Our welcome to Los Angeles was a huge queue in immigration and a welcome hug from Nicks sister Sarah.

The day was spent catching up with Sarah, napping to avoid jet lag and eating Rey's speciality - Chicken Adobo. Yum yum! The evening was spent catching up, talking about weddings and our travels to date! As we were going to bed, we received a lovely present from mother nature - a massive 4.6 earthquake! This was the first ever earthquake we have felt, the entire building shook, the drawers opened and pictures wobbled away on the wall!

The following morning we woke up to another earthquake, (4.4) wondering whether it was a dream! No visit to USA is complete without having a Chipotle Burrito so that's where we went for lunch before visiting San Juan Capistrano, a Catholic mission. The entire village/town/neighbourhood was gorgeous and it's the site of California's oldest residential neighbourhood and California's oldest in use building (the Serra Chapel). The Cliff Swallows migrate annually via San Juan Capistrano every year but we didn't see any as obviously August is too far from their migration month of March.

Sarah and Rey took us to Ruth Chris's for our engagement meal, and also so that Nick could finally have a decent steak. The staff ensured our table was decorated in sparkly confetti and they gave us a pudding with a candle in :). To try and burn off some of the calories, we went for a wander around the shops in downtown Disneyland.

On our last full day in Los Angeles, we chilled out before heading to the outlets. We must add that we hardly spent any money as we need to save our pennies for Central America. It was crazy as the mercury hit 108 f (42 oC) which is just ridiculous. Thank god for air con. It was good to see Sarah and Rey, as we have not seen them since their wedding in 2010.

The 10th of August marked the start of our penultimate leg of our big trip...the Central America tour covering Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Belize and Mexico. Sarah dropped us off at LAX so we could catch our flight to San Jose, Costa Rica. (Just to add for our parents benefit, No we are not secretly on our way home! Not just yet...)