Well, we´re here!

The story so far...

We got to LA last Wednesday, jetlagged and tired and cranky, and were met by David at the airport. He brought us to Manhattan beach, and for food, and took our jetlagged little selves to Maria Reyes, who had agreed to take us in for a few days. We were shattered, she was very nice and welcoming in the face of two people who were clearly almost incapable of speech!

David had enilsted another friend of his, Alex, to take us out and about in LA (you need a car to get anywhere, it sprawls endlessly), so she took us to the Getty museum, to Long Beach, to dinner, to the Queen Mary cruise ship, over the Vincent Thomas bridge (big suspension bridge, was in Lethal WEapon, Cathy was starstruck) David left us off at the metro the following day and we did the whole hollywood boulevard thing, looking for the names of people we could recognise, seeing many we´d never heard of, it was all fun. We had a bit more fun outside the Chinese theatre looking at the hand and footprints and signatures. John Wayne had tiny feet. Marilyn Monroe had TINY feet. Johnny Depp and I have almost exactly the same size hands.

Saturday was Universal Studios day, Maria and her son Danny took us along. Lots of queues, lots of rides. It was fun, in the highly organised way these things are fun, and in the absence of spontaneity. We got to see Wisteria lane on the tour tram.

We spent Sunday washing clothes, and later hanging out with David again. He took us to Vencie beach to buy bikinis. (I left mine in my drawer in Cork. grrrr) Dinner with David and friends, on to Ensenada on Monday.

Have to say, Ensenada was a bit of a let down. Touristy and not very nice looking, it´s where the California yachting crowd descend at varios times of the year. Apparently, the place is buzzing at the weekends, but it had no beach, no atmosphere when we were there.

We got away from the town today, and managed to find a nice beach. We also found a crazy American who gave us a lift back to town and fed us beer while we played with her children. Then we realized that at the border crossing into Mexico, we hadn´t gotten our tourist visas. And there´s nowhere you can go to get them except the Mexican border, and if we have any official business here we´re going to need them. So we have to go back to Tijuana tomorrow, get little pieces of paper, and come back down the Baja Peninsula again. Yay.