South of SF on the coast 19-21 Oct

Mon 19th
Happy Birthday Tristan (and Pablito in Quito) - Tris managed to wake up not too early (to our surprise) and then he opened his presents. It started as another coldish, drizzly sort of day and we had to go and find an Internet cafe and try to get the computer fixed. After a lot of looking (due to the incredibly poor signage they have over here) we finally found a chamber of commerce who managed to point us in the direction of a place that might be able to help us with the computer strangely enough in a Chinese restaurant called Mr Hong's Chinese! Mr Hong was a lucky charm as the computer started working straight away and then he kindly printed out some documents that I needed to sign and then scanned them back into the computer so that I could return them to the UK. Celso ate a large plate of Chinese food and Tristan sat playing his new birthday DS game whilst I caught up with the blog and loaded our photos. Then after a nifty bit of shopping to buy Tristan a carrot birthday cake we got on our way in the sunshine to San Juan Bautista to camp. So not a very exciting day for Tris' birthday but he has been engrossed all day; first with a 3D vision book and then with his new DS games. We ate cake and sang happy birthday at tea time when we had stopped in a campsite in San Juan Bautiste, the site of an old Catholic Mission. The town is full of, what I call, the typical, low, fat walled, white Mexican style buildings, with their rounded contours and red roofs. We went out for an amazing Mexican,Tristan birthday, meal in one of these buildings with a large cactus filled garden. It was the best Mexican food I've ever eaten and we left loaded with left overs and very bloated and sleepy.
Tues 20th
We drove down the 101 to Monterey Bay and parked up by the sea in the old cannery area of the town with divers emerging from the waves. It was hot and sunny and the wharf area was so clean and manicured with 1cm lawns and spotlessly swept sidewalks that it seemed to be some sort of Theme Park, with the podgy curvaceous stone buildings painted in an array of pastel colours and people standing in the doorways of the little shops asking passers-by 'How are you doing?' or such like. The Aquarium was quite expensive but well worth the fee, it happened to be the 25th anniversary of their opening so there was cake for everyone and special events. We spent over 1/2 an hour just watching the sea otters, they are the most amazingly beautiful and cute animals. The double glass meant that you were only about 10cm from them as they floated on their backs and attended to their cleaning, they opened their jaws and rubbed their cheeks and their heads just as though they were washing their hair, or having some sort of deliciously relaxing head massage. We were lucky enough to have a great spot to watch them being fed but sadly they didn't give them shellfish that they could break open on their stomachs with their little rocks (even though one of them was carrying a rock), instead they gave them squid and prawns with they chewed noisily and with very little manners at all! So we still need to go and search for some more otters in the wild so that Celso and Tristan can see them eating shellfish but I am glad to have been able to see them at such close quarters. The next most amazing exhibit was the sea horses, I didn't know that there were so many different types; and I felt happy about each of the enclosures that housed the creatures as they were really large and filled with corals and weeds, what I hope to be, a very natural environment for them. There were also 3 storey tanks that housed huge tuna, shoals of mackerel, sardines and anchovies, and another that was the first ever, in the world, to grow live kelp; into which a diver descended and then all the fish appeared to get fed, small tiger sharks, rockfish, eels and various types of bass. We spent over 4 hours in the aquarium (plus an hour when we went out to make sandwiches in the van), started by the Packard family (I believe of Hewlett Packard), in the last cannery building to be closed in Monterey, and then growing to use many more of the old cannery companies along the wharf. Near the end of our visit, at one end of the aquarium, we came on some large floor to ceiling windows that looked out over the bay and we sat and watched for a while. How lucky were we, three sea otters were there in the water about 100m off shore (and there are less than 1000 left in the wild), they were diving and playing but unfortunately not feeding, but amazing anyway. Then we drove south along Route 1, which is the coastal route to Los Angeles, and again we twisted and turned along cliff side roads in and out of coastal fog - I think I'm used to this sort of driving now! We stopped at a campsite as dusk fell, down a steep embankment to the edge of a river and went to sleep listening to the tinkle of the water over the stones in the river bed.
Wed 21
We awoke to the tinkling of the river and got up into sunshine beaming down through the trees. On the far side of the river there were at least 5 wild turkeys scratching about in the woods with one male snorting and gurgling and showing off his tail and several females following him around.
We drove 60 miles south along the coastal road; up and down, twisting and turning (again); in and out of coastal fog that could be seen coming up the cliff and billowing across the road in front of us. There were some fantastic views and some extraordinary little towns; one, called Lucia, consisted of a church and a small hotel, as far as we could see. We kept on stopping to look for Sea Otters, even at a place I remember that mum and I saw several about 15 years ago when we drove the California coast together, but we saw absolutely nothing. Then just after the Point Piedras Blancas Lighthouse we could see loads of, what looked like, logs on a beach. We stopped and spent over an hour sitting in the sun watching juvenile elephant seals on the beach and in the water. The adults are all out at sea fattening up for breeding season at this time, but the juveniles stay in near the coast, the young males trying out their snorting and flaring of their nostrils, play fighting and sorting out who was dominant to whom. The females were mainly sunbathing on the beach, they were much prettier without the oversized noses, but all were covered in the most enormous swarms of flies.
We reached Hearst Castle around 2pm and went for a tour around this rediculously oppulent property which cost $6000000 to build over 40 years at the start of the 20th century. At one time the property consisted of over 250,000 acres with a private pier at the sea, a zoo with bears, wolves and other predators and free roaming kangaroos, zebra and elk along with beef cattle and bird raising areas for chicken, quail, turkey, pheasant etc to feed the household. Hearst made his fortune as a newspaper publisher, he collected art from all over the world and used many original pieces in his building such as a 14th century ceiling from Spain in his bedroom. Sometimes the things he bought did not fit exactly into his plans so he would either extend them with modern peices but carefully made up to look authentically old, or sometimes he split the pieces and divided them between rooms. The building techniques were state of the art for the time using reinforced concrete for the main structure, though the detail was exquisite, but a very odd mix of many different styles. We were swept through the house by a very knowledgeable guide and we were all a bit dumstruck by the amazing quantity of beautiful artefacts, finishing in the indoor pool with gold leaf tiles. I came here 15 years ago with mum but it was just as astonishing the 2nd time round.
Finally we drove another 10 or 15 miles further south to Morro Bay and we are camped by the beach under the Montana de Oro which we intend to investigate tomorrow.