Archive for January, 2008

Los Angeles – Day 2

The next day I woke around 7am as I really wanted to spend as much time as possible at Universafrom l Studios however it was a bit dissapointing when I opened the curtains and I realized it was raining heavily. That didn’t stop getting out of the hostel and going to the the theme park, after all, I had only three days in Los Angeles and
that was the second day already.

I walked a couple of blocks from the hostel to a shop where I got an umbrella from a Salvadorian guy LOL. Then I walked into the metro (the train station), bought a daily pass and waited for 10 minutes until the metro turned up. Again, I couldn’t avioid comparing the infraedtructue of that train system against the only train system I know, connex at Melbourne. Fortunately, Universal Studios city train station is one station awayt from mine.

Train Station at Los Angeles

After 6 minutes I was at the first public entrance. It was still raining and very cloudy so I walked to what it seemed to be the Universal Studios shuttle stop and after asking I took this free shuttle that took me to the main gate.

The first bit is a chain of restaurants and souvenir shops related to the park. This area is free so you can walk around and get some food if you want. As it was raining there were very few people out there. I took some photos and then walked to the actual theme park. At that time I had my doubts about wether the rides and the shows were running but one of the park’s staff members told me everything was operating as usual so it made me decide to get the tickets and to get into the park.

Universal Studios Public Area Hard Rock Cafe at Universal City, Los Angeles Dante @ Univeral Studios' main entry gate Dante @ Universal Studios

Once inside the actual fun strated, every single corner and shop is related to a movie or show. Shrek, back to the future, Jurassic Park, Flingstons, horror movies, TV series ,etc. I walked around a little bit in order to get to know the park and then I took the universal studios tour, jumped to one of these carriages and waited for some minutes.

A funny thing was that at the tour’s gate there was a lady saying: “thanks for coming to the tour, English tours through this way and the Spanish version through that way please”. Spanish is an option you would never expect in a theme park in Australia, may be Chinese or Japanese but never Spanish. Anyway, the nature of the movies, the original hollywood movies and the most popular characters were made in English so no point to do the tour with someone translating that for you.

The tour last around 45 minutes and covered a cool ride through some stages where tv series like Heroes are been shootted. We also passed next to a gallery with some of the most popular cars in the history of hollywood like “The delorian” from Back To the Future and “Eleanor” from 2 fast 2 furious.

Other attractions I took were terminator 2 4D, shrek 4D, smart animal shows, horror passages, a great demostration about how special effects are made in Hollywood and more. The best two rides were definitely Jurassic Park and The Mummy where you are in car passing through differeng scenes of yhe movie and suddently the fun starts, at jurasshc park you have a face-to-face interaction with the T-Rex and a sudden fall of around 60 meters, and in the mummy the slow ride turns into a crazy roller coaster with forward and backward movements. I jumped into jurassic park’s ride three times and two times at the mummy’s ride.

Jurassic Park Entrance A dinosaur turning up Universal Studios, Los Angeles, California Warner Brothers theme park 

After this fun… and again, AFTER, I had lunch at jurassic park food court lol and then i walked back to the main square of the theme park where there were other cool shows like the animatronics.

Remember Forest Gump, the movie? If so, this will look familiar for you Universal Studios tree

That day rained almost all day, it stopped at around 5pm and i stayed till 6pm. Then i took the shuttle service back to the metro station and then back to hollywood higlands station. I had quick dinner at burguer king where compared the tastes with the australian version (hungry jacks)

Burger King back in Hollywood, Los Angeles Spanish, English, Spanglish?

Once back at the hostel I met the guys again at the tv room, I met Ana, a welish girl, Lesly a guy from Asia living many years in los angeles, Carl, an Irish guy and Tim a guy who had just check-in. We talked a bit and watched one of these american shows like The Big Loser.

While chatting with Tim I noticed a familiar accent in his speech. He had come from Australia and more precisely from Melbourne. He was doing his bachelor course at Melbourne university and, like me, he was in holidays. Now, the most interesting bit was when he said he would go to Peru in two days to do the inca trail. I couldnt stop laughing and he was a bit confused about my reaction.

He laughed as well when I told her where I am from, where I was going next and when. This’s been the biggest coincidence ever in my life, we were going to Peru in the same flight. Cool!

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Los Angeles – Day 1

Muchas cosas han pasado desde que llegue a Los Angeles y como varios amigos me pidieron compartir estos momentos asi que desde aca posteare en ingles.

As some friend asked me to share my experiences in Los Angeles (LA) and Peru so from now I’ll be posting in English.

The flight wasn’t that great but as we had heaps of beers available it was ok. I guess the guys attendind in the aircraft know how boring of this type can be so they try to offer you heaps of things. Once in LA I felt a bit strange… I found myself in an English speaking country (again) but with an enormous difference, there were so many Latino Americans people, not ten or twenty… but hundreds. This might sound a bit crazy for some of you but the fact of being in a country like Australia with just a very few proportion of Latino Americans for two years and with no other experience in a non-spanish speaking country makes you think for a while how people live in this ‘new’country.

In regards to the immigration process, you know how it is known it can be a pain sometimes, well i must confess I have no complaints whatsoever and actually I gotta say they were extremely kind, all of them. Some people said to me about the strict they are and how they open your luggage and stuff making you feel kind of embarrased but in my case, at least, it was as follows: left the united airlines area to approach to immigrations where they stamped my passport and asked what I was doing in Australia and how long my stay in U.S. would be. I answered and the lady smiled saying “have a nice stay, welcome to America” and I was like “uhm…. alright, thanks” LOL.

I expected a second check (as the immigration card states) or an exhaustive check of what I was carrying with me however none of them happened.! The lady then said please go through this way to claim your luggage. That’s what I did and after claiming them and giving one of the immigration cards to a guy I was already in the public area, ready to take a cab or do whatever want. At that moment I realized that all the process had been extremely straight forward.

Well for me it was so cool! so I headed to terminal where Troy (an Australian friend from melbourne) was meant to arrive. I got to that place and found out his flight was just landing, great! I waited for some minutes with the trolley I had and then I tried to call him with no answer as result. Actually, I didn’t know how to call him. I dialed with country code and all the stuff and didn’t work so I asked for help, the airport staff also didn’t know what exactlly I had to dial for calling to an  Australia mobile. What was worse, I didn’t have American coins and there wasn’t a coin machine around there so I couldn’t use the public phone available in the area I was. I went out to see if there were any coin machine but I didn’t have luck, however when I got back to the terminal I saw troy arreanging his luggage so we say hello and went to the airport’s food court and I tried ‘Budweiser’, a beer quite populatcin Los Angeles. I gotta say it tasted to me like water, so light!!! Anyway, we also wrapped two hamburguers and talked about many thing as we killed time.
Troy was only waiting for 8 hours before his next flight to Miami and then Colombia while my plan was staying at LA for three days before heading Peru.

We stayed at LAX till about 3 pm and then I took the shuttle service to the backpacker hostel in Hollywood, sounds cool, isn’t it? On the way to Hollywood I came across with the strong power the Latin America comunity has in this city. As an example, half of the ads I saw that day were in English and the other half in Spanish. When I finally got to the hostel I had my first experience with the power of bargaining of people in LA. The drive was US$15 and I gave 20 to the driver who said: “Thank you”, I was like, what?? “It’s 15 man!!”. He said: well 15 or 16 is the same, it sounded like if he was giving me a favor. He took some 1 dollar notes (bill. In American English) and gave me 3 dollars. I looked to him like: this is not enough, he finally a bit angry gave me the rest. Look, I dont mind giving tips but that is not the way. In that sense is very different to Australia where you don’t even consider a situation like this can happen.

California... yeah!! Getting to Hollywood

I got my bed in a pretty descent 6 bed dormitory and after having a shower I went out to know what Americans call Hollywood.

In few word it was not that spectacular. It’s a bit impressive at first but after a while its just a comercial area with spiderman, snoopy, and other characters walking around and doing funny things. If interested in the Famous’ walk, well its not more than plates with names and some graffities. As I was already there I took some photos of that area.

Famous' parade Micky!!! Famous' parade 

Hollywood, California Kodak Theatre The famous RED CARPET  

Me and the Hollywood sign as background In the Chinese Threatre

What I was actually looking for was something very american and I found it at level three of the kodak theatre (where the Oscar’s Award ceremony is performed every year), it is called Jhonny Rockets. If you have no idea about this place ill give you a clue: remember the typical restaurant inthe movie Grease, with john travolta and olivia newton john. Well that is. I felt very excited and without doubts i went inside and ordered a tradional hamburguer and a malt. Im not exagerating i felt like in the movie. The food was very good, especially the malt :)

Johnny Rockets, the famous 80's fountain (if you watched Grease, the movie, this will look familiar to you) Enjoyin a yummy hamburger and a giant malt at Johnny Rockets Like in the 80's

Then I walked around for a while, took some photos and went back to the backpackers hostel. In very few words this was day one at los angeles. Pretty interesting stuff but nothing like Wow! And that would make me thing its better than Australia… Not yet, at least.

The second day was a great visit to Studios Universal Hollywood, yeah, a great and WET day for many reasons.

Cya!!!

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De vuelta a la blogosfera

Asi es, estoy de vuelta posteando luego de casi un mes sin hacerlo. En estos un poco mas de 30 dias ausentes he experimentado muchas cosas nuevas y que ya habia olvidado y de las que compartire en los siguientes posts. Esto no es acerca de Australia… que raro no? pues sera acerca de mi paso por Los Angeles, Lima, Cusco, Puno, Arequipa y mas, casi todo sera sobre mi regreso a Peru por vacaciones.

 

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