19-09: South of LA

Why did I go to San Diego? To be honest I had never heard of anything worth seeing there before I arrived in California. From then on, lots of people I met and spoke with about my travel plans told me that I should go to San Diego, that it is a beautiful town and that I'd like it there. That's the reason why I went there.

When I woke up in my car after the day of my huge roadtrip from the Grand Canyon to Orange County, I realized that I've steered my vehicle right into a real posh rural area. There were huge properties everywhere, people riding horses and a horse-jumping practise area next to the spot where I parked the car. I knew from my travel guide that the whole californian coast between the LA area and San Diego is a breeding place for snobs. Everybody drives SUV's, people are well built and sporty, everybody goes surfing before, during and after work (if they go to work), you meet in cocktail bars and restaurants in the evening to exchange the newest rumors and you have to be one of them to not be called a "loser". Not a place that I felt very much sympathy for. I was still 50 miles away from the coast and it already looked half like I imagined from the guide. Nevertheless, nobody felt disturbed by my nocturnal presence and no sheriff questioned me why I slept in the car. I immediately left the place to head for the next petrol station, where I used the bathroom and had some breakfast from my supply. Then I drove towards San Diego, which was only 80 miles further. I knew that my designated hostel would start processing check-ins not before 2 pm, so I spontanteously decided to check out a beach north of San Diego. This decision was a wise one because I noticed that I was driving into San Diego right at the time of the morning rush hour and the six-lane highway was packed. I left it before the already highly viscous (sry, I am process engineer :P ) traffic turned into a complete jam. I stopped at a beach with really nice waves. It was ten in the morning on a Wednesday and there were lots of people jogging along the beach, some were surfing, some were just having a walk, some were roller-skating and some were taking their dogs out. I catched some nice waves with my bodyboard and lay on the beach for an hour, reading my guide. It wasn't very warm: There was chilly wind blowing in from the sea and the sun was dampened by the haze, which was hanging above the landscape since I've woken up this morning. Later I drove to Ocean Beach, a part of North San Diego and "hip place to be". It reminded me somehow of Friedrichshain (Simon-Dach-Str.) or Kreuzberg in Berlin. There were lots of small independent shops, cocktail bars and restaurants. Young people were the majority. Everything and everybody tried to be hip and relaxed, but in some cases it was already above the limit. In these cases people or properties looked dirty and un-cared for. Like the hostel that I wanted to stay the next two nights in. First it looked quite cheap for an american hostel but soon I thought that the price for a night was still too expensive. From the rules that I got told about at the check-in I could derive that it was a proper party hostel. It was even allowed to bring "guests" in who could sleep with you in your bed during the night. When I entered my room I knew that this rule was rubbish, because no girl would stay in there for a night. My linen was stainy, the room was dirty and there was a fat man lying in the third bed playing a game on his computer which seemed to be fixed to the bed. This guy never left the bed the whole day and I was wondering why he was here and what he was doing for a living. He looked like he would live in this room. I couldn't even use my sleeping bag because there was a sign that warned of bed bugs. I locked all my value stuff in the fortunately present safe and left the room quickly to have a shower, an issue that needed to be solved immediately after two nights in the car. I was already expecting bad things, but my expectations got beat easily by the hostel bathrooms. All of them were in a lousy condition, but the one I entered first even had some traces of blood on the floor of the shower. I was disgusting. After checking out the backyard, which was pure chaos of course, I left the hostel to stroll through Ocean Beach. At the beach there were lots of surfers, skateboarders, bums, people playing the bongo, the smell of marijuana was in the air, old people were having conversations, young people were posing. It was nice and made me forget the condition of my accomodation for a while. In the late afternoon I jumped into my car again to check out some of inner city San Diego. There was the Gaslamp Quarter, a nice and expensive entertainment district, there was Downtown, a very clean but cold financial district and there was Little Italy, which was quite cool and definitely worth checking out although it doesn't keep up with the New York version (I think). After seeing all these different types of neighborhoods I have to say that San Diego IS a nice town, no doubt about it. But after seeing my accomodation too and considering my travel money, I decided to cancel the second night and rather sleep one more time in the car than pay for getting a disease in the hostel. There are more hostels in San Diego than the Ocean Beach one, I could easily have switched, but as I said: my money dried out. I went back to Ocean Beach to maintain my travel blog a little bit and to have dinner. In my hostel there was an event in progress. It was called "Drinking around the world". Basically, there were people teaching you drinking games from all over the world and you played them. I arrived a little bit too late (drinking in the hostel was only allowed till 9 pm), but I got an invite for the subsequent bonfire on the beach, where the drinking should continue. With that invite I got another set of rules: Drinking in public isn't allowed in the USA, so I got handed a huge softdrink cup (coca cola), where I should fill in any liquids. Obviously half of the hostel met at the bonfire, so I decided to go there, too. But first I had to get a beer from somewhere, which wasn't really a problem because there were convenience stores at every corner. But: In the US, convience stores sell only single bottles, which are larger than 660ml. I didn't want such a big beer. There were small bottles too (333ml), but these were only sold in six-packs. I didn't want a six-pack either, just a normal size beer. In the end I found a can of imported japanese "Sapporo" which I experienced to be a good one. The store owner handed me one of these stereotype brown paper bags for my beer, but I wanted to fill it into my cup. When I was going to open the can in the store, the owner told me that I wasn't allowed too. In the end I walked around the corner to secretly pour my japanese beer out of a can into a softdrink cup in the shadow like some criminal. Americans could really spoil drinking a beer. Then I attended the bonfire for half an hour where I spoke to some people, most of them pretty tipsy already. There was a spanish girl too, but she couldn't really speak english. I couldn't understand what she was saying, and she couldn't understand me. In this moment I realized that my english did improve a lot, especially the speaking and listening comprehension. In New Zealand I had my doubts about that because it was already quite good before my semester abroad. But here I recognized that I didn't have problems to express myself during my whole USA trip, people would understand me and that I even could understand some really bad UK accents by now. After half an hour at the bonfire I left for a short walk along the beach before I went back to the hostel to have a nights rest. The fat man was sleeping already, but to my surprise he didn't snore too bad. I mean, I had earplugs but against penetrant and loud snoring they don't help very much.

In the next morning I got woken up by the fat man. Not personally, but he actually left his bed and the room. I could still feel the bed swing because of his footsteps, when he moved down the corridor. I was dead sure that he was just going to the bathroom and I didn't want to bump into him, so I waited for him to return. After ten minutes he still wasn't back, and I was wondering what he was doing. I got up, skipped the disgusting shower and went to the kitchen (free breakfast) where I realized that the fat man was the cook of the hostel. Now everything made sense. Even though I knew that this guy doesn't care a lot about hygiene, I started to eat my breakfast. There were a lot people in the kitchen, who had already finished a major part of theirs, and nobody looked sick or like there was something wrong with the food. I have written a lot of bad things about this hostel, but to be honest, the breakfast was the best of all free breakfasts which I had during my world tour. I could eat as much pancakes, sirup, scrambled egg, toast, cheese, jam and peanut butter as I want. Not a very healthy breakfast, but it definitely fills up.

After that I left the hostel and started what I wanted to do during this day: cross the border and visit infamous Tijuana in Mexico, before driving towards LA. I parked my car near a train station, because I would take the train to the border. It was cheaper than driving (petrol and parking lot fees) and I didn't need to navigate through the whole San Diego area, which would have taken more than the hour the train needed for one way. The border crossing was no problem, but I was a little bit nervous because getting into the USA is always harder than getting out.

Tijuana itself was really s*** (sry). It was dirty and there was nothing but tourist shops. And because I went through there on Thursday noon, I was almost the only tourist around there. Every shop owner greeted me loudly and wanted me too have a look at his goods. First I went along the most famous street in Tijuana, and there was one shop next to the other. I would have liked to have a look at some of them, but I was just too annoyed. Tijuana is a place where the Californians go to get cheap booze and medicine. It is feeding off the alcohol tourism on the weekends. Additionally, there is a huge black market and lots of crime. I never felt safe. I had some Tacos (yummy), Churros (yummy too) and a cerveza (not too bad) before I left Tijuana after only two hours. The border crossing back into the USA made no problems either. I arrived back at my car around 4 pm. I knew the area where I wanted to sleep during the night already (just 80 miles north of San Diego) and I decided to take the coastal road (Route 101) to get there. The highway would have been to fast. Route 101 would take me through all the posh coastal towns which are lined up next to each other like on a chain. Before sunset I took a break to have another swim and a bodyboard session before having dinner and watching the sun disappear behind the horizon and the haze. After dark I got to a town where a car meeting was in session. There were lots of old nice american muscle cars, even older oldtimers from before the war, cadillacs and other huge cars from the fifties and of course some new ones too. That was cool and I enjoyed strolling along the boardwalk. In another town there was a street market, which I enjoyed too. It was not the least annoying in contrast to the mexican street market standards. After that I had to get on the freeway to cross an army base territiorium behind which I pulled over in a quiet place to stay for the night.

This place was actually next to an access road for the army base. In the morning I got woken up by these typical songs the soldiers sing when they jog around their base. The wind carried the sounds out of the valley up the hill and through the slot in my window. I continued my trip along the coast towards the LA area, where LA is only one town of many. Next to it are Compton, Long Beach, Santa Monica, Malibu, Venice Beach, Pasadena and more. I approached from the south, still driving through glamorous Orange County, the home of surfing. I stopped for breakfast at Huntington Beach, hometown of surfing, and watched all these sunnyboys enjoying their pre-weekend surf session on Friday morning. The surfers were everywhere, the water was dotted with surfers as far as you could see in both direction. I want to witness the activity on the weekends. If it is only double as many surfers in the water than on a Friday morning, then it is "packed" already. I had to return my car at 12:30 pm, so I continued driving. Route 101 would have taken me straight up to Santa Monica, the place where I booked my hostel, but in Long Beach the traffic got stagnant and I decided to hit the freeway in order not to get charged for the car for another day. In the end everything worked out perfectly. I managed to find a parking spot near my hostel at ten to twelve, had my bag stored at the hostel at twelve and had the car returned by 12:38. Now I had arrived in the city of angels.