This post was written on Thursday but posted today (Saturday) due to lack of internet.

I woke up in my tent freezing cold this morning. The fog had come in and everything was damp. This was a bit annoying because I was hoping to get packed up fairly early and was forced to wait for the tent to dry enough to pack away.

I had my first camp breakfast; four eggs and three slices of cold bread. It was pretty average…

Before leaving Monterey I had to go and visit Cannery Row and the world famous aquarium (which I already had a ticket for). Cannery Row is a street by the water where a bunch of canneries used to process and can the bountiful sardine catch. Business boomed until the sardine population crashed bringing the canning industry along with it. Many of the original buildings still remain and have been repurposed as shops and accommodation.

Cannery Row, Monterey

The aquarium occupies one end of the row. I’m not sure if it’s in a cannery or not but it did have a collection of canning machinery on display. It has been called the best aquarium in the world and it certainly didn’t disappoint. The highlight would have to be the gigantic deep sea tank that featured hammerhead sharks, huge tuna (2+ metres long), a massive school of sardines, and many others. I’d never seen such large tuna in real life and they were pretty amazing.

The other favourite was the sea otters. I’d always imagined that otters were about the size of a cat but these were twice that at least. There are four resident otters, three of whom were out and about today. They spent the entire time jumping and diving and performing for the watching crowds.

I was hoping to stay tonight at a campground about an hour south of Monterey in Big Sur. On the way down I stopped in at the postcard town of Carmel-By-The-Sea (it’s actually called that). It was amazingly pretty and entirely perfect, the sort of place that nice families would live in a Disney movie.

Unfortunately the campground was full, as was the next, and the next two after that. I finally found a spot at San Simeon, about two hours further south than I had planned to drive. This particular camp ground has no water available at all due to drought but luckily I had filled my huge water container yesterday.

The road through Big Sur was epic. The land rises abruptly from the ocean up to towering peaks with the road precariously carved in the side. Generally the land looked arid and sandy but every time a river flowed down from the mountains groves of huge redwoods are found. Out in the sea the famous California kelp forests can be seen. All along the road the fog would swirl in and out. It would pour through gaps in trees like water which made the trip feel almost surreal. It was like driving on another planet, one that changed every few miles.

It’s a remarkably wild coast. There is almost no access at all to any of the beaches from the road (mostly because it’s hundreds of metres below) and there was plenty of wildlife around. Just before San Simeon was an Elephant Seal rookery where the beach was crawling with hundreds of the huge seals. According to the information panels the come ashore this time of year to moult.

The road on its own is worth the trip. It was a big change from the wide open freeways that I had driven the last two days and reminded me much more of roads in New Zealand. One big difference though was the quality of the drivers here. There was not a single passing lane in 3 hours of driving and very few spots where passing was permitted. Drivers seemed to understand that they might get stuck behind slower vehicles and I didn’t see any overtaking or tailgating.

The famous Hearst Castle in just a few miles back up the road so that’s where I’ll head tomorrow morning. After that it’s a straight run south down to Santa Barbara.

My Tent