Freaky Americans

Americans crack me up. I'd just assumed that the ones on TV were magnified versions of real life people. Wrong! Most people actually are larger than life - and not just physically.

Walk down the street and you are bound to hear some kind of emotive outburst on nearly every block - even if its just someone talking loudly on their mobile. And people speak like characters in action movies in everyday speech. Everything is superlative, or at the very least, awesome or right on.

But, to their credit, this outlandish emotional charge also includes being very friendly and welcoming, which is nice when you're new in town. As we headed south into San Diego, this became more noticeable. Also there were no shortage of people approaching us in the street or on the buses to have a chat.

Californians are a diverse bunch, both racially and socio-economically. Turns out the amount of homeless types shuffling around Venice Beach was pretty in line with other areas. Even in San Diego, an ostensibly wealthier area with massive seaside villas right out of the OC television show has its fair share of drifters.

There are two kinds of homeless people in the US - those begging for weed or alcohol, and those not. The overwhelming majority of hobos on Venice Beach made this clear in their cardboard signs - they wanted money for beer, or weed, or both. In contrast the signs of those begging in San Diego claimed to be clean and sober, and promised not to drink or smoke money away.

Some on Venice Beach were into self-promotion, such as the "world's greatest wino" who promised to entertain with songs and jokes for a few pennies.

San Diego has a great downtown area called the Gaslamp quarter - so named because of the gaslights on its street corners. It is the town's old quarter - 18th century buildings are immaculately preserved and freshly painted, and bars, restaurants and cafes line the streets. In contrast, LA's seedy downtown precinct looks as gritty and washed-out as I imagine most inner city areas looked before urban renewal projects took hold in the 1980s and 1990s.

LA downtown has no nice shops or restaurants and its few remaining historic buildings are crumbling. Instead there is a vast collection of pawn shops, jewellery shops and payday lenders, and its central avenues are ringed by dilapidated warehouses with chain link fences.

The only excursion we did in San Diego was to La Jolla (pronounced La hoya), a beach just north of San Diego which is home to a big seal colony. The seals arrived in the 1970s, marooning themselves on rocks around a sheltered cove. It was once a children's pool but the seals' presence means most kids now steer clear of the beach.

We had brought our swimming costumes in the hope of being able to swim in the ocean, until we discovered that at this time of year it is a very chilly 13 degrees! Although we did see some nutters swimming (albeit in wetsuits) from the beach around to the cove - which looked like a little over 1km - they swam right in among the seals, and apparently right over an undersea canyon where sharks are known to convene to hunt for seals!