Pacific Coast Highway

The Pacific Coast Highway, or Highway 1, runs along the coast of California and offers some beautiful towns and viewpoints along the way. After strengthening ourselves with a delicious soup in bread, we drove to our first stop in Monterey. This is a small, quiet town with a harbor and was recommended to us by Philip's grandpa. Our accommodation was just outside in Salinas, where we had booked a caravan through AirBnB. We briefly felt like we were in Australia again and found it quite fun to live here despite the cramped bathroom.

On the first day we strolled around, observed sea otters and seals, and walked along Cannery Row, where Monterey's large can factories used to be located. In the evening we snuggled up in our little caravan.

The next day we finally had another dive. Philip really wanted to see the Californian kelp forest, so to speak underwater trees that also bind a lot of CO2! This time we rented the equipment and the instructor separately, so we loaded all the equipment including 4 oxygen bottles into our little Toyota Corolla and drove to the beach in Monterey. Our wetsuits were super thick, and we also put on gloves, hoods and boots because it was icy 11-13 degrees on the seabed 😅 For the first time we went directly into the water from land, otherwise we were always from a boat started off. Unfortunately, the first dive was quite short, more to get in, but we already saw some starfish and of course the impressive kelp plants. After a short break we went into the cool water for the second time. This time longer and deeper (and colder) and next to the kelp we also briefly saw a sea lion flitting past. We also lost our diving instructor once due to the low visibility and had to do a so-called CESA (controlled emergency ascent) for the first time! That was exciting, but not that dramatic since we weren't that deep down and so close to the coast. Our diving instructor came up shortly after us in almost the same place; he was probably just one kelp plant away. After that it continued without any further incidents. In the end we were pretty exhausted and had a lot of sore muscles from carrying all the equipment, but we had a lot more experience ☺️ After the dive we drove further afield, to the cute little town of Carmel-by-the-Sea, owned by Philip's grandma always raves. We strolled along the pretty streets and beach and headed back to Monterey after some hot chocolate. We decided to spend one more night here and booked a motel right in town. We even had an electric fireplace there! After a very tasty Vietnamese dinner we fell asleep like babies.

The next morning we made it out of Monterey and continued on Highway 1, always with the Pacific and its jagged rocks on our right. Since the road was closed about halfway along our planned route, but there were many beautiful viewpoints there, we drove to the Bixby Bridge, turned around and had to go back to Monterey to get onto Highway 101. This time our destination for the day was a rather unspectacular place called San Simeon, but where a colony of elephant seals lives on the beach. We made it to the viewing point before sunset and were able to watch the funny animals. Similar to their relatives the seals, but even larger and flabby, they lay around on the beach and now and then crawled over each other. The males have a small trunk, which also gives them their name, are huge and really loud.

Next we went briefly to Morro Bay, where we took a short walk on the beach and then on to beautiful Santa Barbara. At the beginning there was an accident right next to our parking lot that caused a lot of noise, but no one was injured. We then explored the city, which seems to be one of the most expensive residential areas in the area and we quickly understood why. There was a huge, beautiful beach and large marina, as well as a wide pedestrian zone with all kinds of nice shops and restaurants. In the evening we treated ourselves to a damn tasty but also damn expensive vegan burger and drove on to the somewhat more affordable town of Carpinteria 😉.

After a very loud night in the motel right on the highway, we set off for Los Angeles early the next morning. We drove through the famous Malibu, where there were chic villas and there was a lot of traffic. Since we had to drop off our car and pick up our new car, our route first took us to the airport. We had actually booked an electric car, but unfortunately there was no longer one available and we had to make do with a giant spaceship-like SUV for the time being, but it quickly grew on us 😄.

We will spend the next few days in Los Angeles with Lauren, a very dear diving buddy who we met on the Galapagos Islands and with whom we are allowed to stay!