Almost Mexico

A full day of driving takes us from the edge of the snow covered Sequoia National Forest through the outskirts of hazy LA and, at some points, 8 lanes of freeway in both directions leading south towards sunny San Diego.
San Diego is renowned for sun and unsurprisingly is one of America's closest cities to the Mexican border. It's around 10 miles to Mexico from here. This is also as far south as we're going on the west coast. We'd heard crossing the border into Mexico was easy but getting back into America takes forever.


So here we are. It transpires that we've driven the length of the American West coast in full. To try and put it in perspective the coast of California alone is the distance from London to Milan. There's certainly a Mediterranean climate here which is a nice break from the snow of the last few days. It's back to t-shirt weather again.
Our motel is on the edge of town which seems a bit ramshackle and run down. When driving into downtown San Diego you pass through blocks of homeless and crazies. We see a group of homeless engaged in rapping contest on the street, it's comical at best. Once through the tramp-belt downtown seems decent enough. The main area of congregation is around the Gaslamp District that is lined with bars and restaurants and the odd gas lamp. It's President's Day the day after so the streets and establishments are full and moderately lively. Decent looking Euro-style buildings and upmarket bars mixed in with old style American theatres and shops. Not bad.
Signs have been erected in the area reading, 'Giving to pan handlers promotes drug and alcohol abuse'. So instead of hanging around here they're just a few blocks on the outer edges of town. The governors probably think, 'Problem solved. Now we can continue on spending millions of dollars improving the facilities for the rich people.' Utterly useless. It's a out of sight out of mind syndrome as there clearly is a lot of money in San Diego. From what we see on local tv the money keeps getting spent to improve the waterfront area and upscale living in the city itself. All this while on the edge of town we drive under bridges full of sleeping homeless and trolley pushers sifting through bins. I suddenly realise how similar America is to China, but the people here are less healthy.
We have a look around Balboa Park, like parks in other American cities you can't just walk to, you have to drive or take a bus for a while to get there. But when you do it's a good looking place and typically huge.


It houses various things like a science museum and arts museum but also has a Spanish Colonial area that is a welcome relief from some of the blandness of the outlying neighbourhoods. It's like we're back in Latin America again as we pass through vine covered courtyards and under white-arched corridors past old churches.

All of a sudden we stroll into a fake mini-England from Shakespearean times, sort of. It's a small courtyard with a Globe-style theatre and and a couple of other ye olde England looking buildings. Shakespeare performances go on inside, we sit on a bench in the sun thinking about good ole Blighty for a while.
We come across a cactus garden housing all varieties of the plant of sizes, shapes and colours I've never seen. It's a great place to get away from the problems of the city.
Back in town and we notice the new baseball stadium and conference centre. This is a part of the plan to get people living back in downtown and to an improved quality of life. The people who already have money that it. If you have none and living on the street then all you get is a nice multi-million dollar stadium to look at from a distance before you get moved on by the police.
The next morning we're getting ready to leave and hear a bang outside. A car has somehow driven off the nearby freeway and onto the road below completely crushing itself.
We chat to a Danish business man in the morning and he tells us of his life of international travel to weird and wonderful places. He recommends the Faroe Islands and Greenland for a must visit. It would certainly be different to San Diego.
Although San Diego is a decent place it's by no means inspiring and has it's fair share of run down living. At this point I'm sick of American cities. Not only are they disappointing, other than San Francisco, but they largely have a homeless problem you'd normally think would be consistent with South America or Asia, but it's not. America is far worse. This is the richest country in the world and yet it has no national health service or homeless solution for it's own people. No wonder it has so much money to got to war and have an expensive space program.
On the whole the urban areas are soulless and have no passion , life or colour about them. What colour, style and life only exists from previous land owners the Spanish and the Mexicans.
I start to wonder whether spending so long in North America was such a wise idea and if all those people who'd been confused by our decision to come here were right. We missed South America. we considered buying tickets to Argentina or Mexico.
But there's a lot ahead yet to see and this country has to show me what I really came here for. The land itself. Maybe then this extended North American adventure will be justified.