Today (26th Jan) dawned a little cloudy but we were still up and ready for a walk by 9 o'clock having had our bagels again and repacked from scratch as everything was in such a mess! This time we walked along the beach in the opposite direction towards Venice. The route was shared with lots of people exercising in different ways and it was pleasantly warm.

On our return to the hotel we checked out and headed off north to Malibu. This proved surprisingly uninspiring - just many miles of buildings on both sides of the road preventing us from seeing the sea and many were not very attractive! We decided not to stop at this point and continued on to Point Dume beach. This was a lovely beach with small surfable waves and we spent an hour or so watching the pelicans flying past and surfers failing dismally to surf!

It was still comfortably warm despite only occasional glimpses of the sun. I had a paddle - mainly to say I had paddled in the Pacific in January! Steve remained steadfastly out of the water!

We then made our way back to Malibu to eat at a restaurant we had identified through Tripadviser. This proved a good move as we had a most enjoyable lunch and ordered a sandwich to take with us for later.

After lunch we decided to head away from the coast and up into the Santa Monica mountains. We chose a route we thought would take us on a loop and back to Santa Monica but after travelling along it for some miles it stopped abruptly and became a track! We had to turn round and retrace our steps. When we were nearly back at the coast we found a sign for Solstice Canyon and decided to explore there. We had an enjoyable if noisy walk as a flock of parrots kicked up a right cacophony and were joined by frogs croaking near the river, not to mention all the other bird calls. At one point we had the option of taking a loop back and soon found ourselves scrambling over stepping stones as we crisscrossed the stream bed. This sounds a bit precarious but actually wasn't as bad as it sounds as there was very little water in it! California is in the grip of a drought at present. I mention this because it started to rain as we got to the end of our walk - not much to start with but increasingly heavy as the day progressed and in fact continued till we left.

We returned to our hotel as they had said we could use their "restroom" to change before heading off for the airport. It was as well we left with plenty of time as the journey took ages. I'm not sure whether it was just rush hour or perhaps the rain but we crawled along for most of the time and what had taken us about half an hour on Sat took an hour and a half on Mon!

Having handed back the car we ate our pre-bought sandwich and followed it up with a cup of tea and a peanut crunch cookie. I don't know how many calories that was but it was just as well we shared one! Mind you it was yummy!

I did try to write the blog before boarding our flight to NZ but I just didn't have enough time - so sorry to those of you who were expecting it. Since then we have had more trouble with this as I wrote it and then somehow it deleted itself!! Grrr!

I must tell you about our flight though. Some of you will know that we had booked a Sky Couch with Air New Zealand. This is 3 seats together which have footrests which come up to make a flat area with the seat. They give you a mattress topper, pillows and blankets and as long as you don't mind getting cosy with each other its a great way to get your feet up and your head down without spending a fortune on upgrades! It is definitely the best long haul flight we have had!