Phoenix, Arizona to LAX, California (Day 10 - 7/1/14)

"Hey Luke, eat some of these worms"

After numerous days of American travels, the day of our departure is now upon us. The little anxious butterflies have been kept at bay by the wonders of Arizona but now they erupt in my stomach like big squirming caterpillars - a lifecycle in reverse, a queasy feeling that reflects the strangeness and uncertainty with which I face two weeks in a non-Western country for the first time in my life.

Once or twice, Duck and I have sheepishly spoken of our regret at not staying in America longer, masking our nervousness about Mexico. Over the last eight days we've mentioned our destination to several Americans, yielding a variety of replies ranging from mortified to wildly enthusiastic. It's somewhat comforting that the enthusiastic endorsements come from those who have actually been, whereas all the negative ones come from those who haven't, but still - our worries lay within us, largely unspoken but plain on our faces. 

In hindsight, I now view the naysayers as xenophobes... people with an acute fear of the unknown that has been fed by the media's portrayal of Mexico as a wild and lawless place. I have no doubt that Mexico contains some of the worst crime-stricken areas in the world, but most of the areas that we travelled to are as geographically and philosophically distant from the cartels as parts of Australia are from Indonesia. 

Also in hindsight, I should never have googled the locations we were to visit and then crosschecked them against news stories. Bad idea.

Ho hum!

See ya Phoenix!

The Duck has it in her head that we'll fit in a trip to Phoenix Zoo or the city's botanical gardens before we leave but I have far more realistic (and boring) ideas of what the morning will bring us.

Last night, Duck freaked out when she saw that the date was 7/1/14 - the same day we were to fly out. She thought we had missed our flight. I calmed her down by pointing out that it was past midnight and that we had simply just started the next day.

The morning brings us a rare sleep-in, some overdue showering, and some good old loungin' around. 

Driving the rental car back to the airport is a hair-raising experience all on its own, but the Duck acquits herself with aplomb. As we get into our hire car one last time, track 14 of Josh Pyke plays softly and mournfully. It's the only CD we've listened to on our travels, over and over, and yet I will miss it in the days to come.

Most of today consists of sitting around at Phoenix airport, which is much smaller than I expected. We stress a bit when our domestic flight gets delayed - meaning we have less time to connect to our international flight at LAX. We make it just in time, but only after some wrangling with various flight attendants to confirm that our bag has been transferred from plane to plane.

View from the plane out of Phoenix

As we finally settle down on the plane bound for Mexico City, I listen as the language around us transforms into Spanish. I try to pick words out but most people speak too fast and too soft. The plane climbs into the night air and Duck watches, enraptured, through the window as Los Angeles opens up underneath us like a vast blanket of Christmas lights.

She turns to me, her eyes as big as saucers, "It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen".

Wendy's; one of America's many fast food chains

Foods we ate in Ahhhhh!merica:

Breakfast

• Biscuits in sausage gravy
• Waffles (strawberry, blueberry, original)
• Bagels
• Bananas
• Whole egges
• Breakfast burrito
• Bacon (crunchier, thinner, oilier)
• Choc-chip and blueberry muffins

Lunch and Dinner

• Carls Jr.
• Denny's
• Hogan Restaurant
• Wendy's
• Jack-in-the-Box
• Blue Coffee Pot
• San Diego Pizza
• Mexican food at the Zoo
• Logan's Roadhouse
• Subway
• Cameron Trading Post 
• Old Town Mexican restaurant in Sand Diego

For Real

Snacks

• Bugels
• Lays
• Jalapeno white chocolate
• Mexican stone/chili chocolate
• Cheese spice larvets
• Reese's Pieces
• Code Red
• Root Beer
• Ginger-Cola
• Frybread (lots of it)
• Cheese-chili pistachio nuts
• Peanut-filled cheddar crisps
• Cherry lollipop

Sydney to California (Day 1 - 29/12/13)

(In late 2013-early 2014, my wife and I travelled to America and Mexico. It was a very memorable and educational trip that will always hold a special place in our hearts. I kept a journal at the time so I thought I would finally share our travels. Many of the photographs below were taken my wife, herein referred to as Duck)

  

Off to the other side of the world...

29/12/13 - Sydney Airport, Australia

My head feels like someone sat on it for an extended period of time and some inky sea monster keeps sending its tendrils upwards from within my stomach. My nerves vibrate, my ulcers ulcerate. This is me, at the airport - anxious like a kid on vaccination day.

I've never been overseas before but I have learned that telling people that I'm on my honeymoon is a sure-fire way to grease the wheels of life. Our seats get upgraded to economy plus and the bored border security guy perks up considerably to give us tips on travelling and eating in Mexico. "Try everything!" he says, "You got to eat the street food".

My headache collides endlessly with a nervous energy that races back and forth between acute worrying and a strange cheerfulness. I can't stop beaming at the Duck, who is now my wife.

Pretending not to be nervous about flying overseas for the first time. Failing at projecting this.

29/12/13 - LAX, Los Angeles, California to San Diego, California

In between fitful sleeps of nothing and a lot of readjusting, I suddenly travel back through time a whole day and find myself once again living through the 29th of December, albeit in a whole new country.

I look down at an impossibly endless sprawl of cityscape covering the Californian coastline as our plan hums overhead. Nothing has prepared me for the sheer size of Los Angeles; an urbanised environment that makes Sydney look positively Lilliputian. 

The Duck has prepared me for a xenophobic American customs blitz that could possibly end in cavity exploration, but after an hour of waiting patiently in line (and discussing Koalas with the grumpy customs officer) we suddenly find ourselves released from LAX. No bag scans, no body scans, our shoes stay on, and no one so much as raises an eyebrow at us. So much for American border zealots! (I bet those words will come back to bite me...)

My initial impression of Los Angeles is a bit subdued. Stepping out of the airport, it just feels like any airport in Australia. But after nearly an hour of walking around the open streets of L.A. with a whole bunch of baggage, I soon begin to appreciate a few key differences. The roads are massive; having anywhere up to 10 lanes, and the skyline is fairly flat; a few squat sky-rises and rows of sturdy palm streets the only things that interrupt the horizon. An enthusiastic homeless man sings really loudly next to us for a while before cheerfully asking us to buy him some breakfast. 

Los Angeles, U.S.A.

We eventually find a car rental joint that isn't completely booked up and head on out of L.A. for our first destination; San Diego. 

So many signs with mile measurements not in whole numbers. Things like 'Oceanside, 3 and 3 quarter miles'. I know it's their country, but I reckon if you have to use fractions in your road signs that this is a good indication that you should probably reassess the usefulness of the imperial system of measurement. I decide not to suggest this to anyone while I'm here.

The Duck decides to pull over in the ocean-side town of Oceanside so that she can check out the local information centre that sits by the ocean (call it professional curiosity as she works in this industry back in Australia). The staff are great. In fact, Americans in general are great to talk to - friendly, enthusiastic, polite, jocular, and engagingly curious. 

First meal in America - the diner-chain known as Denny's. Food was okay but the 'Strawberry Mango' lemonade I drank had enough sugar in it to cause hereditary diabetes for the next seven generations of my family.

I have noticed that as we get further south and closer to the Mexican border that some of the architecture reflects an increased Latin influence. The houses in sleepy beach-side townships all have white walls and terracotta-tiled roofs. It's nice.

After a few more hours of driving, we get to San Diego. What can I say about this city? It's a bit of a culture shock to suddenly find myself in a whole new city that I've never really expected to visit. We've come here specifically to see the famous San Diego Zoo, but are also thinking of staying a little while longer to explore. 

Shock of the day - a woman opens her car door into our car while we sit in it. She just laughs and bangs it into our car a few times while she squeezes into her driver seat. The Duck tells me not to bother having a go at the woman but I can't believe the gall of it. If I knocked my door into someone else's car I would be mortified, but the fact that she did it repeatedly while laughing to her friend... it boggles my brain. Luckily there's hardly any damage.

Hubcap damage. Just a scratch!

We're pretty exhausted by the time we get to a hotel but I don't want to waste any opportunity. A quick bit of internet research puts me in touch with the Gaslamp Quarter - San Diego's hipster/party zone. Unfortunately, we decide to drive there. I say we, but the Duck does all the driving because she has experience driving in the U.S. from a previous trip. Our GPS chucks a massive wobbly and sends us onto a million busy turnpikes and freeways, including one closed ramp. Duck decides to pull over so we can take stock but the tire clips a gutter and we get a bit of a fright when we inspect it and see the hubcap bent out of shape. Nicole is quite upset, but we soldier on and eventually find the Gaslamp Quarter.

The Gaslamp Quarter. The lights are hard to capture in photographs.

Closer-up.

The Gaslamp Quarter is amazing. A tight grid of streets alternatively named after numbers and letters, the historic buildings are Victorian in origin and there's a mixture of real and faux-gaslight lamps lining the streets. It turns the city into a faerie-steampunk wonderland of sparkling roadscapes and busy bars. The late hour pushes us towards a cheap but brightly-decorated Mexican bar called Funky Garcia's, a lucky punt that fills our bellies with oil-soaked Baja Mexican food. The toilets are greenwashed with strange espanol graff-art and the cheap eats are delicious. 

Freaky Mexican toilet art.

PS. What's with American plumbing? The toilets are filled almost to the brim. I'm almost afraid to sit on them in case I end up waist-deep in toilet water!