Monterey Bay area

After a rather nice lie-in, I dragged myself out of the hostel at about 10:00am and found a bus to take me to Old Monterey, where I had the morning to kill before my bus to Big Sur.

I had a thoroughly enjoyable morning there..... I booked a whale watching trip for tomorrow and watched some lovely sea otters and seals in the bay from Fisherman's Wharf, before heading to the nearby Maritime Museum.  The museum was a bargain - $3 and a good amout of information and artefacts about lighthouses, the European settlers in California, the coast's role in naval warfare and the local sardine cannig industry.

At 1:20 my bus departed for Big Sur - a large section of high cliff about an hour south of Monterey.  The all-too-common fog was rolling in so I didn't get the full view of the rugged coastline at big Sur, although the area between Monterey and Big Sur was nonetheless stunning!  I decided against coastal explorations, partly due to the fog, realising it was clearer inland.  Instead I went to Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park where I spent a wonderful three hours walking the gentle trails through coastal (not 'giant', but not exactly small either) redwood forests.  The woodlands were beautiful and shady in comparison to the open, scrubby sections of path which offered no shelter from the hot inland sun.  I saw the Pfeiffer falls - impressive for their height rather than their flow, although that could be a seasonal thing, and I heard from a lady on the train that California has had very little rain in the past year.

I wandered and sat briefly by the Big Sur river, although it was the noisiest section of the Park I encountered due to the proximity to the campsite, and schools having broken up over here.  However, I did manage to share a few moments watching a ground squirrel as it went in and out of its burrow quite happily as long as i didn't move too quickly from my rock about 2 metres away.

I returned to Monterey after 7pm and went straight back to New Monterey where I am staying.  I walked down to Cannery Row, which is an area of shops and restaurants by the bay, where I watched some dolphins diving in the bay, before walking along towards Pacific Grove where a large number of harbor seals were lounging on a beach in the last hour of daylight.

Another day in this area before heading north again....