We aren’t dead!

So it turns out that camper vans and blog posts are in fact mutually exclusive!

We have arrived in Melbourne into our lovely Airbnb and I have logged on to see that the last post I did was at the end of September. So much has happened in the last 3 months that I am not sure where to start. We’ve finished the Californian coast between San Francisco and LA, spent a month in a camper van exploring both islands of New Zealand and just finished with a cheeky 6 week stint in another camper travelling south from Cairns to Sydney where the biggest challenge turned out to be enduring my mother! And there was me thinking it would be the plethora of dangerous animals that seem to lurk around every Australian corner.

Anyway back to California which I am now struggling to remember. Having trundled through various beautiful towns including Carmel (I think I could live there if I had a spare $10m), Cambria, Cayucos (home to the most delicious tacos from the local petrol station) and Montecito (best brunch ever), we hit LA.

Sebby appreciating iconic, once in a life time Big Sur

Despite living in London, I found the idea of LA a bit scary so we opted to stay only one night and I thought we may as well go to Venice Beach principally because I’d heard of it. FYI it would seem that isn’t always the best reason to pick an area.

We rocked up to our apartment which was basically in a council estate with a locked gate, a shuddering lift and rather dubious characters loitering around. Andy had regained his Yosemite look of horror that had funnily enough been missing when we were staying in the hills above Carmel. Anyway I understood why because I was feeling rather horrified myself. But as the old adage goes…never judge a book by its cover because once inside, it was actually really lovely. A massive bed (theoretically for me and Andy), another double bed in a pull out drawer for Sebby and a big sofa bed for Willow plus a linen cupboard/darkened Josef Fritzl style room with no windows for Emmeline as well as a kitchen, sitting room and bathroom. All of it overlooking sunset on Venice Beach. The owner of the building came to see us because they were about to do some work on the apartment and told us the story of the building which he had bought about 35 years before for $1m when it was a drug infested ghetto. It was recently valued at $40m. Fair play. It didn’t take much to work out what had attracted the stunningly beautiful, Thai mail order bride to her geriatric 5.4ft face for radio husband.

We decided to go to find a playground and have a wander on Venice Beach. It quickly became apparent that the local playground wasn’t frequented by any children fulfilling more of a drug den function. Playground mission aborted much to the anger of the kids so we placated them with promise of a dip in the water and a play on the beach. This was a short lived activity too as I narrowly managed to avoid stepping on a hypodermic needle buried in the sand so back to the apartment we scuttled vowing never to come to LA again. Venice Beach is a pretty seedy neck of the woods. So many homeless people sleeping in tents and on benches by the beach as night falls as well as all the obvious drug activity but I guess that is the reality of life for lots of people and perhaps sadly what constitutes the Hollywood dream for some.

We didn’t fly out until the evening of the following day so we checked out of the place and headed for the antithesis in terms of affluence and cleanliness-Bel Air! We headed for the hills to channel our inner Fresh Prince and wow! What a difference. The views were stunning and the properties were mega. No celebrity spots but some serious curb crawling and sticky beaking of LA real estate. And that concluded our time in America.

My observations of America are as follows:

Super friendly people

Beautiful coastline

Delicious brunches and Mexican food

Weird placement of highways right through the centre of otherwise beautiful towns

No idea why anyone would live in LA

American camper vans lull you into a false sense of security about the size of camper vans in other countries!