California - As I Liked It - 1
It was the way the woman flew through the air some 100 feet above the Pacific waves that cast a magical spell. But then, everything I had done over that past week had put the patent Wow-o-meter deep into the red. America’s Far West held me enchanted.
Which wasn’t really unexpected because California is about excitement. California is where “stuff” happens. It is world renowned as a “can-do” kind of place where the weird is wonderful, and the wonderful nearly always thrills.
When the person from the America As You Like It travel company asked if I’d like to have a go on a circus trapeze, I wasn’t in the least bit surprised to hear the school was in Los Angeles.
That’s a city where some really crazy stuff happens – you only have to traverse its amazing 22-mile long coastal cycle route to learn that. Learning to fly on a high trapeze in LA seems almost subdued.
Not quite so subdued, however, that a middle-aged British journalist failed to complete the course thanks to a bad back, however - more of that later.
My excuse was that I was suffering a little stiffness thanks to a great deal of driving. Not that I was complaining, because it was quite simply some of the best driving I’ve ever done – way up in the high deserts of that hot, vast and beautiful State.
There’s only one kind of vehicle to drive in such places – and OK, I’m going to plant some trees, grow all my own veg and recycle everything including the kitchen sink to repay the planet for this - I hired a big throaty convertible for the job. Only with the roof down and a V8 rumbling under the bonnet can you really go California dreaming… Or, at least, that’s what I used to think before they started making very acceptable electric cars.
And it does seem like a dream when you are somewhere like the Joshua Tree National Park. This is everyone’s idea of the Far West – a kind of giant cowboy country consisting of more than half-million acres of stark wilderness.
At first glance from your open topped car the desert seems empty save for rocks, the odd tree and more rocks – but it’s actually rich in plants and animals that live in this land of climatic extremes. The trees give the park its name - Joshua trees are a giant type of yucca and as such they look like no other trees you’ve ever seen.
Vast granite crags beaten into all shapes and sizes are dotted across the endless empty landscape and between them canyons provide walkers with beautiful trails in which to examine the spring desert flowers and admire the rattlesnakes. I am serious – this national park boasts six different types of this venomous snake.
I didn’t see one, though you can believe I was looking all the time as I walked down numerous trails. Nor, alas, did I see the wild bighorn sheep for which the park is famous.
On another day we went on a four wheel drive safari into some of the box canyons that adorn the flanks of the San Andreas Fault - which is a feature of so much of California in general, and the valley that plays home to Palm Springs in particular.
The town is three hours east of Los Angeles and as your car ascends to the high desert you pass some of the biggest wind-farms you will ever see – they harvest the mighty blasts that can funnel down through the mountains.
The nearby fault-line is a fascinating place to explore – or at least it is when the Earth’s tectonic plates are at rest. We followed it some way and saw how the palm trees grow along its length because the fault is a dampish place where water is pushed up from the bowels of terra firma. Our guide, Morgan from Desert Adventures, showed us how the local indigenous Indians used to live along it in their lightweight grass thatched homes.
“Earthquakes don’t kill people,” she shrugged. “Buildings do.”
Morgan told us box canyons – steep-sided ravines with only one way out – were at their most dangerous in the sudden heavy rains that sometimes fall in these parts. Indeed, you could see how huge boulders had been swept down on tidal waves that can reach the size of a house.
After all this savage landscape it was pleasant to return to the luxurious surroundings of the Rancho Las Palmas Hotel in Rancho Mirage, which is a kind of posh suburb or Palm Springs.
Our huge suite overlooked cool gardens where waterfowl played on the numerous ponds under the tall palms, but were kept out of the equally numerous swimming pools.
In this cool, cocooned world, one felt very far removed from the long, hot highways of the desert, so one day we stopped in the Ace Hotel in nearby Palm Springs for lunch in their authentic old style American diner. If you have a good beef burger, then you have one of the most sumptuous simple meals in the world – and The Ace both offered this treat and also affordable, but beautifully appointed, rooms should you be exploring this area on a tight budget.
That night we had dinner in an altogether different setting – the Two Bunch Palms Resort in Desert Hot Springs is just half an hour’s drive away but in another world. Which is exactly what gangster Al Capone liked about it.
Located right on the fault line, it not only plays host to groves of cooling trees, but also to unbelievably hot natural springs where you can bathe, chill-out (if that’s not the wrong term) and generally take your leisure. That’s what Mr Capone liked to do when he hid out here with various molls and torpedoes before eventually losing his freedom for tax offences.
After becoming sufficiently chilled-out in the high desert, it was time to hit the altogether hotter more intense experiences offered by Los Angeles. Very intense, if four lane traffic jams are not your thing – but once we’d parked the car at our hotel in Santa Monica we didn’t drive again for three days.
We biked instead – and Santa Monica is the sort of place that lends itself to this healthy activity, although the Ambrose Hotel on 1255 20th Street does have a complimentary limousine service which will shuttle you to-and-fro from the famous beach and the almost as famous 4th Street shopping area.
I use the word famous to describe these places because I have seen both countless times in Hollywood movies and TV programmes.
For the beach, think Bay Watch. Then think – bloody-mary. That, at least, is what I did previous to my sky-scraping, cloud-catching trapeze lesson. The best bloody-mary I have ever drunk was consumed at the end of Santa Monica Pier, and it really did help immunise me from the fears of the high trapeze.
Not that this turned out to be necessary because the windy journeyings in my convertible had given me a stiff neck which the trainer advised would only get worse as I fought G-forces some 50 feet above the wooden deck. To be honest, I was disappointed because there was a safety net, not to mention a full harness.
However, as I watched my fellow students, who all seemed aged between 12 and 18, I began to see that a small degree of suppleness was required. The simple swing seemed easy enough – but within two hours all these kids were flying through the air to be caught by a trapeze artistes hanging upside down on another swing. I’ll admit: that wasn’t going to happen to me in a thousand years – although the teachers told me they’d seen 70 year olds who’d accomplished the brief, death-defying, flight.
After that, I needed a stiff drink and a good dinner – which is exactly what I got at the well known Lobster restaurant perched above the pier. It must have one of the best views in all of LA and after I’d finished off a whole large creature of the type which gave the place its name, I asked the waiter if the Hollywood celeb’s frequented the place for the food and ocean vista.
Hesp dining in Santa Monica
With Mrs Hesp
“Some,” he shrugged. “But mainly B-listers.”
He then gave me a look that suggested I might, in his world, be considered something of a Z-lister and with that I was ready to head north on the second leg of my amazing Californian road journey.
Fact File
Martin travelled with America As You Like It who offer tailor-made holidays across the USA (www.americaasyoulikeit.com
