Sea Life

14/05/2010

I woke up on the beach . . . well in a car park by the beach that was shrouded in sea fog. After some wet wipe-ing and some raison bran ( the boys had lucky charms eugh!) we started of the drive up the big sur coast. Breath-taking scenary of jagged coastline and rolling hills with an intermittent curtain of fog.

We stopped at heirst castle, which is a spanish castle thing we thought we'd look round, but you had to go on a tour package thing that was more money than we wanted to spend to see something we weren't that interested in. So we made tracks.

However just down the road we saw a much better sight, and this time it was free. There was a nearly deserted layby nextto the beach and on the beach were 30/40 elephant seals having a snooze.

We went to investigate and it was amazing. They were massive and all sleeping on top of each other like puppies but every now and then making these squelching sounds as they breathed like they were snoring. They were quite smelly but really cute. We couldve watched them for hours as occassionally one of them decided to get up and go back to the sea and had to clamber over all the others to get there. My favourite were the ones that looked really identical who were lying back to back like a heart (see pictures).

When we got a bit further along highway one and there was an 'elephant seal view point' that was full of cars but had no where near as many seals, we drove on smugly.

After this the road started to climb and become less straight before becoming hairpin turns through huge clefts in the rock. When the fog cleared we got some amazing shots of the coastline. It really was fantastic it's just a shame that the van doesn't have the best visability. Nexttime I do highway one I want to do it on a motorbike, the curves in the road would be great fun!

We reached Carmel at about 3pm and got some gas and were going to have a look around. It's a small tourist town, really cute full of cape cod style houses and shops. The place was a hive of activity, so we went down and looked at the beach which looked a lot more like the new England coast than the carefully manicures west coast. I imagine it's pretty bleakthere in the winter.

Our final stop for the day was in Monterey (maybe like monterey jack cheese?) where there was an old Cannery which had been turned into a huge aquarium. I loved it, there were exhibits of jellyfish, coral and fish, as well as flamingos, penguins and sharks. 

My favourites though were the sea otters. They were huge, the size of a retriever with little hands. One was rolling around on the surface of the water washing it's fur and the other was lying on it's back in the sun massaging his head - that's the life for 
me . . .

After andrew had found a penny to squash and Johny had a pin badge we started looking for somewhere to lay our hat. The beaches to the north of 
Monterey had loads of RV and campsites by the beach, so we headed there and found an RV park that would put us up for $35 including hot showers and wifi. But as we were on a tent pitch we had to put up our tent even if weren't intending on sleeping in it. It was not very impressive and seemed to have a dog flap on it!

We headed a bit further into town in search if dinner and found a little Mexican restaurant. We we decided to try it, as mexican food usually has real vegetables in it and after a few days of junk food it was time to balance it out.

The food was great. Andrew didn't know what to have as he's never really had Mexican food so he got a mixed platter which had refried beans on it. I didn't really get them, they didn't taste of anything.

Anyway we are heading to Santa cruz tomorrow . . .