Los Angeles…ended where we started!

A good friend of us, Paul Badenhorst, from Pro Yacht Deliveries, always says. ‘If it started, it has to end, good things end, bad things end…’ (He is a professional Yacht Delivery Skipper and also keep a blog of his travels - just click on Pro Yacht Deliveries. He is busy with a delivery from Cape Town to Tahiti at this stage and reported some bad weather last night on his blog, they are between Trinidad and the Panama Canal). 

We decided to end our good journey in California, with the place where we started, almost a month ago, Malibu! We booked into the RV Park for two nights, and enjoyed just being there.

The boys played ping pong, we walked on the beach, collecting illegal Malibu mussles, and started organizing the suitcases!

Four months of traveling, with a sea anchor and a barbeque and all the electronics and a lot of other Catlyn goodies had to find their way into four bags, of 50lb each, and the rest we tried to conceal in our hand luggage. 

We were packed and ready to say goodbye to our ‘Beast’, and we waited for the yellow cab to take us to LAX Airport.  We had to wait from 16h00 to 20h00 before we were booked in and on the JETBLUE plane to Fort Lauderdale!

 Marco was feeling lousy and was running a temperature. After all the cold and snow, no one got sick, but as soon as we took of our jackets, enjoying the warmth, he was sick! But he promised that he will be well the day after tomorrow, as soon as he saw his big brother, Jaco!

The plane took off at 22h00, and the flight to Fort Lauderdale was 3 hours and twenty something minutes, but we landed more than six hours later, around 06h30. No sleep for the night! Johan got our rental, Ford Taurus, a nice car, with a boot big enough for all our luggage. We were searched from top to bottom on the Airport. We lost two bottles of sealed wine, and Johan had to take a couple of long gulps from the whiskey bottle, and Marco`s Monopoly was scrutinized, but all of that was now forgotten. We were so tired and anxious to get to the hotel! I saw a bit of Fort Lauderdale, the huge houses, all the yachts, the immaculate gardens fighting against the sleep.  We reached the Best Western Hotel, at about 10h30 dreaming about a hot bath and a clean sheet bed! Only to find out that we can only get our room at 15h00! We ended up in Denny`s for breakfast, and Joe feasted on their unlimited flapjacks for 2US$. It was still a long way from three!  The car was hot and uncomfortable, the malls tiring, but eventually I couldn`t wait any longer. I found out our allocated room number, and started searching for the cleaning girl, only to find out that she wasn`t even aware that we are waiting, and she was casually going about her own route! I begged her to do our room next, and we ended up in a clean fresh room just before 15h00! If only I had done that earlier…

The hours dragged along to 22h00, when Jaco finished work. No one could sleep, we were just too excited! And when 22h00 came, we saw him in the dark, on his skate board, showing us the way to the flat. It was as if we`ve seen him just yesterday! We laughed and cried and hugged…