Our flight from Lima to Miami was hilarious, it first began before we had even checked in. The man at the desk began asking us whether we had packed our bags ourselves. But instead of saying this clearly he said it in a whisper and both of us first thought he asked us who the "leader of our country was", to which we both answered what?!? He then went on to repeat the question again, but we still couldn't hear him, and Clem thought he said "who is the owner of your country" to which she replied "the Queen". He clearly thought we were nuts and then asked us again "who packed your bag?", this time we actually heard! Later whilst going through immigration to get out of Peru, we suddenly overheard the speaker phone explain that in Lima airport they do not announce departure announcements over the speaker, instead you must find it yourself. It was all very odd. Anyway we finally made it to Miami, where our immigration experience was appalling and left us feeling that America really hated foreigners as they put 1 border control officer to deal with all the foreign passports and 4 for the US citizens meaning that within 10 minutes all the Americans had gone through, whilst we decided that sleeping on the floor was a far better way of spending the next 2 hours that it took for the foreign queue to pass through immigration. At Miami airport as we were passing through security got asked whether we were travelling with an adult to which we replied that we weren't. She then asked if either of us were over 18, we both said yes which she was thoroughly surprised about and told us we both looked like 15 year olds, we didn't know whether to take this as a compliment or not as we were both looking like complete hobos by this point. We finally got back on the next flight to LA where we went to our friend Elliot's house and he kindly let in two very tired travellers. That afternoon he took us along the boardwalk to Venice and we watched a beautiful sunset and then went for a tour and drove passed the Mormon church, the Church of Scientology, Universal Studios etc etc. We all then went to the most amazing Vietnamese restaurant. The next day, Clem and I were left to our own devices to explore LA before 8pm when we had another flight. We went back to Venice, stopped off for a nice coffee and then hit up FreePeople which was a disaster for our bank accounts (our justification for new clothes was the repeated situation of our clothes going missing when we gave them to laundrettes to wash.) A few hours later and with a big dent in the budget, we took the metro to Downtown LA and attempted to find Korea town, failed, then stumbled across Grand Central Market where we got some rather strange looks and felt very out of place as tourists. As we were walking to the fashion district we discovered a very cool Urban Outfitters which was inside an old cinema- Clem then proceeded to buy just a few more things. We then found a bus which took us over the Westwood and UCLA where we saw Mitch and his girlfriend and we had a quick tour of the campus, grabbed some dinner and then walked over to his frat house, which was exactly what they films portray them as. Sadly we couldn't stay in LA for much longer as we had a flight at 11pm to Tahiti that evening, so said our goodbyes and headed off back to the airport again.
Rocking the traveller look, the shoe/trouser combo was the best
Sending stuff home, Clem was very sad to be separated from her hiking boots
Miami immigration was a joke
3 flights down
Venice sunset
Venice by day
An important looking building in the Civic Centre
