Do you know the way to San Jose?

Friday 13th April 2012

I had a good nights sleep last night. Claire was up at the crack of dawn again, trying to coax me out of bed by rustling biscuits. It didn't work.

We realised this morning that Friday the 13th would not have been our preferred date to start driving a strange car on the wrong side of the road in an unfamiliar city. But that's how the dates worked out so off we went to get our car.
We had both been a bit worried that something was going to go wrong with the car rental, but hadn't been talking about it for fear of jinxing ourselves. I'd spent hours trawling hire car websites a couple of months ago trying to get a good deal. We really wanted a Ford Mustang convertible but ended up booking a Mitsubishi Spyder Eclipse as it was the only convertible we could afford. It looked like a nice car but a bit small, and not very American sounding.
When we arrived at Hertz, there was a minor panic when the staff couldn't find any convertible keys at all. Then they remembered about their special box of keys, and we were handed the keys to a brand new Mustang that had only been delivered that morning, with just 20 miles on the clock!

So without further ado (and before we could get too scared), we set off to try and get out of San Francisco and start our road trip. I've driven abroad before, on the wrong side of the road, so I drove first. It was actually OK. No crashes, near misses, getting lost, or angry horn blasts from other drivers. American drivers seem pretty chilled out and courteous, unlike a lot of British or Australian drivers. We spent the first hour or so on the rainy freeway (motorway), via San Jose, and passing near to Cupertino (the home of Apple!), and then the rest of the day on the Pacific Coast Highway, where it was sunny and we had the roof down.
The roads were pretty good, despite the evidence of lots of recent rock falls, and lots of hills and bends. Claire settled down after a while and stopped gasping at every corner.

A week before we left the UK for America, we had a little disagreement over Sat Navs. Claire wanted one and I didn't. I won the argument, with a clause that we would get one if navigating the old fashioned way was too difficult. I think Claire's managed to prove to herself that we really don't need one - as chief map reader today she hasn't got us lost once!

We've seen quite a lot of wildlife that we haven't identified (yet). There are loads of buzzard like birds soaring around the coast, which I cant find on the Bird App on iPad. Claire seems to think they are Turkey Vultures but I'm not convinced. We saw some weird squirrel things later which I think may be called Ground Squirrels, and carry Black Plague, if Wikipedia is to be believed. Hopefully that isn't the case, but I'll let you know in due course.

Towards the end of the day, Claire finally got behind the wheel, on a nice long straight wide bit of road. Moments later, I spotted some seals lounging around on a beach. We found somewhere to stop, and discovered we'd come across an elephant seal colony. There were loads of them all along the beaches. They really are some of the most unappealing creatures I've ever come across. They are ugly and fat and seem to spend their entire day burping and farting. We took a few photos and then went off in search of some accommodation.

We're staying near a place called San Simeon which is midway between San Francisco and Los Angeles. We've found a proper American motel, which seems OK, and have been experimenting with the coffee percolator and managed to make some tea in it that wasn't too bad.

Tomorrow we'll be continuing down the coast towards LA, and hopefully stopping off for the night somewhere near to Joshua Tree national park.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Pacific Coast Highway, CA