Wednesday out at the tarpits

Today was pretty cool. In the sense that cool can be when it's 34 degrees Celsius (94 degrees... Trying to learn the English system...), and hotter if you're cut off from the ocean by hills on all sides.

A little out of the hills I went out to Hollywood again, catching a bus using the Metro system... The first bus driver was not very nice. You have to put the exact change into the thing because it doesn't give you change... She yelled at me and just grunted at me to go sit down when I tried to get coins out of the coin return (isn't that meant to be for change usually?).

I got to Hollywood Boulevard where I was planning to catch a second bus... Only I hadn't marked on my map which side of the road it was meant to be on, and just as I realised... I missed it. No matter, it gave me some time to lunch and get excited because some people promoting Disney were out on the street: (Click me) (Click me) I was a little upset that I didn't have anyone with me today actually, I couldn't get a photo with Jack Sparrow! I'll have to wait until October when we go to the theme park itself I guess...

Eventually I did catch my bus, and off I went to the Miracle Mile, also known as Wilshire Avenue. Excitement abounds.

So the mission of today was of course to go to the La Brea tar pits which I had heard about from Annie S.S. I think it would be much better to go in and see as a school group (in fact there were several groups of kids on Summer camps there) or a family, but it was interesting all the same to see a lot of the fossils, and the bubbling tar pools outside. There was also some people excavating a tar pit outside, which only happens once every year when it is warm so I was lucky. I couldn't see much, but I think one of the guys was chipping out a bone. On a day like today I'm just glad that it wasn't me... They only dig up the stuff that is a bit hard, so think about trying to dig up a sealed road on a day when it's so hot that the road has begun to melt and get stuck all over the bottom of your shoes... Yeah, I'd rather not be them with my face so close to that.

It was interesting, though almost just as interesting was my discovery of vending machines selling 600 ml bottles of soft drink for only $1!!!! This is apparently standard too!!! So I sat in the shade and had my very cheap bottle of Coke before walking back to the bus stop... On my way back, about five random people started launching into conversations with me, which struck me as very odd, because that kind of thing usually happens to me only at Scout camps. People here are obviously very sociable... None of them made comments on my accent (which is still very Australian, if not a bit British sounding to most people here), which was also interesting. The conversations were all about how hot it was though, as if I didn't need reminding!!!

Then, I caught the bus back here.

The end.