Los Angeles to Palm Springs

"You know what the funniest thing about Europe is? It's the little differences. I mean, they got a the same shit over there that we got over here, but there it's just a little bit different” Vincent Vega's musing about the little differences between the US and everywhere else is as applicable today as it ever was. In this case, we were experiencing America's little differences. Different words for things, different turns of phrase, combined with our accents resulted in much mutual confusion. "I'm sorry, we're not from here. We don't understand what you're asking."

We were staying in Downtown LA, once a no-go area of urban decay but now undergoing a revival. Old buildings have been restored with niche hotels, bars and restaurants. There are still no-go areas. Only two blocks from our hotel the streets are filled with homeless encampments.

We started our holiday with a food and history tour. We've always found food tours to be particularly helpful to orient ourselves to a place. Sometimes we've been the only people on a tour, which can be a bit disappointing as it's good to interact with other people. There's a. Lot more pressure when it's just you and the guide. We'll, it proved to be one of those occasions. JM, a French - Brazilian advised us it was just us. Great. So off we went. Downtown LA has a lot of art-deco architecture so that aspect of the tour was excellent. We visited the Biltmore Hotel and the Bradbury Building, which featured in the movie Bladerunner, along with many other interesting buildings, but the food part of the tour was disappointing. L A is a melting pot so the tour seemed more of a random selection of world cuisines - Thai kebabs, Mexican tacos, Italian pasta, a French croissant and a donut. Nothing particularly inspiring. I guess that's to be expected.

After the tour we visited the Petersen Automotive Museum on the Golden Mile, the miles square zone of museums and art galleries in the east downtown. The Petersen Museum has an excellent collection houses in a magnificent new building. There are some real automotive gems and rarities in the collection. Highly recommended.

Petersen Museum virtually backs onto the LA Brea Tar Pits, something I've wanted to see since I was a dinosaur mad child. This natural oil seep has been trapping and preserving ancient beasts for tens of thousands of years. Oil bubbles up to the surface from deep within the earth mixing with water and soil to form a sticky tar-like mass. Animals would come to the pools to drink, get caught in the tar and sucked to their death. Dead and rotting carcasses would then attract predators hoping for an easy meal, who then became victims themselves. The tatr preserved the bones extremely well and excavations of the various pits resulted in hundreds of skeletons dating back hundreds of thousands of years. The pits are still very active today. As we were looking at one of the larger pools bubbles of natural gas popped to the surface. No one light a match!

After two nights in the Big City it was time to hit the road. We were heading west. We picked up our hire car from Enterprise Downtown, a short taxi ride from our hotel. Here we hit out first obstacle - no GPS. We had specifically ordered a GPS with the car as we were using Australian phones and roaming charges are expensive, but these days mobile phones are so ubiquitous that many people and companies do not consider the implications of NOT having a mobile phone is. "Just use your phone." Was the response from the staff. "But we can't." We replied. "Then you can go to the airport and hire one from the airport office", was the only suggestion. We weren't going to go an hour back to the airport so we were stuck. We signed up for an additional roaming plan and attempted to get out of LA.

The roaming plan tool some to to go through so we set off blind into the horror show that is the LA freeway system - at 11am. The guys at Enterprise gave some general directions - go two blocks and turn left then stay left and follow the signs for H10 south then get on H10 east. So we turned left and immediately missed the H10 turn off. Shit! Where the F were we? We had no idea. We tried to navigate back to Enterprise by dead reckoning but by a stroke of good fortune spotted a sign for H10 south and we just went for it. The next two hours were white knuckle tense driving through LA peak hour traffic. We've done a lot of foreign driving - including some terrifying drives in Italy - but nothing comes close. Fortunately all went well. We didn't crash. We didn't die. And an hour later our phone maps started working.

First a detour though to Joshua Tree National Park. Joshua Tree National Park undoubtedly received a boost from U2's Joshua Tree album, whose cover art was photographed in the park. The stark and angular trees - actually a type of yucca lily - make for a haunting landscape. The park also has interesting rock formations. It's reminiscent of the West Australian outback in many ways. The park is about an hour north of Palm Springs and worth a visit if you're travelling by.

After a drive through the park circuit we headed south towards Palm Springs.