We awoke at 6am and were having breakfast at 7am and woke up terry and Sue at 9am. Our body clocks are all out if whack.

We walked 40 minutes in the heat to pick up our campervan and were dripping in sweat by the time we got there.

Our campervan is cool. It’s a Ford maverick and has an upstairs and a downstairs for sleeping in.  To get upstairs though, we actually have to climb up some stairs. t’s also painted with a cool design.

Getting out of LA was not much fun. We all forgot to eat and fill up with fuel before setting off, but were a bit reluctant to get off the motorway as LA has some pretty dodgy areas. We saw a shopping centre at the side of the motorway so we stopped.  We all stood out pretty badly with our pale faces and big painted campervan.

We went to the supermarket to stock up on supplies. The food prices here are really expensive and that’s before the tax has been added. We grabbed some essentials such as water and beer.

Sue spotted a Sketchers outlet store and disappeared in there while Mike and I tried to hunt down a sat nav system as Barry lost ours in Europe. It’s not much fun trying to find our way around LA without one. Unfortunately nowhere in this crazy place sold sat navs. We asked the guy in the Sketchers store where we might find one. He seemed quite amused that 4 kiwis were lost.  He said “How did 4 people from new Zealand end up in Mexico Plaza”. To which we replied “we don’t have a gps so we don’t know where we’re going”.  He gave us instructions to radio shack where he was 1000 percent sure they would sell them. “It’s only half a mile up the road”. We asked if we could walk there. “Oh no, you don’t walk in this neighbourhood, you must drive”.
Ok, time to leave we think.

Sue needed to go to the loo first so I accompanied her to a Taco bell. While I was waiting a very smelly homeless woman walked in followed by a scary looking gangster type. I couldn’t wait to get the hell out of there.

We left without our sat nav and found ourselves on the motorway going in the wrong direction. We got off at the next exit and found ourselves in a scary neighbourhood.  There was a couple of unsavoury looking guys under a bridge and the houses looked like slums with Windows all barred up. We saw a girl getting into her car and asked directions. Thankfully she spoke English and gave us directions for the motorway (in the correct direction this time). Phew. We were glad to be out of that seedy neighbourhood.

We crawled along the motorway for a while when we saw another shopping centre, but it was more of a mall and looked better. We stopped an voila – they had a selection of car gps’s. So we bought one. We decided to eat dinner at the food court while we were there.

Finally, we dragged sue out of the shops and were on our way again. We stopped about 8pm at a camping ground beside the motorway. We had showers then sat around chatting and drinking beer.