Once again I was hoping to get up and leave early and this time the plan worked. Being on the east side of the mountains meant that the fog had been kept at bay and I woke up to bright sunshine and warm air. I made breakfast quickly and discovered that the bread I'd been eating for the last three days was 'intentionally underbaked'. It's supposed to be cooked for 12 minutes in an oven before serving. No wonder it tasted a bit yeasty...

I was running pretty low on gas and hoped that I had enough for the short drive over the mountains to Santa Barbara. As soon as I crossed onto the seaward side of the slopes I was reunited with the fog . It was the last time I saw the sun that day. I managed to get into town with plenty of fuel to spare. I'm still getting used to how the fuel gauge works in this car so it pays to be careful.

I had a list of things that I needed to buy for my camping kit so my first stop was a shopping centre. I had two days worth of blog posts that needed to be uploaded so I visited a Starbucks and made good use of their WiFi. I also needed to figure out where I would be staying later that night. I decided to aim for a campground in Malibu, just north of Los Angeles and about an hour's drive away.

I had heard that Santa Barbara had a nice downtown so I decided to check it out before leaving. It was definitely worth the trip. The entire main street has a very distinctive Spanish architecture which gives the town a very cohesive and distinctive look without being tacky. The main street was lined with shops and restaurants and I could have spent much longer there than I did.

The drive to Malibu was fairly uneventful. Upon arriving however I found that my camp site didn't seem to exist so I have to work out a new plan. I was now close to Los Angeles so I started looking for cheap accommodation there. I first looked at hostels but from the limited selection available none seemed to have car parking available. I was sat in a carpark on the side of the Pacific Coast Highway while doing this and it was getting late so I was getting slightly impatient to find somewhere. This probably explains why I ended up booking a room at a fairly nice hotel in Redondo Beach in Los Angeles through a site call Hotwire (more on that later).

This hotel was another hour further south through heavy traffic on LA's famous freeways. These got up to around 7 or 8 lanes in one direction at times and it was definitely an experience to drive on them. I can't imagine they're working out very well for LA though if there's heavy traffic at 6.30pm on a Saturday.

LA Traffic

The hotel was pretty decent but I was surprised at how penny pinching it was. WiFi was $12 and breakfast $18. My hostel in San Francisco had provided both for free and I had been paying about a quarter of the price that I paid here. It was nice to have my first proper shower in three days but really it was not worth it at all.

As for the website I mentioned above, Hotwire supposedly offers rooms that hotels are having trouble selling at below market rates. The catch is that the name of the hotel is not provided until the room is booked, only the location and a general description of the room and establishment. This sounds good in theory but in practice the thing verges on being a scam. You enter the area that you're looking for a room in and you'll be presented with a bunch of options with prices listed. Almost every single time if you select an option the price will jump up by about 20 or 30 percent. Offers will also disappear in the final stages of payment which is incredibly annoying. In future I'll just stick to Airbnb.