Where on earth..?

Malibu, Big Sur & rest of the west coast

On the second cruising day we headed north from LA. Our first goal was to check out Malibu which is just half an hours ride north from Santa Monica via the south pacific freeway. I thought Malibu would be a place with a nice beach bulevard and palm trees growing on the sidewalk. Well, that's not Malibu. Malibu is a long strech of nice beach but the entrances to the beach are rare and most of the beach front is blocked by private buildings thus blocking the view to the sea. The public Malibu pier and the lagoon beach on the north side is the main entrance for the mortals to see the beach. Between the pier and the lagoon beach there is a really great point break for surfers. Unfortunately after the warm waters we've been used to the "cold" water of the west coast did not feel too inviting. We also checked out the shopping mall to see any celebs but the time was not right and I left Malibu with a slight disappointment in my mind. Perhaps we've seen too many great places not to be able to enjoy the good places anymore. Well, at least we might need some time between the places but our schedule now will not allow us that.

Anyway, from Malibu we went to Santa Barbara which is yet another playground for the rich. Instead of entering yet another narrow strech of beach front buildings Santa Barbara offered a town centre away from the beach. The beach and the central pier at it offered a great beach buleward and an excellent jogging ground for me the following morning. The whole city was almost totally rebuilt after an earthquake. When they planned the new city they decided to build the whole city as a replica of an old spanish town. You can see only red tile roofed buildings with neatly decorated white walls with mediterranean balconies and such. It's a really nice place to visit but again it is not exactly for the budget travellers.

The following day we continued the pacific highway 1 and entered a place called Big Sur. It is not really a place or town but just a long strech of coastal road turning and twisting around the mountaneous coast. We we're a bit unlucky on this part of our journey as the fog and clouds from the sea were blocking the best views most of the time. Though I'm not complaining as the narrow and twisting road is like riding a roller coaster. Plenty of fun and occational views were totally worth the time spent.

Big sur is a long ride on the coast and we arrived in Santa Cruz late in the evening. The city was getting dark when we had our dinner. We had to see the famous pier with the fun parks and all in it after the sun was set and the sight was only promising us the good time we would have had there if we would have had more time to spend. If you ever have the opportunity then you should spend a day or two in Santa Cruz as there seems to be plenty of things to do even for a budget traveller.

On our way back south from Santa Cruz we enjoyed yet another night ride on the freeway. The following day we turned away from the freeway and visited the wine country. After seeing a lot of great wine areas I was still amazed by the size of that wine country. The wine itself was not exactly my favourite but after a few tastings you couldn't care less (or be afraid when driving - just kidding!). Anyway, after Carina had her wine and I had my tiny share of the tastings we had a great picnic on the side of the road. The view overlooked a great open ranch in front of us and behind us there were yet another cattle ranch with hundreds of cows. The day was topped with a visit to Los Olivos which was yet another setting for the movie called Sideways.

posted by Raine @ 9:45 PM