Marco-YOLO

This was a 10 day road trip along California’s famous coastal highway in a convertible.

San Francisco – Met up with old Capital One friends, Tsvetan and Jarisara, for lunch, took my cousin Alizeh, a freshman at UC Berkeley, to dinner, and did some tourist stuff again.

Carmel – I love the vibe of this town, relaxed and happy, a great place for the low-key kind of Dolce Vita.  It was also near Pebble Beach, which was cool to see.

Hearst Castle – This may be the coolest building I’ve seen in the US. The beauty and opulence of this mega-mansion is something to behold and crown jewel for m was the pool, maybe the most iconic in the world.

Pismo Beach – Just a stopover, nothing special.

Los Angeles – LA is a fairly known quantity so not much to say. At Colleen’s behest, we took a TMZ bus tour, which was the corny guilty-pleasure type fun you’d expect it to be. I also rode a mechanical bull for the first time and did miserably.

San Diego – Nice city by the bay. Highlight here was a shore dive into the kelp forest off La Jolla. It was my first cold water dive so I was wearing a 7-9mm wetsuit with hood, gloves and shoes. The hood confused a playful seal (photo below) who initally though I was a giant awkward seal, but even after he figured out we weren’t seals, he still hung out with with us for several minutes. But the oddest thing was being 40-50 feet under water and seeing birds swimming by you like rockets. Cormorants seem remarkably at home under water for a flying species, and the amazing thing is some Cormorants can dive to three times that depth!

We went to the big island of Hawaii for a little over a week in December, 2008. The weather was fantastic. I got to snorkel up close with a large Manta Ray, touch a green sea turtle, relax on some unbelievably beautiful and deep beaches (Hapuna Beach and Mauna Kea), charter a boat to hit all the top snorkeling spots around the Island, play some golf, go to a luau and check out some volcanoes. All in all, a nice trip. I got in some nice photography too.

Now for the bad – Hawaii is f**king expensive! Sure, it’s beautiful and everything but seriously, its a long-ass and expensive flight followed by being stuck on islands where everything is super-expensive.

If you ask me, hit up Cancun instead (as we did in Nov, 2009). The service is better, its half the price, and half the flight.

An oddity! Great weather in London. Street musicians were out, playing by the pubs and restaurants and there were more people out than normal for a Saturday afternoon. I stayed with my cousins on Edgeware road and went to Picadilly Circus with my friend Ziggy and cousin Ali for 3 hours of billiards, air hockey and bowling (I got 5 strikes in a row, one short of my best). My aunt made my favourite Pakistani dish that night for dinner. The next morning, I played with my niece and nephew before catching the Heathrow Express out to the airport and making my way back home.