Monterey County

We have been staying just outside Monterey in an appropriately named town called Seaside. Everything pretty much does what it says on the tin here – Seafoam St., Spray St. – and that’s no bad thing. We love the place and could easily spend days sinking our bodies into the dunes.

On the way here we also visited Carmel-by-the-Sea, which is an old artists’ colony filled with independent shops, cafes and clear beaches. Cool place.

We did another great coastal walk last night into Monterey, mostly on the sand. Nicola got her feet wet and we saw lines of birds nosediving into the sea. When we got into town it was getting dark, so we quickly took in the touristy parts like Fisherman’s Wharf and Cannery Row and that was that… we washed up in a tiki bar and ate ahi poke sprayed with sriracha mayonnaise. It was Tong Heaven.

Today we took the car and crawled for 17 miles through the gated community of Pebble Beach. The rugged, granite-black coast that surrounds much of the area is in contrast with its manicured golf courses. It’s a pretty upmarket place, but if you don’t own a local mansion or have a prize Links trophy glowing in your cabinet at home, you can still take in some of the best views of the area for only $10.25. You pay the toll and you get a guidebook which highlights all the key points of interest, and we wound up spending around 4 hours here so it was well worth it.

And we really loved it! As well as the rocky parts, there was still a lot of white sand and tons of cypress trees, which are really ominous and cool. There’s one called the Lone Cypress and one called the Ghost Tree, but they don’t all have names. The roads were coiled through all sorts of terrain, so as well as seeing tons of great stuff we had a really pleasant drive.

The water surrounding Point Joe is known as the Restless Sea, where the rocks underwater create “unique offshore turbulence” by breaking the waves early. Jutting out of the ocean around here was Seal Rock, where we saw tons more sea lions (yeah, you’d think they’d be seals). We also saw otters at Cypress Point Lookout and in the designated picnic area, a seagull tried to steal our lunch and our camera.

Nicola has started to communicate with the animals. I’ll probably wake up next to one tomorrow, and I’ll take it down to the beach.