From England to Ecuador and beyond

From England to Ecuador and beyond

Wednesday 28 May 2014

San Diego - day 1

Written Friday 23 May

So the road trip has finally come around and our first stop was...Hollywood! Sigh. Luckily it was just a couple of quick stops at the Observatory (panoramic views of LA, meh) and the Walk of Fame (again). Got to San Diego a few hours later, such a pretty place - sea, beach, quaint 'real' American houses decked out in patriotic flags and lush green front yards. Only got to see it from the van (which may hereby be referred to as Gloria) as we headed for the - gulp - campsite. Was quite surprised at the speed we put the tent up - sure, probably spent more time staring blankly at an assortment of sheets and poles than actually working, definitely clipped a few bits into the wrong places and had to ask more than my fair share of questions to get past each stage, but we got there :) 

The plan for the rest of the afternoon was initially to stay at the campsite but persuaded the tour leader to take us downtown to explore. Would have felt weird otherwise, I like dumping my bags and acquainting myself with new places pretty much straightaway. Mooched around the historic quarter which has a very Western, cowboy-esque feel to it. It's Hispanic as well which is cool - people of Hispanic origin actually outnumber Americans around here. Went for one drink which turned out to be a slippery slope...the original intention of hitting the supermarket was to stock up on soft drinks but we came out loaded with ping pong balls, red cups, an enormous bottle of wine and a packet of Cheetos. Whoops? Fajita dinner (we're taking it in turns to cook, oh god. Quite impressed the camping stove managed to produce fajitas for 14 people, although when my go swings around people will be sampling a mean pasta a la cheese) followed by a blazing campfire and playing I have never...excellent way to get to know people you've known little over 12 hours!

The people in the group are awesome and are going to be lots of fun, SO excited for Vegas now. Not 100% sure about the Trek America style though...for example we're staying in a campsite in San Diego which is quite far away from the centre/beach area. Not too sure why we're not staying in a cheap hostel, even more so considering we're staying over a Friday and Saturday night...I'm so used to just being able to leave the accommodation and stroll into the action either on my own or with people from a group but here we have to be shuttled around together to get anywhere...bit restrictive especially for someone who values their independence/freedom. The other thing is that it takes like 3 hours to prep, cook, eat and clear up after dinner, which totally wastes time when we could be out exploring what new places have to offer. I guess it'll be different in the National Parks because once the sun goes down there won't be much else to do but in cities it really sucks - plus it's hard to skip group dinners since there's a rota...again restrictive grr!

Anyway it's only night 1 so we'll see how things progress!