Sea Elephants

Packed up and on Highway 1 by 9am.  We intended to stop occasionally  on the way South but the coast was quite fog bound so the views were limited.  Amazing amount of invasive pampas grass on the hillsides.   As we came down from Big Sur we stopped off at this beach where, since the early 1990s,  a huge colony of elephant seals has built up.  They are all along the coast but here is where they regroup in the autumn,  lying in heaps, fighting lazily, swishing sand over themselves to keep cool.  There is a car park and an information booth but they are supremely unconcerned by people peering at them.  The largest males, who are almost as big as real elephants don’t show up until later in the year but even so - these are big fat babies. 

We drove through Moro Bay, past Heart Castle,  where we saw the herd of zebras kept since William Hearst’s time and onto the small cool town of Los Alamos where we stopped for lunch at Bell’s, a restaurant run by the niece of V’s friends David and Nan.  It was exceptionally good food, quite simple but immaculate.  Very Franch they say, ie not quite French. 

After lunch we headed on to Ojai where V’s friend Joan made us race up to a rock shaped like a whale to see the sunset.  There had been a big fire four years ago in Ojai but there was a lot of new growth in the area.  Joan’s property, an old house, wasn’t damaged. 

Hannah and Alexander joined for dinner and afterwards V & I went to the Capri Hotel, a modernised, classic 50s motel, very cool.