california dreaming

Once again, we have fallen woefully behind in our updates.  Being a sucker for posterity, I feel compelled to put something in the record about our trip to California from Hong Kong last month.  But, for the sake of picking up the pace, I will let the pictures do most of the talking on this one.  Here’s a quick recap.

After five fascinating months in Asia and 70,000+ kilometers traveled… over land, air and sea… via train, car, bus, motorcycle, motorcycle sidecar, scooter, bike, plane, boat, canoe, camel and elephant… Aman and I boarded a late night flight to Los Angeles in early May.  With the reality of being stateside imminently before us, various feelings were astir.  Not least of all, apprehension.  As you might imagine, despite all those kilometers traveled, neither of us was looking forward to a 13 plus hour flight.  You can furthermore imagine our faces when we were told that it was a full flight, and that we would be seated in two center seats.  No window, no aisle, not for either of us…  We looked at each other in horror.  How could we have let this happen???  We couldn’t believe it.  Amazingly, however, the flight was really comfortable and we slept for most of our trip across the Pacific Ocean.  Go figure, we couldn’t believe that one either.

Just as it had taken off 13 hours earlier, our flight landed late on a Tuesday night.  As we waited patiently in line to clear through immigration, a montage of patriotic images flickered on TV screens mounted above the immigration officers’ desk counters.  It felt really good to be coming back to the U.S. for a short while, a nice transition between our recent adventures in Asia and our upcoming summer in Europe. 

We were stopping in California for two weeks, primarily to obtain some additional travel visas.  Aman needed his Schengen tourist visa in order to visit Europe over the summer, and I had to get a tourist visa to visit Brazil, where we plan to be later this year.  In our downtime, we hoped to discover what the Golden State had to offer.

So, after a few initial days in Santa Monica (a neighborhood favorite of mine) preparing our visa applications, running from embassy to embassy, and dealing with the culture shock of being in the U.S. for the first time in five months, we hit the road for a weekend drive up the coast through the sparsely populated region of Big Sur.  This is something that I had wanted to do for years, and I knew it would be an idyllic experience, but WOW.  It was probably the highlight of our time in California.  An absolutely spectacular ride along the rugged coast of the Pacific Ocean, and all we kept saying to each other was WOW.

We got to Monterey (where we were staying for the weekend) in the early evening and then it hit us: jetlag.  Doh!!  It hit us hard too.  As a result, we took it easy the next couple of days, which included a scenic ride along 17-Mile Drive through Pacific Grove and Pebble Beach on the Monterey peninsula.  A “must do” for anyone visiting the Monterey area, which (incidentally) we would have missed had one of Aman’s friends not told us about it when he heard that we were there. (Thanks Ben!)

The drive back to southern California was as breathtaking and relaxing as the ride north.  Just before we hit San Simeon, we stopped for awhile to check out thousands of elephant seals in their rookery, or natural land based habitat.  It was pretty good timing, since they only stop in this area twice a year (they are at sea for 10 months or more a year).  We caught them (the juveniles and females) during the annual molting season (when they shed, and then grow new hair and skin), so they were all different shades of gray, silver and beige.

Back in Santa Monica, we were in striking distance of some great beaches, which we sampled aplenty.  We loved the chill vibe and how much activity – surfing, volleyball, skateboarding – was going on, everywhere we went.

Santa Monica Beach:

Malibu:

Laguna Beach:

Venice Beach:

Hermosa Beach:

After we had exhausted the local beaches, we made a long haul one day and visited Joshua Tree National Park, which sits in the Mojave Desert, three hours east of the Los Angeles area.  Not sure what we were expecting to find out there, but it was so interesting and definitely worth the trip.  A friend of ours likened the experience to walking through a place created by Dr. Seuss and, after seeing it, we would agree with you Les.  Crazy-looking vegetation and huge piles of massive red boulders scattered about in an otherwise barren land.  It was wildly surreal.

We spent our last days attending to all of the little things that would become infinitely more difficult to accomplish once we were back on the road (e.g., dry cleaning, laundry, getting haircuts).  We packed and shipped a 30-pound box of excess stuff that we had acquired back to a friend in New York.  We had brunch and spent the day with a good friend who happened to be in California on business.  Most importantly, we picked up our passports containing the travel visas that we needed to continue on this journey.

And, like that, two more weeks flew by.