I had to go back to Canada to complete some consulting work. Tan and I got up early Sunday morning. It wasn't much fun saying bye to Tan, but the trip is only for three weeks.
In the tranist lounge, Ben Lee was hanging out and he caught the same bus as me. A chance encounter and it was a spin out seeing him again. In Sydney, I hung out in the lounge and took some shots of the CBD. It is amazing, both Tan and I have been to Sydney airport a number of times but never got out and visited it. Overseas, as soon as you say Australia, they say Sydney and then ask what it is like. It looks great (on the TV and magazines). We both agree Sydney is on our travel list for this year.
An overnight long haul flight and like ground hog day it was Sunday again, a function of travelling over the international date line. I arrived in LA, and grateful to see my bag come off the plane. Last time, LA lost my bag which pissed me off. I put my bag through connecting luggage and walked to another terminal to catch the flight to Vancouver. Ben Lee was in front of me in the queue at immigration. In the distance, I could actually see snow capped mountains!!
The flight was nice, seeing the Pacific Coast states of the North-West. Like twice before, I flew over the Cascades and got to see volcanoes. This time covered in a lot of snow and the surrounding lakes were frozen over. Cold! In comparison to the 41 C day in Perth last week this place has a big difference.
On arrival in Vancouver, I sorted out some immigration stuff and then I got that sick feeling. I had arrived in Vancouver but my bags hadn't. Now I'm a fairly relaxed guy but not having a bag of clothes in cold Vancouver made me feel very disappointed.
I have a little word of wisdom for you travellers out there.
STAY THE F*CK AWAY FROM LA AIRPORT AS THEY ALWAYS LOSE YOUR BAGGAGE!!
This is the third time in three months my bag has gone missing and it is the only pitfall in the fun of travelling!
Brendo cooked a great roast with fantastic gravy. Catching up with Leo, Andrea, Brendo and Lesley was awesome. Brendo and I ended up hitting the town until everything closed. I was a little tired.
It took four days for my luggage to turn up and I was mildly f*cked off with Alaskan Airlines and dreading going through LA on the way home.
It wasn't until the weekend, until Leo and I hit the turps. We had beers including the massive 250ml French beer called Boris. A group of ended up at the Copper Tank, which has lots of memories and then back at Jen's place where we played Rock Band on PS3. I am crap at the Playstation Guitar! Another late boozy night.
We then went to the beach with Dan doing his best Pam Anderson run along the beach and got some shots of the towers that were used.
Venice Beach has an area that is designated for graffiti artists and it is well utilized with everything from the rubbish bins to the palm trees getting a workover. 
Even being fairly early in the morning there were quite a few people around including some local art and craft stores and some bums who had some signage we thought was fairly amusing. 
We then drove to the affluent area of Beverly Hills to the well known street of Rodeo Drive and its many expensive and overpriced stores. 
Rodeo Drive itself was fairly small and really, not that much to look at. All the shops including Versace, Louis Vuitton, Harry Winston, Prada etc were there. 
One of the girls on the group, an Aussie from Toowoomba, summed it up well with her comment “I feel like such a bogan with what I’m wearing on Rodeo Drive”. Still it was interesting to see where some of the movie Pretty Woman had been shot.
Interestingly, the front of the Kodak Theatre was being set up for the Oscars that will happen in less than a week. We say the big gold statue lying down and other small Oscars in another room.
Dan had his photo taken with Marilyn Monroe! 
And we saw the famous Hollywood sign. 
Next we headed to the Farmers Market for lunch. We parked up in the sun with a cup of coffee and tried again to ring American Airlines with no luck to find Dan’s bag. 
We had enough of American Airlines sheer incompetence and decided to head to LAX and search for the bag ourselves and of course, there it was sitting amongst a pile that obviously noone had bothered to look through. At least we were going home with our belongings. Dan gives them the big thumbs down. 
Having got to the airport so early, we checked in and headed to the Qantas Club to feast on some nice nibblies and lots of champers, always a good way to end a trip. The blog was updated and after nearly four hours our flight was called. 
We boarded the almost full 747 and bid our adventure goodbye. An eleven and a half hour flight took us to Auckland where our layover gave us enough time to head to the Qantas Club and a hot shower and then back on the plane for another three and a half hours to Melbourne where we will spend a week before heading home to Perth.
We dipped our toes for one last time in the Carribean, had a leisurely breakfast, packed and regrettably we were off. 
The plane left on time and the highlight was flying over Rum Point from the air. We had to do the usual ridiculous collection of our bags in US Customs to get back on exactly the same plane to Los Angeles. By the time we cleared customs there wasn’t much time other than a few sips of champagne in the Admirals Club (American Airlines version of Qantas Club). We boarded the plane to LA for a 5 hour and 20 minute flight.
Not wanting to leave the hotel as we had to provide our passports to get our luggage, which turned up thirty minutes later.
With the luggage safely in our room, we headed off to have a wander in the city. Four blocks south, the seediness disappeared to Central Avenue, a pedestrianised street which extends for nine blocks. Families were walking along the street and people having fun out doing their Saturday morning shopping. We found Plaza de la Cultura, like a mini Piazza San Marco in Venice (not really) with kids feeding and chasing lots of pigeons. 
We found our next hotel to find out what the plan was for tomorrow. Nothing until 7.30pm, so we arranged a tour outside of San Jose. Back along Central Ave, we had to visit the Museo de Oro Pre-Columbino. Here we learnt about Costa Rican history, the foundation of the nation, herbal medicine from the huge variety of trees and plants and the history of gold and it’s use in the culture.
Afterwards, we went to Café Parisienne in the portico of the Gran Hotel Costa Rica. Very swish and we were both in our best thongs too! I ordered a Costa Rican beer, Rock Ice with Lemon. Here I was thinking it was a beer with lemon. I was right in some ways but so wrong as well. It was like a horrible chelada (like in Merida) in a bottle. Half lemon juice and half beer. It was terrible!! Not I was smiling here only moments before tasting the beer! 
On the way home we walked through the Mercado Central. These markets were winding down with some stalls closed. It was mix of souvenirs and homewares with a large section dedicated to produce and local eateries. We were bemused by the chicken feet and livers for sale but the clincher was the pigs head hanging up for sale! 
We came back admiring the view from our room. Rusty corrugated iron roofs and the occasional burning pile of rubbish. 
We are both happy to be heading out to see the real Costa Rica tomorrow, small villages and a volcano!! 
We were about the only people there are that time of the morning and we had to wander around for ages until a coffee shop finally opened and we could get our café fix.
Our baggage and ourselves had supposedly been checked through to our final destination, San Jose in Costa Rica. We had five hours to kill in Panama with not a whole lot to do. We ate lunch at the one and only café in the airport, wandered around the shops and exhibits and tried to sleep for a while. 
Dan had the Panamanian equivalent to a VB, a Balboa, and bought two very expensive and ultra-tacky fridge magnets of the canal.
Our plane (Mexicana Airlines) left on time and we were off for a short 50 minute flight to San Jose. We landed at San Jose, cleared immigration and headed down to baggage. It became obvious after around 30 minutes of waiting that our bags weren’t going to arrive. An airline representative came and over and between his poor English and our even poorer Spanish, he tried to find out which part of the world our bags might be in. No luck though. We then got palmed off to another representative from the airline who bore the full force of my fury at them losing our bags. We filled in our paperwork, were told to come back in 24 hours if our bags had not arrived and we would be eligible for an intial $100 US compensation. We left the airport (along with a number of other people) with literally the clothes we were wearing and a small daypack each and not all that confident that we would every see our bags again.
