What a magical place! The vibe here is pumping. Hippies in the st, trippers strolling along appreciating nature, musicians in the sand, superfoods in your belly..
Ocean beach tugs on your heart strings & doesn’t let them go!

We fell in love with this place. I travelled here with the Carter siblings, what a great team we were! With each of us not having a care in the world but when to turn over on the sand, we had the most chilled week.
We went by greyhound to get here, & got the popular choice of the month – uber!
It was technically my first “greyhound” bus, and I was pleasantly surprised with the quality! We had leather seats, and we didn’t smell the smell of urine once! Which was great.
It was ten times better than buses I had previously gotten on the east coast, like the megabus. Gathering by the east coast being not as touristy, I’m assuming this is why.
The LA grey hound terminal was filled with every character imaginable. Mothers wearing stilettos to junkies that could barely walk.
The San Diego bus stop was a lot nicer.
San Diego, the city, was so surprisingly clean and modern! We all didn’t really know what to expect but had a pleasant surprise when it wasn’t like the city of LA.
The buildings were all fairly modern and barely any rubbish on the pavement.
We spent one day in San Diego city & wandered up Broadway.
That day we went to the San Diego zoo! Which was known as one of the best in the world! It was 100 acres in size, & there were buses to get around to each section of the zoo!
It was a lot bigger than little ‘ol melbourne zoo that’s for sure! They had animals I’d never seen in my life – pandas, polar bears, grizzley Bears, reindeers, iguanas, those creepy lizards you see in movies of the desert & even a whole section dedicated to Australian wildlife!
Every animal had the indication on their description of weather they were Stable, Endangered, or Extinct. It was astounding to see how many were Endangered! Probably about 90% of them were!
Zoo’s are a wide eye opener to how much humans really are damaging nature & people don’t see the importance they play in our Eco system.
They had model sculptures of extinct animals. One that stood out was an extinct Lion which was literally about 8 times the size of your every day lion. It was taller than me!
The San Diego Zoo made me feel like a little kid again, it was a super fun day!

••• “Everything on earth is being continuously transformed, because the earth is alive & it has a soul – we are apart of that soul, so we rarely recognise that it is working for us” •••

On the way back to Ocean Beach, we stopped at the Gaslamp District, which is a beautiful area of restaurants and bars in the city. There are quaint street lamps the whole way along the st, hence the name.
We went to “Dicks Last Resort” for some food, dranks & laughs.
Dicks is an American restaurant where the waiters aim is to speak to you in the most inappropriate way they possibly can. It was an absolute cracker.
They judge your personality as you order & then make you a hat made out of paper with a funny phrase on it to take the piss out of you. Ryan’s was “my balls keep falling out of my thong”, Kirstys was “I go down faster than power windows”, & mine was “Backdoor Princess”. It’s a very funny restaurant if you want a good laugh!

We were staying at Obi (Ocean Beach International Hostel) on Newport Ave. It was probably the best hostel I’ve ever stayed in in my life and I’ve stayed in around 30-40 hostels! It was decorated with local artist paintings on the interior of the building and on the exterior. It made you happy just looking at it! Me & Kirsty were in our element at this humble hippie home of a hostel. It was the perfect location aswell! Next door, you had the choice of Acai bowls, smoothies, sushi, Mexican, cute hippie shops.. Everything we both loved! We were literally a 2 minute walk from the beach, you could see it from our hostel, outside the front door!
After being there for a week, it became like a home! Everyone there was like one big family. It had the best community feeling out of any hostel I’ve ever stayed in.
Everyone just wanted to be near each other and hear others stories & have fun together in the sun. It sound perfect, well it was!
The staff got involved every night with the guests. They organised beer pong/flip cup challenges, campfire parties on the beach and Night’s out.

On the Tuesday night we all went down to the beach for a piss up at the beach with snores and music! An older lady approached me while I was sitting out the front enjoying a beer, & said she was trying hard to find someone to play guitar for the camp fire. I wasn’t going to mention I knew how, but when she couldn’t find anyone else – I thought what the hell, why am I afraid anyway. I let go of my fear of not being good enough & we jammed all night and played for everyone at the hostel down at the beach. She played flute, I played guitar. We played with Black bird by the Beatles. It was the only song I knew I was quite confident with.
Two other english boys ended up putting their hands up & spoke up about their hidden musical talents.
They were both amazing! I don’t know why they didn’t speak up earlier. So they started jamming with us to! We played with chords and harmonies and found ourselves singing Yellow by Coldplay.
At this moment, I fell in love again with music again. This is what music is. Playing with people you just met at a hostel on the beach, with a bottle of moscato your side.
It was a special moment for me, I felt present & felt joy run through my body.
These moments when you realize how amazing life is, are the best.

The homeless in Ocean Beach werent even really homeless. They were hippies. People who loved to just live with the earth. They didn’t need possessions to make them happy.
The surf and the sand on their feet was enough for them. We didn’t get asked for money off one of these “homeless” once. (except for the time Kirsty and I were chillen out the front of ocean beach having a cider & a man in a good & sunglasses asked us for a dollar because he said (and I quote) “look sorry girls, I promise I’m not stoned but I’ve mysteriously woken up on the other side of the ocean & needs money to get a boat back” (there are no big boats from ocean beach and across the ocean is Hawaii then onto Australia) hmmm oh ocean beach, never failed to entertain!
The “homeless” loved to have convosations with you. About life, culture, travel, anything that you knew and they didn’t – they would listen!
So I was told that I couldn’t swim for 10 days with my new tattoo, but how can one go to a place of sun, surf and sand without having a cheeky dip! After watching the surfers all week, me and Kirsty decided we’ll attempt these 4-5foot waves that San Diego was offering.

The surfing in Ocean beach is amaaaaazing! I’ve never seen such talented surfers in my life! The pier extended to about 1km out to sea & the advanced surfers surf THROUGH the pier! It would be so dangerous but they do it with such flare that it looks safe.
I love watching them hang ten! This one surfer I’ve watched hangs ten then walks back then does it again, crazzzayy!
Even in Australia I’ve never seen such talented surfing! We were lucky we came in October, turns out that’s the hottest month in San Diego! & best for surfing!
Surfing competitions were happening all the time, & majority of the cars in the beach car park were all Combi Vans that everyone lived in. The surf was so inspiring, it made me want to move somewhere like Byron Bay desperately and try out a lifestyle like the Ocean Beach lifestyle!

The waves looked scary but they were like a big teddy bear. The seemed scary from the outside but once you got in there and wave dunked you around, it really wasn’t as angry as it looked. The Aussie waves are much more powerful when you go under.

San Diego has been one of my favourite places so far & DEFINATELY one I can see myself going back to! Ocean beach has that effect on people…