being said there is really very little else to report other than the second night we slept much better! Well apart from being woken by a Mexican couple having sex at 3:30am followed by them having a loud discussion before he seemed to go to work, and the third and forth night we slept blissfully! Even trying to find a park to go and chill out in during the day resulted in us finding the ghetto recreation ground! We didn't stay there long!!

And so now we find ourselves sitting at the Greyhound bus station waiting for the bus to take us onto Santa Barbara!