"You girls want a bong? Everyone needs a bong!"

Where our story last left off was the beautiful beaches of Puerto Escondido....a far away cry from the snow that now falls outside our New York apartment window.
But first, lets recap....

The night of my last blog, we had our first brush with the unfriendly side of Mexico that we had been hearing so much about.
Getting back to our villa and into bed with our books, we realised there was some drunken dude speaking Spanish having a little look-see into our bedroom.
After arming ourselves with scissors, flicking the lights off and getting down on the floor with deer-in-headlights eyes, our little friend bid us "Buenas noches" about a million times before stumbling away.
Realising the only thing keeping us from possibly being attacked was a flimsy sliding door, and that our lack of sim cards rendered us stupidly cut off from the world, was enough to scare us into deciding to find other accommodation for our last two nights in Mexico.
We decided to move across the road, infact right into Chris and Keiran's old room which at least felt familar...and high up off street level.

We stuffed our last days in Mexico full of Teresa juices (orange, pineapple, guava, strawberry=heaven) chicken burritos, cocktails and sun before it was sadly time to re-pack our backpacks and hop on another 12-hour coach ride.

We left Puerto at 6.30pm...arrived in Mexico City at 7am the next day...raced to the airport for our 9.25am flight back to L.A.
The bus ride was painful...out of the 12 hours, Stef managed to sleep about 10, leaving me purposely bumping her and sighing loudly in an effort to get her to wake up and play with me.
The flight was slightly less painful because by this stage, we were over tired and laughing at everything including the dribbling 12 year old with slicked back hair sitting next to us and the 3 pieces of rockmelon that was our breakfast. Thanks Aero Mexico! You shouldnt have!

Arriving in L.A felt strangely like coming home. Perhaps it was the urbanization, or the fact that we could communicate with the people around us....or maybe it was the smell of pollution in the air...regardless, we headed straight for McDonalds before heading back to David's in Encino.

First night back in L.A and of course, despite our lack of sleep during the past 328474 hours of being in transit, we decide to head out. Cocktails at David's followed by cocktails at Whiskey followed by warm sake at Nobu lead to our first celebrity sightings. A blonde gave Stef a funny look on her way to the bathroom- "Hey I know that chickohmygoditsKateHudson!"
Of course, I nearly wet my pants and we spent the next 15 mins waiting for her to come back through the doors, before realising she probably took some sneaky back exit to avoid the paparazzi out the front.
Not ten minutes later and a bored looking Nicky Hilton struts past me. I brace myself against the wall to stop myself from fainting while the others laugh and take pictures of me.
I HAD to chase her into the bathroom, which was awkward because she wasnt in a cubicle, but fixing herself at the sink and we were the ONLY ones in there. I panicked, went to go into a cubicle and then realised I didnt want Nicky Hilton hearing me pee so I backed out, washed my hands and then ran out.
Smooth Tully.
David had decided I had embarrassed him enough so we headed to Crown which is apparently the best place on a Wednesday night. The crowd of paparazzi out the front was a testimate to this, however they were disappointed when they realised we were no one.
Crown was dark, with lots of booths in dark corners to hide in and by now, we were seeing seven of everything so (thankfully) I was a little more aloof when Jack Osbourne and Matthew Perry strolled past me ever so casually.
Few more cocktails later and Stef lost her camera so we sensed it was time to go home....via. Mels Drive In for food.

Day 2 back in L.A and Stef and I decided to do some exploring of our own. We figured out the buses and managed to maneuver our way over to Venice Beach.
It was the nicest day it had been in L.A and we were excited be back so close to the ocean so we hired out two beach cruisers which are like bikes with huge mustache handlebars and white baskets on the front.
We rode along the beach front all the way to Santa Monica Pier which had a ferris wheel and a view out to the ocean.....not to mention a Bubba Gump Shrimp Resturant and a million souvenir stores.
We decided to ride back on the street side, past the hundreds of little market stores and stoners trying to make a living. There was everything from tiedye tshirts to bongs up for grabs...and the owners of the stalls were ten times more interesting than any of the fabulous people we had been hanging out with in Hollywood.
After returning our bikes we took our time going back down the strip of stalls and checking everything, and everybody, out- catching the most amazing sunset over the beach.
Stopped by 'Bondi BBQ' for a burger on the way home- the menu was hilarious. "The Shark Bite", "The Taronga Zoo"....we even had trouble ordering beetroot on our burger, apparently its just 'beet' over here.
The whole day had been so much fun and it felt good that we had found our own way there, independently and not with help from David and his Merc.
Stayed in that night as we were exhausted from all our bike riding and exploring.

The next day we were determined to continue finding our own way around so after catching a lift into downtown L.A with David on his way to work (including a photo by the infamous Beverly Hills sign) we figured out our way down to Melrose Ave. for possibly the BEST shopping we had yet to come across on our trip.
What started out as a couple of hours set aside for perusing, ended up as an entire day. Some of our favourites were the Teenage Millionaire store that was having a HUGE sale on some sick Obama is my Homeboy tee's and Aardvarks Odd which was the best stocked vintage/2nd hand shop I'd ever seen. We walked out of there with 1x tie dye tshirt, 1x Madison High cheerleading uniform (me) 1x UCLA basketball singlet and 1x perfect condition Adidas jacket (Stef). I literally had to drag myself out of there or I would have just kept finding treasures.

Waiting outside a shoe store while Stef tried on shoes, I was exhausted. Arms, heavy with shopping bags and feet sore from walking up and down Melrose, I slumped down against the outside of the store.
It was then I noticed the two VERY familar looking guys (and one huge black dude) walking up towards me. They were walking really slowly, like almost shuffling and had alot of jewelry on and it took me a while to figure out they were Joel and Benji Madden.
I think i might have pooed my pants a little.
I scrambled up, grabbing my shopping backs and tried to look as alluring as possible as they walked past me, one of them gave me a smile.
SHIT I thought, what if Nicole is waiting back in the car or something?
I resisted following them but I did run in and hyperventilate the story to Stef about 9 times.

Not wanting to have to inconvenience David by getting him to pick us up again, we decided to get a hostel room on Melrose ave for the night. It was far easier to do than we thought, and the room (we got a private room) was all futuristic and The Jetsons-styled. Plus we had a cool view out onto the the street and free breakie in the morning.
Despite me acquiring a raging fever sometime in the arvo, we decided to make a return visit to the Arclight movie theatre to see Australia. By the end of the movie, I was on fire and pretty much too sick to walk without Stef holding me.
We made our way back to the hostel and I went straight to bed- rambling ludacris fever talk until the hostel lady brought us up some Nurofen.

Oddly, I was 100% the next day as we made our way from Downtown L.A back up to Hollywood. Today was our last day in L.A and I had made Stef promise me long ago that we could do a Hollywood homes tour.
Luckily for us, it had been a slow day on the tour front so some dude offered us 2 tickets for $50 which was a really good deal considering the prices of some of the other tours.
An hour later and we were in our limo with 4 other Australians getting our photo taken infront of the Hollywood sign.
Other tour highlights included:
* The shop where Julia Roberts is told to leave in Pretty Woman.
* The church where they filmed Sister Act.
* LC and Lo's house from The Hills.
* The bush where Linds Lohan crashed her car and was caught with coke in her pants.
* Paris Hilton's house.
* The Playboy Mansion.
* Leonardo DiCaprio's house.
* The Beckham's house.

There were of course lots of others but some were more impressive than others...and apparently some werent impressive at all- Stef fell asleep in the limo.

After the tour we got burgers at Johnny Rockets before making our way back to David's in Encino. The plan WAS to have a big boozy dinner to celebrate our last night in L.A but David had eaten and we were exhausted, so instead we spent our last night in L.A re-packing our backpacks (near impossible) and doing some loads of washing.

5.30am the next morning and our cab had arrived. We both had different flights to N.Y (however left and arrived within half an hour of each other) so I worriedly said goodbye to Stef at terminal 6 at L.A.X (I'm always expecting a phone call saying she missed her flight) and made my way to terminal 4.
A stop over in St Louis and Ghost Town the movie, later and Stef and I were reunited once again.
We did the backpack dance and strapped ourselves in as we braced ourselves for the New York cold- suddenly, Puerto and our burritos felt very far away.