Thursday, October 17, 2002 A.M.

At Jerry's Famous Deli on Ventura Blvd. in Encino.

Except for waking up in Puerto Penasco and having a leisurely breakfast, doing some souvenir shopping and sitting at the edge of the Sea of Cortez/Gulf of California (all of which were pretty excellent), the second half of yesterday pretty much sucked.

It was a long drive day with some very short tempers. We had meltdowns in Mexico and in the US and drove for hours withouth speaking. It acutally broke the ice when we were searched at the border in Yuma. We were both glad when we got to Jeffrey's.

We had crossed the border at Lukeville very easily but decided to go back and drive along Mexico 2 because it was or at least appeared to be shorter. Shortly thereafter, we had the meltdown which colored the rest of the day. Shortly after that, we got run off hte road passing a truck. Getting stopped at the Mexican military roadblock and searched at the border were actually high points compared to everything else.

Coming across California, the winds were so fierce, we bagged the idea of camping and pushed through to L.A. It's really good to be here and to not have to deal with getting here today. Coming in to L.A. last night, we took a wrong turn andhad to do a bit of back-tracking. We drove through some pretty rundown neighborhoods.

But for all of that, yesterday morning was very cool. We got up, went for a swim in the ocean and then the pool. It was a special interlude. We had breakfast at the hotel, check out and drove back over to the fisherman's wharf area. We did the tacky tourist thing and were quite pleased with our progress in learning the art of haggling. Esteban and his buddy, Santiago, had a go at it with us netting 2 mirrors and 3 postcards for $55. Then we sat for one last time at a seaside bar, watched the birds and the fishing boats and took what should be some cool pictures. What was a lovely sea breeze along the gulf turned into quite a dramatic gale as we drove out of Puerto Penasco with sand virtually covering the highway as it blew across. Awesome visual.