The City Of Angels

It was time to check out of the Navaho Lodge, a place that had been a good, but seemingly expensive, home to us. It had all the amenities we needed including kick-ass wi-fi which is always a bonus. We would be bussing it back to Downtown and then hopping on the trolley (tram) to get back to the Greyhound terminal to wait for our 12:00 bus to our last destination, Los Angeles. The busses to LA were frequent, pretty much every half hour, so we were hopeful that our last Greyhound trip would be uneventful and get us there in good time. We had been getting to the bus station with about 2 hours to play with to ensure that we were at the front, or very near the front, of the queue for whichever bus it was we were trying to catch. So we arrived at the open-air bus station (yes, open air – although there was a roof over our heads, but I wouldn’t want to have been there in the middle of winter) and got our luggage tagged before getting our bags searched by the burly security guard. A bus had just pulled up and he said that we could jump on that one if we were quick. But it was him holding us up searching our bags and checking our tickets! We managed to race onto the bus before it left and grabbed two seats near the back and settled in for our last coach journey in America. As with 95% of our coach journeys in the US the bus was freezing, and mainly due to one of the air vents above my seat being simply a massive hole as opposed to the closable vent that is the norm. But I had a plan. The Globe stress ball that I had acquired from Anna at work slotted snugly into the hole and made things at least a little bit bearable. But soon enough it was freezing again, with James having to tuck both arms inside his t-shirt, and me losing feeling in my toes.

As we had managed to get on a much earlier bus we would be arriving at our hostel much sooner than expected. Or would we....? After about half an hour of driving the bus pulled into a side road where a car with Border Patrol was parked up. Hang on though, we were heading AWAY from the border with Mexico. Just what the heck was going on? A green-uniformed troop boarded the coach and headed straight for the toilet at the back. Finding nobody inside he proceeded to check everyone’s papers and ID from the back to the front. As we handed our passports to him and advised him that we were flying out to New Zealand on Tuesday from LAX he continued his checking of every individual on the coach, presumably searching for illegal aliens. Someone questioned why we were being checked as we were heading north towards LA and he replied that the journey began in Mexico, so there could be “illegals” on board. After getting a clean bill of health we continued on our journey, thankfully with no more delays.

Once we arrived in LA I soon realised that I had left the globe stress-reliever in the hole in the AC, so maybe it will continue its travels for the foreseeable future in some kind of ironic twist of fate. So look out for it if you are ever on a Greyhound bus near the Mexico border, on the right hand side, about 15 seats back. Our hostel, Stay On Main, was not too far away, but the room was not ready when we arrived. We had managed to get a fantastic deal on this place, although we thought we had missed our chance when the room became unavailable when trying to book and then the website went down. £92 for 3 nights in Downtown LA with wi-fi, separate beds and breakfast included. James and I passed the time with a few games of Blackjack (not the 21-style Blackjack like in casinos, but our version where you have to pick up 12 cards if the other player plays a jack of spades of clubs, etc) and for the first time in our trip he beat me 5 games to 3. I tried to best him at Rummy (which is his forte) but it wasn’t to be. Although I did win the quickest game of Beggar-My-Neighbour in card history, so it wasn’t a white-wash. And then our room was ready for us. Two single beds, a sink, TV, some kind of flowers-on-the-wall light and a neat hand-seat in the corner. After we had unpacked and settled in we took a wander round the local streets and found a fantastic supermarket called Ralph’s. We stocked up on food and headed back to the hostel to tuck in and plan our next couple of days in the City of Angels.

The hostel