Santa Monica

Before our final day in L.A, we had a bit of life admin to see too. Having bought so many Bolivian style rugs and souvenirs, we had taken up a lot of room in our bags! We decided before we jetted off to Fiji that evening, we would spend the morning sending our bits back to England. This task took up a lot of the day, and due to old maps, we walked a long way to find the old post office had now gone. We trudged our way around L.A trying to find a place to send all of our stuff. It was a hot day, and all of our stuff was heavy, so Steph was quickly becoming quite grumpy, as all she wanted to do was go roller blading down the sea front, which had planned to do afterwards.

After a couple of  hours wandering around the streets, we finally found a post office after asking a few locals for directions. After about another hour of wrapping and weighing, our stuff was in the que to be send to England.

After such a morning, we sat down for a Starbucks to cool down (both in temperature and in terms of mood for Steph). As promised, we headed down to Venice beach to roller blade, passing a few of the stalls we had walked past over the last few days. These all had really nice summery beach wear, and Steph had her eye on a pair of shorts that she wanted to buy for Fiji. Tom agreed that we could splurge this once, and buy them on the way back.

We got to the roller blading rental place, and quickly popped them on to start racing down the beach front. We quickly forgot about the unexciting morning we had had, and were now trying to stay upright and avoid leaving some of our faces in L.A. We were headed for Santa Monica, which housed the pier and promises of a cooler, more chilled side to Venice Beach.

After about 20 minutes of speeding along, the famous ferris wheel was in sight.

We saw some people doing acrobatics on the side walk gym equipment, and took of our blades to have a further look around. We walked onto the pier, and had to resist the urge to go on any of the rides, as we wanted to save our money. We were starting to get hungry though, so we allowed ourself to finally try an all American corn dog.

The sausages were deep fried and put on sticks, and tasted very strange but good. There was something wrong about having a sausage battered, but they were tasty so we didn't complain! The concept was almost as weird as the man/woman who served it to us.

We bladed back to Venice Beach, much faster as the wind was now pushing behind us. We handed back our blades, and went to the market to pick up the shorts Steph wanted.

We found the section where shop was, but in between two stalls, there was a large gap where the shop with the shorts had been. Steph couldn't believe it! It was a afternoon in the mid week, and the stall owner had packed up early and gone home. Having had her heart set on the shorts for the whole 3 days we been there, she instantly went back into the gigantic sulk she had been in that morning.

In an attempt to cheer her up, we went down to muscle beach to buy a present for our friend Mark who would be joining us in New Zealand in a week. We saw a slinky vest that read 'Sex, Weights and Protein Shakes' and knew this would be the perfect vest for our skinny pal. We paid way to much for the vest, but knew the laughs would be worth it, and it actually rose a small smile out of Steph's grumpy face.

We went to a pretty pub right on the beach for some dinner before having to get into the taxi back to LAX airport. Steph had some fresh tasty salmon, and Tom had a salad, as we both realised we would be spending the next week in our swimwear.

 In the taxi there we met a young Australian guy who had been to Coachella and seemed a little buzzing still from the experience. He asked excitedly if we had seen cocaine being made in Bolivia, to which we obviously replied with no, and he seemed a little bored with us after that! 

We got checked in and ready to board our overnight flight to the paradise islands of Fiji.