Prologue: 2 Weeks in California

To get prepared for Bolivia, I spent 2 weeks with my Bolivian flatmate Ariel and his family who is living in Carlsbad, a small town between San Diego and Los Angeles. I left just in time to escape the big snow storm all over europe…while waiting for my plane in Zurich, i saw that flights to Stuttgart, Paris and Frankfurt were already canceled. The trip went well, without any delays, even the guys at the migration at JFK in New York were very friendly, which was kind of surprising after all the bad stories I have heard.

The weather in California was comfortably warm and sunny, so i took the chance for an extended walk along the Carlsbad beach on my first day…it's hard to believe but this was really the first time i've been on the beach this year. Unfortunately the water was too cold for swimming…

For the next days, we decided to visit some of the various amusement parks around San Diego. First I went with Charlotte, a friend from Switzerland and Albertina, Ariel's mom, to Sea World, whose main attraction is 'Shamu' a killer whale show, named after one of the first orcas ever captured. It was really impressive seeing these 6 ton colossuses jumping through the air as if they were light as feathers. The day after, we visited the 'San Diego Wild Animal Park', a 7 km^2 safari park hosting around 400 different species. 

Afterwards Ariel, Charlotte and me headed north towards San Francisco. We stayed 4 days at the place of Maria, a Chilenian singer, and her boyfriend Vedran. The first two days, while Ariel hat to meet his thesis director in Stanford, Charlotte and me explored downtown San Francisco. When Ariel came back, we made a tour around the bay area. On the way back we took the pacific coast highway, which closely follows the coastline all the way from San Francisco down to Los Angeles.

Unfortunately it started raining heavily that day, so we could only guess how magnificent the view would be at good weather. After a few more days in Carlsbad and a short trip to Mexico, it was time to continue to the actual destination of my journey...