Santa Catalina

Gabe and I rented a car to drive out to Santa Catalina. Its about a 5 to 6 hour drive from the city, nice way to see the country. About half way there I was pulled over for 'speeding,' the speed limit changes without notice. So while I was not speeding according to the last sign I saw, la policia begged to differ. I could either get a $100 ticket or we could "just work it out with him." So we gave him 40 bucks and headed back on our way. The last 2 hours of the drive is through mostly uninhabited farmland, lots of cows and a few houses few and far between.

We made it to our destination, a very lazy beach town, barely even worthy of being called a town. There were a few hotels/hostels spaced out sown a dirt road and a market. The one we had decided to go to was only reachable by driving on the beach, and we couldn't get to it with our car when we arrived due to the high tide. So we had to park on the beach, and walk across a stream with our stuff. We set up our tents (we decided to camp, a much cheaper idea since we had to pay our 'speeding ticket'), and spent some time in the water surfing before the sun set.

There aren't many options in Santa Catalina to eat since its so small, so we stayed at our site and ate pasta that the owner cooked for us and drank some beer, then went to sleep. We woke up early the next morning, hung out for a few hours on the beach and decided since the surf sucked, we'd drive back to the city a day early. All went well on the drive home until we got to the Bridge of the Americas, the bridge that crosses the Canal into (or out of) the city. We were stuck on the bridge for an hour, they had only one lane out of 4 open, and had to alternate which direction got to use the lane every 20 minutes. Although in retrospect, it was kind of cool to be up above the canal with view of the boats in the harbor.