San Diego, which of course in German means a whale's vagina

The prize of the day will go to the person who can guess which movie the title of today's blog comes from. It's a wonderful coincidence that we spent today at SeaWorld, but although I saw a couple of pilot whales and a few beluga (darling) whales, I didn't catch sight of any of their San Diegos, as it were.

The drive down here from LA went fabulously, especially compared with the nightmare that is navigation in LA. We didn't get lost once. OK, we missed our turn off right at the start but we turned around, using the wonderful block system to our advantage once again (who thought of that, apart from the Romans, I mean). So that doesn't count.

It's a beautiful drive, all rugged mountains with boulders the size of mountains overhanging the interstate and filling me with wonder and a profound fear all at the same time. Compared to LA, the landscape of San Diego is still winning the battle against humanity and its companion mall culture (I'm longing to know what's inside Denny's and Taco Bell, I've seen loads of them wherever we go - you can't find a policeman in LA for love nor money but should you need a fix of Denny's, you're on a winner). The reason for this is that much of the land around Interstate 15 is almost impossible to build on, all unforgiving mountains, jagged hills and sudden valleys, and all this in heat that could fertilise an egg, let alone fry it. However, as it was in Toronto when I was last there (although that seemed flatter as I recall it), everywhere that it is possible to build on, new housing projects - and I mean huge housing projects, although they use the cotton-candy term 'communities' instead - are in various stages of construction. You can almost immediately tell who they are aimed at, too, by the difference in the size and style of what's on offer. The class system is so alive and kicking in the US of A.

Even the long-established towns and communities are astounding to see, because, unlike England, where towns and cities have, in some sense, evolved (sometimes over centuries), here they are designed whole: tight terraces, uniform styles and the ever-ubiquitous, navigator's saviour, blocks. I can understand why, there is something quite comforting about the uniformity of it all, but look beyond the towns, and the accompanying walls and walls of malls and malls, and it looks as though these communities have been dropped here, complete, upon this ancient landscape. San Diego really conveys the sense to me, far more effectively than LA, that America is huge and I mean huge, as in way bigger than it looks on the map. Even a big map. And it feels so alien, so different than back home in this sense, sometimes on the journey down from LA, I would look at this vast landscape and it stretches way beyond any distance I can conceive of, in my experience as a densely-populated-English-city girl. It scares me sometimes in a way, and yet it delights me in another. For want of a better word, awesome! The picture that kicks off the post, which was taken from the top of the SkyTower in SeaWorld goes some way to capturing that sense of vast spaces, and that's in the city.

So, we arrived at Chula Vista, which is so friendly and has lots of green bits (I'm referring to trees and bushes and grass, rather than mould), which the campsite at Pomona, LA didn't (although that had a recreation room with air conditioning and this one doesn't so it's all swings and roundabouts as Mum would say). We settled in nicely last night (Friday night to us) but I couldn't write because the WiFi was all skewiff as we were only in a temporary spot. This meant that I had to wheel the laptop in its special carry case all the way across the campsite to sit in the children's park and receive the signal there - the things I do to keep everyone informed, it has nothing to do with my ego, or gaining experience in travel writing, I'm doing this all for you, my public - very cosmopolitan. I wrote until 11pm and then they wanted to switch the park lights off (philistines) so I had to delay uploading the post until today.

This morning we drove 20 minutes or so out of the park to go to SeaWorld, which was really fabulous, although I did have some concerns about the animals being pimped out to perform for the public in the way that they were. There's a huge conservation element to the park, and they have their own breeding programme, but I would have been just as happy to see them swimming around in pseudo-natural environments, in fact happier than seeing them perform tricks. I comforted myself by dreaming up stories about the good animals 'going bad' and eating the crowd (myself excepted, they would have recognised my positive karmic intentions), but it was a poor salve for my conscience. I couldn't bring myself to take many photos though, because when I took one of the dolphins, which was the first section we went to, I could have sworn that the dolphin looked at me reproachfully, like I should have known better than to exploit for holiday snaps. I felt so guilty after that that I didn't take any more, well, except for the penguins, but they were showing off and practically begging me to. Dad took loads of pictures though, so I'm using those here instead.

We went up the SkyTower, as I mentioned, which was fab. Apart from some initial nerves as we rode up into the air, I wasn't worried about being 265 feet up in the air, which is unusual for me, but the view was breath-taking and I just didn't have time to be scared. After that we went straight to see Shamu (check him out on his own web cam at http://www.shamu.com/) the orca, a glorious and majestic and quite overwhelmingly huge creature. Now, like I say, Shamu (I couldn't stop saying his name in Bo Selecta style with an extremely rude epithet attached to the end - can you guess what it is yet?) is a wonder of the world in his own right, but there is an hour long show in which he performs a series of tricks with the SW staff (now that doesn't sound quite right, and yet the pimping metaphor is starkly correct, really), including letting them surf on his back, flipping them up into the air and propelling them around the huge pool/stadium on his nose (I'm not sure how he did that, but part of me just kept wishing he'd just eat one of them, so I wouldn't feel so guilty). Amy told me off for looking so disturbed throughout, and I must say my emotions were on a bit of a ricochet, part of me was thinking, that's amazing, but the other part of me was thinking, In the name of God, let the orca go free. Not that they could, he wouldn't last two minutes in the wild now that they've turned him into a big spoon-fed performing pussy. Amy thinks I take these things too seriously and think about them too much - any votes?

We saw sharks, which were not, thankfully as terrifying as JAWS, and the hammerheads always make me laugh because, well, you just think, Why though? every time you look at them. The dolphin show was fabulous, oh and I fed a dolphin! Can't believe I was about to forget to tell you that! Amy and I paid five dollars for some food and then you lay your palm flat over the water and that's the sign for the dolphins to come to you, then you stroke their head and they let you because they know you'll give them food after. I only stroked his head once, because he gave me this reproachful stare all over again (and it wasn't even the same bloody dolphin) and I felt like a punter with a prostitute so I just gave him all the food I had after that, just because he was a dolphin and he was cool. All the animals are trained through sign language and whistles to perform their tricks, though the park staff call the tricks 'behaviours' to make themselves feel better. As if. What dolphin requires the 'behaviour' of leaping 35 feet into the air to catch a flag in his teeth, heavens to betsy.

My favourite, without a doubt, were the penguins.

Didn't do much, didn't perform tricks, just waddled around, looking at all the punters as if we were the ones in the zoo and they'd paid the admission to come and stare at us for the day. They are chilled out little dudes, and I didn't feel so bad about them because something in their vibe said, Don't give a toss really, at least it's warmer here, innit? We also saw, beluga whales, manatees (these are from Florida and are really bizarre and HUGE, check them out on http://www.greenscreen.org/newsletter/articles/Manatee.html ), polar bears, sea otters, walrus', sea lions and way too many fish to name individually here. It was a really good day.

Dad and I had a barney on the way home, only our second one, but my Steve Hender NLP training has taught me to think of this as a good thing. At least we're both getting to know each other better in terms of where our boundaries are! It's now ten past one in the morning here and I can hear Dad snoring in his end of the trailer (check out the pics inside and out here - look at the slide-out on the trailer, that's the bit sticking out and it makes our front room twice as big as it is when we're driving!), while Amy is fast asleep in our shared room above the driving quarter. If I'm to get up in the morning at all, I should go to bed now. We're going to Balboa Park tomorrow. This is the USA's "largest cultural park" and houses the San Diego Zoo (prepare yourself for more 'Should we/shouldn't we contain animals in parks and zoos" angst tomorrow) as well as a dozen or more other museums in beautiful landscaped gardens. I'm really looking forward to the museums especially. Tell you all when I see you next.

Big hugs going out to Mum, Bean, Matt, Kitty Kat Kate, Shon and the gorgeous Lisa Clark - really missed you all today. Kate, if you're not getting psychic flashes about me every so often over the last 24 hours, you've lost your magic mojo! Love to all, peace out. Duuuuuuuudes.