Nothing much happened today. All we did was check out of San Fran at 8:30am and hung out at San Fran airport until 1pm. It was a 2 hour check in, and the place was PACKED! So glad we checked in early.
When we touched down at LAX, we went to the baggage claim, and amazingly, our bags were already there before anyone else’s. It turns out because we were at San Fran airport early, they put our bags on an earlier flight, so we beat the baggage stampede.
As there’s lack of decent public transport, we caught a taxi to our hotel, roughly a 30 minute drive. Concerned about the fare, it turned out that from LAX to Downtown was a flat rate of $46.50. The driver was Nigerian, and after 10 minutes, he started saying “you Aussie? I have a friend who lives there – but he’s dead now!”. We went quiet, then he said his mate was Steve Irwin. Bad joke.
The second part to the drive was that he was speeding through the roads. I think a permanent speed camera flashed him. As we got closer to the hotel, we discovered that he couldn’t turn left where the GPS was indicating. So he went up the road a bit and did an illegal U-turn. He hopped on the right road and went to the entrance of the car park.
Well, he thought it was the entrance. It was the exit of the car park.
There was a car trying to leave, so he reversed out. But on reversing, there was clear signage that said “WARNING: Wrong Way. May cause severe tyre damage” – about 4 signs.
He was persistent in getting us to the entrance, so he drove in through.
Then the hissing and thudding started. All 4 tyres were popped. Reece and I looked at each other, confused as to why the hell he did such a stupid thing. The driver hopped out and examined one of the tyres, continuingly saying “Oh No!”
Oh No indeed.
I told the guys to get out of the car and grab their stuff. The driver popped the boot open and we took our bags out. The driver apologized profusely saying he was concerned that he didn’t drive us to the entrance. I gave him $60 and told him that he should be more concerned about all his tyres.
We grabbed our bags and walked to the hotel. As we were walking, Pete informed us that his license expired on 7 July – 3 Days ago.
FAIL!