Catalina Island

We’d been talking about taking a trip to Catalina Island for weeks, but each time someone couldnt make it (including me once, again, sorry Martina for cancelling last minute!!). So for one of the final weekends I had in LA, we managed to book our tickets. Christopher had a deadline coming up with lots of work still to be done, thats why we made it a day-trip for saturday. Catalina Island is a part of LA county. Its about 25 miles off the coast, with two main cities: Two Harbors and Avalon, and a whole lot of nature and stunning beaches.


Christopher drove us out to the heliport of Long Beach early on saturday morning. As we only had one day on the island we decided to travel by air, and return late at night with the ferry. Its about an hour and a half on the ferry, whilst the helicopter transfers you from Long Beach to Avalon in 15 minutes. We were seeking for an adventurous day, so this was the best start we could think of! Apart from Craig, none of us had ever been into a helicopter. I was very excited but also quite nervous! Im very used to flying but I will always remain scared of heights. The helicopter ride turned out to be alot of fun!


After a good breakfast in Two Harbors, Martina and Christopher proposed to rent a bike. For those not familiar with the island: its nowhere near flat!! The journey up one of the highest hills of Avalon nearly killed me! No wonder we were the only bikers on the island. The reward of course is going downhill back into the centre of the little city: it was crazy how fast we went on our bikes! Back in the centre we had great seafood for lunch, ready for more fun. Being on an island I wanted to do something water related. As we were unlucky with the weather, snorkeling was not an option. So I sought to rent a boat. I thought without permit we would not be allowed to rent a motor-boat, but turned out it was no problem. We took the fastest boat we could rent, a 15 horse power, and left the port (Christopher that was a submarine you almost hit!!) to the open sea. We took turns in controlling the boat, and, apart from a little crash into a floating seawood mountain, everything went perfect and we saw the island from yet another side of view. I could have stayed the whole rest of the day on the boat, touring around the island, but Martina heard there are great hiking trails on Catalina. So we returned the boat, and went on for quite a hike up in the hills. The island is very dry, a large surface burnt down recently,so it has very low vegetation. Most of the people that come to the island are elderly playing golf, or tourist with very small children seeking for a quiet and easy vacation. There are no cars allowed on the island, if you want to move around motorised you can do so with a golf kart. Time flew though, so eventually we had to speed up our return down form the hills to the port to catch the last ferry. From Long Beach straight back to Pasadena, absolutely knackered but with a great and most adventurous day to remember...