Los Angeles is fascinating yet horrible, tacky yet glamorous, and unimaginably rich yet unthinkably poor. Maybe these were things I already knew about the City of Angels, but it was still both shocking and exciting to experience it.

It was fairly shortsighted of us not to have booked somewhere to stay before arriving in the US, as not only is it the summer season but the school holidays had just started. Suffice to say, we had trouble at first and had to settle on a motel in Inglewood, which unless you listen to gangster rap you probably won't have heard of. One woman couldn't speak highly enough of the hotel but warned us not to venture out of it for fear of the 'crack addicts running around.' Although our room for three was very nice with two double beds in two separate rooms, the hotel had a fairly odd atmosphere and in the restaurant you couldn't seem to get what you'd asked for, that is if you were served at all.

Luckily, we were able to find space at Banana Bungalows in West Hollywood for the following nights, although it did involve spending the first night in a dorm which Becky hadn't bargained on, but accepted with good grace. We hadn't quite grasped just how large LA was until we tried to get around it. Simply going to the shop for some water took nearly an hour out of the day. We decided to head for Santa Monica Beach as we were told it was just a bus ride down Santa Monica Boulevard. This was correct, however, Santa Monica Boulevard is an incredibly long road and we arrived there more than an hour after we'd left. Even the beaches are gigantic and a stark contrast from our private beach in Fiji.

Having experienced the vast distances, we decided to let someone else drive and booked onto one of the many LA tours. It seems we were allocated the most eccentric tour guide possible, although in a city like LA he might have been considered relatively normal. Having treated us to a few small glimpses at the famous sights, we headed for his real penchant, the famous homes of Beverley Hills. This part of the tour wasn't as exciting as I'd previously hoped as most of the stars had installed huge gates to stop people on tours taking endless pictures of them. We did, however, get to hear all about Brian our tour guide's life, his girlfriend and how they'd spent many of their birthdays, and how he went through Halle Berry's bins the day after she'd separated from her husband. So not quite what we'd bargained for but interesting all the same.

As if we hadn't been caught out by the huge distances already, we spent the most of our last day in LA trying to buy a Greyhound pass to get us around The States for the next seven weeks. Having waited way too long for the bus, it then took much longer still to make our way to Downtown LA, all the time our plans of getting to Rodeo Drive were slipping away. I must say that Downtown LA was not one of our highlights of the trip and was the place where we saw our biggest quota of crazy people screaming to themselves in the street. The Greyhound Terminal really was something else, too.

With the Greyhound tickets purchased and Rodeo Drive not visited, it was time to enjoy our last night in LA which we spent on Hollywood Boulevard. You could spend most of a trip to LA just on Hollywood Boulevard, trying to work out who all these people are you've never heard of but seem to have stars, trying to stare inconspicuously at all the people talking to themselves and dancing in the street, watching the crazy traffic, or you could do what Becky did and get a tattoo. Having debated over her decision in Fiji, she let her inhibitions go in LA and had the Fijian phrase 'Sega na Leqa' meaning 'no worries,' tattooed onto the inside of her foot. Luckily for her she still liked it the next morning and hopefully still likes it now.

Having said goodbye to Becky on Thursday morning following a great 11 days together, we headed back into the wrong part of town to catch our bus to San Diego. It felt as if we hadn't seen all that LA had to offer and would've liked a few extra days, but on the other hand it also felt as if we'd seen too much.

Rosa