Below is a photo montage summing up our time here. Now with zoom!

Despite the obvious ‘cultural’ link with Josh Schwartz, we found Newport to be far less ‘OC’ than we were expecting (and not in a good way). A combination of endless queues of giant cars (the latter being true to form I suppose), chain restaurants and tacky shops with a non-existent public transport system made us glad we were only passing through. The beach itself is quite nice, but compared to the coastal beauty of Big Sur and Northern California it was definitely lacking something. Laguna beach – a little way further down the coast – was by contrast, a pleasant surprise with beautiful, palm tree clad stretches of coast and hill top huts where people were reading and painting.

The onward drive to San Diego was scenic, with palm trees whizzing past the window and a marked increase in temperature as we headed south. We stopped once more in a kitschy little diner on the way (one of the famous ‘Ruby’s clan) which served, even by American standards, large portions of 50′s diner style food (the usual cherry pie, ice cream sundaes, hamburgers and fries), and then spent the rest of our journey trying to recover from the bloat. San Diego greeted us with an air of confusion as we made our way into the city centre and struggled to find somewhere to park our little car on our backpacker budget – nearly impossible it turned out. In a way I was glad it was so difficult, at least it meant that there were a bearable number of cars in the city centre, meaning plenty of space for pedestrians and bikes, but I still can’t work out whether it is down to simple economics or city policy…

The hostel itself was certainly one of the more unique ones that we visited in California, with every surface available adorned with lively colours. It was located in the ‘Gaslamp’ district, a hodgepodge of soulless pubs hosting Karaoke nights and sports bars packed with screens, screaming punters and large groups on one long bar crawl headed for Tijuana. The only real points of amusement nearby were an alcoholic ‘Slurpee’ bar which served semi-liquid ice cocktails with loads of food dye and a couple of interesting thrift stores. The real soul of San Diego lies elsewhere: in town it’s somewhere to the south near UCSD, an area we didn’t have time to visit; but further afield there is the beautiful coastline of La Jolla and to its north the Torrey Pines State Reserve. La Jolla is a coastal suburb of San Diego which has a different feel to the inner-city noise-fest nearby – it is much more relaxed and laid back, though conforming to some of the typical Californian suburban sights of furniture stores and minimalist cafés.

Man vs. Seal

Within La Jolla there is a major point of contention at the ‘Children’s Pool’ (a sheltered cove which the people in charge decided was a perfect place for the county’s children to swim. A nearby colony of seals had similar ideas however and decided to claim the beach as their nursery resulting in an ongoing battle. As always happens whenever nature makes inroads into a populated settlement, there are those who wish to turn the beach into a protected area for the seals and those who want it for their kids. Representatives from both camps man neighbouring info stalls at the entrance to the beach (so far only a couple of stand side fights have been reported). At present there is an uneasy truce with neither side getting exactly what they want but the seal population seems to be sticking around, so it looks like the compromise is holding so far.

Not wanting to get too embroiled in the seal battle, we headed a little further down the San Diego coast to watch the sunset from Torrey Pines. This is a cliff face that overlooks a long stretch of beach and open sea, with a precarious walk down to an impressive stretch of sand. We were joined by a small crowd of sunset gatherers, including a group of photographers armed with cameras of varying lense size. As the sun began to sink, three of the group jostled for position on a small viewing ledge, getting visibly angry as their huge lenses crossed with each other like swords (I never realised that photography could be so competitive but there we go)! We stayed to watch the sun set on its paparazzi before going for a moonlit walk along the beach.

My cousin Naomi had kindly offered for us to stay with her and her family in North Hollywood for our last ten days in the US and so we left San Diego the next the day for our final coastal drive back towards LA. On our exit out, a water main had burst in the middle of town creating a sort of film set atmosphere with evacuees on the street and SD cops closing off the area. It seemed a somewhat fitting end to our coastal Californian road trip.

The entrance to this great little bookshop is almost hidden among the jumble of restaurants and stalls which line the busy Venice Beach boardwalk. Its shop front is entirely obscured by the seating area of the next door Sidewalk café and people sometimes mistakenly go in thinking that they have found the toilets for the Sidewalk, only to be greeted by mountains of books, lazily guarded by the store cat ‘Conan the Librarian’. There is now a large sign with an arrow running along the front of the Sidewalk’s canopy, which is luckily also owned and run by the bookshop owners themselves, and is reported to be the financial crutch of the bookstore.

This bookshop is literally an oasis of quiet from the bustling crowds and noisy buskers outside and is a fierce supporter of independent enterprise. It hosts tables of books from independent publishers throughout the store and the influence of individual shop staffers can been seen all over (for example ‘Bonnie’s summer reading list’). The close knit staff here all have excellent taste, though taste is a subjective thing and their ultimate aim is to provide as wide a selection as possible so that they are offering rather than dictating choice. The politics, music and poetry sections are particularly good. SWB is well known for its curveball recommendations, which keep people coming back but they are also sadly not immune to the iron fist of Amazon. All too often, the bookshop is treated as an information centre, where people come for free advice or just to take photos of the book displays on their phones so they can order them online later. Even though we all seem to have less time as a society to spend ‘browsing’, I can’t help but feel that the death of independent bookshops such as this would be a sad loss. We tend to cling to the idea that the good ones will just keep going, but often it is a case of luck or money from other income streams which enables this and not all of them can rely on it. The bookshops we have visited so far are resourceful and do adapt but they still need people to buy books from them. If you think the world is a nicer place with them in it, give Amazon the push every once in a while and support them, and you’ll get a decent book out of it too (we were directed to Paul Theroux’s Great Train Bazaar, which has been a godsend on subsequent long train journeys, so thanks SWB!).

Book Soup (Sunset Strip, LA)

The infamous Book Soup deserves the level of notoriety it enjoys among LA locals and drop ins alike because it is a truly excellent bookshop. Their innovative and fun shop windows manage to mix attention grabbing fashion/headlines with subtle, and sometimes not so subtle, educational chastisement aimed to induce reading-neglect guilt in those whose side tables are currently piled with the latest gossip magazines; but it works and nearly everyone who is paused  by the window is eventually drawn through the doors – which more often than not, they will return through clutching a Book Soup bag. Once inside, they’ll have you hooked with an impressive range of titles which would never get featured on Oprah.  In their own words, through ‘our commitment to university, International, and small presses, customers will continue to be surprised by the rare gems found on our shelves’, and they’re not wrong there. Their staff picks section is known to have an almost reverential following and several well known ‘celebs’ who are far too busy/important to leave the comfort of their hotel rooms/chauffeur driven cars have been known to phone the store personally to arrange for a selection of the latest recommended titles to be sent asap to their local palace of residence. A bookshop which isn’t afraid to recommend good books, now there’s a novel idea.

Mystery Pier Bookshop ( Sunset Strip, LA)

A stones throw away from Book Soup but hidden down a narrow, darkened alley way is the Mystery Pier Bookshop which specialises in first editions, signed copies and rare books.  It doesn’t get more LA than this, from the film director style chairs which grace the outside to the pictures of the owner with Johnny Depp, Daniel Craig and the like on the wall, you cannot escape the fact that you are in Hollywoodland. The owner himself is an actor, married to an actor (he having featured in films such as Jurassic Park: the Lost World, she as one of the girls in the Prime of Miss Jean Brodie with Maggie Smith). Harvey is more than happy to chat and is clearly enthusiastic about his collection, showing us everything from a book inscribed by Queen Victoria to a nice collection of signed film scripts (the jewel in the crown currently being an annotated Charlie Chaplin manuscript). Harvey and his son Louis’s finds are museum quality and just being able to touch as carefully leave through the pages feels like something of an honour. Most of the stuff was way out of my price range but it is well worth a visit for Harvey’s stories alone.

Located a little way off the main street, not far from the beach is a small roastery with a great selection of international coffees. The smell of fresh brew oozes down the street and there’s a wide variety of just-roasted blends to sample from. We tried the Ethiopian Harrar, and a couple of sips from the others. Nice and cool inside (with interesting cat mural) – well worth the visit.

Santa Barbara Farmers’ Market (232 Anacapa St # 1A  Santa Barbara, CA 93101)

Delicious fresh produce. For their weekly schedule click here.

The project and their journey is nothing short of incredible. Back in 2008, Dieter Paulmann, the founder of Okeanos – Foundation for the Sea, spotted a vaka (the word for a traditional voyaging canoe or vessel used by South Pacific islanders) from the Cook Islands at the Festival of Pacific Arts in American Samoa and was inspired by it. He had been spending time with scientists, learning of the increasing changes that were taking place in the ecosystems of the Earth’s Oceans and was becoming increasingly saddened by the destruction that was taking place due to over-fishing, rising sea-levels, plastic debris and fossil fuel contamination. Ocean dead zones, acidification and noise pollution were just the tip of this problematic iceberg but instead of dwelling on this unwelcome news, Dieter looked to do something proactive. The vaka sighting came just at the right time and jumped out at him ‘as a metaphor and symbol for a sustainable, respectful life and relationship with the sea‘ and so the Pacific Voyage was born, a project which would aim to ‘bring back the traditional culture and wisdom of their ancestors into our modern world‘.  The plan would be to sail from the South Pacific to the US and back, using only the power of the wind and sun and other traditional methods of Pacific voyaging. In doing so, the crews (from several different South Pacific islands including New Zealand, Fiji, Samoa, Tahiti, Kiribati, Tonga and Hawaii amongst others), are aiming to spread the message of the need for stewardship of our oceans as well as ‘to strengthen our ties with the sea, renew our commitment to healthy ecosystems for future generations, and to honour our ancestors who have sailed before us‘.

Seven vakas were rebuilt in New Zealand, using Polynesian expertise and design (complete with beautiful carvings) but combined with more modern materials:

‘We followed our ancestor’s design, but incorporated more sustainable materials to lessen the impact on our environment. Fibreglass hulls replace timbre to protect our forests and we’ve added eight solar panels on the back of each vaka to power our engines. Natural gas is the only fossil fuel used, which is employed solely for cooking. Like our ancestors before us, we use no running water.’

from http://www.pacificvoyagers.org/

The vakas left New Zealand back in April 2011 and reached US shores by July. We caught up with them in late August when they were looking forward to their winter break in San Diego (due to last from the beginning of September to mid January 2012). Their eventual goal for part II of this epic voyage is to reach the Solomon Islands in time for the Festival of Pacific Arts by late June/July 2012 but they first plan to sail via Cabo San Lucas, The Cocos Islands, the Galapagos and then onto several destinations in the South Pacific including Fakarava, Tahiti, Bora Bora and Raiatea. All the crew are keeping blogs of the experience here – as one blog post read – ‘ the voyage on the ocean is also a journey within, dealing with the fluctuations of our minds as much as with the outer waves and winds‘. The crews that we met seemed a lot happier and ‘together’ than some of those who have sought to revive ancient sailing methods in recent years. The crew on the 1976 voyage of the Hōkūleʻa, which famously featured in a documentary film ‘Voyage of the Hōkūleʻa’, released the same year, were barely speaking to each other by the end due to underlying tensions and crew/navigator conflict. Not so here it seems. The cabins on these vakas were almost as small as those on the Hōkūleʻa but were well equipped and had a cosy rather than claustrophobic feel to them. The beautiful traditional carvings of the vessels were counter-parted by electric solar panels on the back which produce the energy for on-board electronics including, most importantly, the radio and music player! Food variety was mentioned as a downside (tins of spam are a diet staple) but crew camaraderie, shared goals and democratic practice on board seem to keep spirits up. Guitars and other instruments were also strewn around the boats along with gifts that the voyagers had received along the way (including some stones and rocks which are considered sacred by many islands) as well as flowers and a baseball cap, which was the gift of choice while I was on board.

We asked the voyagers about the use of traditional Wayfinding techniques which the ancient Polyniesians used to navigate (the methods for which were passed down to many modern voyagers by Mau Piailug or ‘Papa Mau’ and Nainoa Thompson, who learned from Mau).  Traditional techniques include: using the stars as a compass (the Sidereal compass), and the Southern Cross to determine latitude; utilising the taste, temperature and direction of the water as indicators (a sort of saltiness compass); analysing the sunrise and sunsets and being aware of the birds, fish and animals around you (certain species of bird, dolphin and fish feed out at sea at dusk before returning to lagoons near land at nightfall – Mahi Mahi, Red-Footed Boobies, Terns and Frigate birds are some examples) and so following them or at least observing their direction of travel can lead you to land. The Pacific Voyagers were journeying out of the South Pacific so while some were trying their hand at traditional Wayfinding they also had GPS, AIS and other modern equipment on board as backup and I don’t blame them – I wouldn’t want to sail a Vaka through a storm!

We found the voyagers and their journey really inspiring and the project doesn’t stop here as there are some interesting spin-off schemes in the works. One which particularly interests me is the ‘Vaka Motu’ collaboration which aims to provide as many Pacific Islands as possible (particularly the smaller ones) with a vaka of their own. The idea is that each island community will be in charge of assembling, maintaining and operating their own vessel which can then be used as a form of sustainable, zero-carbon transport from island to island. It is hoped that this will especially benefit the more remote island communities by opening up new employment and economic opportunities through tourism via a sustainable means.

The project is still at the prototype stage so sadly won’t be up and running in time for us to benefit from this form of low-carbon travel but anyone interested in finding out more or donating to the project can contact: [email protected]

Hamish Jamieson at Freighter Travel  (www.freightertravel.co.nz/company.php) – though threatening to retire we’re hoping his recent holiday has refreshed him enough to carry on for a bit! Hamish is an expert on all things cargo and will answer all realistic questions quickly and to the point.

Globoship (http://www.globoship.ch/), a Swiss company, are fantastic agents and will answer questions in English if your German is as bad as ours. They advertise last minute passages (usually due to passenger cancellation) on their website and most importantly, they seem to add the least amount of booking charges/agent fees onto travel costs, which always helps.

Strand Travel (Voyages section – http://www.strandtravel.co.uk/voyages/) deal with passenger bookings on container vessels and are very quick to answer any queries.

The slightly higher-end Maris Freighter Cruises are also helpful (http://www.freightercruises.com/) but are more of a travel club (and have the slightly higher prices to match).

We found that the best way to approach freighter travel research was to explore all the agents’ websites with our route in mind, pin-pointing which companies are listing voyages to and from our chosen region and ruling out those which weren’t, so we wouldn’t bother them with irrelevant questions (having said that, if you can’t find any good information on available routes, it’s always best to email as you never know what upcoming routes the company might have on its radar). We then followed this research up with an email to specific agents outlining the exact route we wanted to travel and the time of year we wished to go, mentioning particular vessels in our title, if appropriate. Routes between Australia and New Zealand, from the US to Australia/NZ and Australia to South East Asia are extremely popular and one of the main problems we experienced was conflicting advice regarding when it’s best to book. Some online information sites recommend booking early as these routes reportedly get booked up six or more months in advance, while other agents told us it was best to wait when we tried to book in advance (which we did before we left the UK), saying that they had nothing available at the moment, but that routes were only announced six weeks before travel so best to try again nearer to our departure date. Some vessels make regular, repetitive sailings the along the same route (i.e. doing a circle once every few months) and these are generally the easiest to book in advance, but slicing and dicing these routes can also often lead to problems of its own. For example, there were a number of freighters operating routes between the US and NZ/Australia, some via islands in the South Pacific, others only going direct, but these were often part of much longer trips. The freighter companies tend to prioritise passengers according to how long they want to stay on board a vessel (because of the logistical and administrative cost of taking on new passengers), so even if there was a cabin free, many were reluctant to book us on for only a 15 day part of a 40 day trip. Contrary to popular opinion, freighters are not cheap either and are often more expensive than cruise ship voyages. Generally you are looking at paying around EUR90-110 per day, which can quickly add up for a long voyage – we found one possible route which would take us from California to American Samoa, where we were told we could quite easily find a connecting vessel heading NZ way, but it was going to cost us EUR3,195 per person, not including the next leg of the journey to Asia)!

After a lot of phone calls, it seemed that there were no trans-Pacific cargo passages available in our time frame which wouldn’t also use up our entire budget. This was a bit of blow, but there was still the option of a passenger liner which we were hoping we wouldn’t have to take, but ‘needs must’. As UK citizens we weren’t allowed to book through US agents who offer dirt cheap cruise deals but there are a couple of UK agents who can arrange deals for you on the same cruise lines, for just a little bit more – namely Cruisedeals (http://www.cruisedeals.co.uk/). We were lucky and were able to get a very good rate on a ship in the Holland America line travelling from Long Beach in Los Angeles to Sydney, Australia via Hawaii, American Samoa, Samoa, Fiji and New Caledonia, leaving on the 10th September. This wasn’t our ideal outcome but was as close to one as we were going to get price and destination-wise. Although we didn’t want to travel by cruise-liner, the much cheaper cost meant that we would also be able to get to Australia with some money left to tide us over while we looked for jobs, so our lack of funds ultimately made the decision for us. We also learned valuable lessons for onwards travel and began to look into options for cargo passage from Australia by letting all the agents we had emailed about the trans-Pacific voyage know that this is what we were looking for next, while also making our budget clear by emphasising that we were more or less only interested in direct voyages only.

If we were to do this trip again, we both agree that gaining crew skills before you set off is a very good idea as it provides you with more options. It is not often that you will find a small boat travelling the huge distance that we needed to go but if you have time, are very flexible and get talking to the right people, it can happen. We did meet a couple of people who had crewed from the US to Hawaii and then found interlinking boats between the South Pacific islands – so it is possible, even though it took them a total of four months (and knowing how to sail is particularly useful as most crews do not want to carry the burden of inexperienced passengers). There are many ‘need a crew/boat’ websites out there but the best we found was:

http://www.findacrew.net/ – the search engine is fantastic and can tailor what you’re looking for according to your skill level, destination and budget.

Unfortunately, there was nothing on there at the time we wanted to sail from the US but we will be keeping a close eye on it for the rest of the trip!

Although our trip to San Pedro didn’t yield any freighter-travel joy, it was here that we finally encountered some sea travellers of a very different kind, who we’d been tracking for a while on their parallel voyage along the coast…

‘became a household name’

During our short stay in Santa Monica, we lodged at the very pink on the outside but green at heart, family run Sea Shore Motel on Main Street (which is also apparently the ‘greenest street in Santa Monica‘). ‘Green’ businesses along the parade are rewarded according to the efforts that they put into:  environmentally-preferred procurement; employee education; ‘Reduce, Reuse, Recycle’ practices; using environmentally friendly/sustainable products for building work; promoting alternative transportation and using natural daylight and ventilation instead of electric lights and HVAC systems. For restaurants, it additionally helps if they compost all organic waste via the City of Santa Monica Food Scraps program; use eco-friendly cleaning products and biodegradable to-go containers usually made from sugar cane fibre and corn. Some of the names of shops along the street do probe that ‘only in California’ feeling – ‘Euphoria seeks RAWvolution – Conscious food for Conscious people’ being one of them.  Even though I know they mean food or health conscious in particular, their choice of name lead me to imagine them refusing to serve a line of sleep walking and concussed customers. The food is delicious though (and the choice is plentiful with Mexican, Thai, Indian and Californian inspired dishes on offer).

As sundown approached, we headed for the beach and spent our evening walking along the winding beach paths towards Venice beach and watching the beautiful sunset from almost deserted stretches of sand. It was easy to forget how close we were to LA here (give or take the odd designer track suit and minuscule dog in handbag) but it must be a wonderful proximity for those seeking a space to breathe after a hot day in the hectic crunch of the central city. Before we arrived, I had a sneaking suspicion that the whole ‘Sustainable Santa Monica’ thing would be at least, in part, fuelled by a lot of Greenwash and city rivalry but I am pleased to say that I was wrong. I was here just five years ago, when open topped sports cars cruising the streets were a very common sight but this time around, there was a new beast on the road – the electric car.  Santa Monica really does seem to have put its money where its mouth is and we saw more electric car charging points/stations here than we had anywhere else in California so far (bad luck Jeremy Clarkson, no excuses for failing to adequately charge your electric car battery here).

Santa Monica also marked the point in our journey where we needed to start thinking carefully about our onward voyage from the US. We had  heard that San Pedro (a little further down the coast in the direction of San Diego) was a major international port and home to a number of shipping companies. If we wanted to evaluate our options outside of the cruise/freighter routes we had found online then this was the place to go, so this is where we headed next.

Santa Barbara Mission by Frank Kehren

Like many Californian towns and settlements along the coast, Santa Barbara bears the mark of Spanish occupation in the form of its Mission (definitely worth a visit for the view from the tower alone – Santa Barbara’s was the tenth to be built in California by the Spanish Franciscans, who came to convert the Chumash and other indigenous tribes to Christianity in the late Eighteenth century). Although it is still widely spread that the Spanish missionaries aimed to promote peace between different tribes, the non-native diseases they introduced along with this ‘peace’ decimated the population of Native California.

Chumash Hut by The City Project

In 1822, Spain ‘lost’ control of California to Mexico, the result of which was further deterioration of native housing (dome-like structures made from willow branches and whale bone), cultural practice and further deaths from introduced diseases such as the Malaria epidemic of 1833. Chumash land was taken, divided up and given to high ranking Mexican families and even Spanish settlers who became ‘loyal’ to Mexican rule. Surviving displaced tribe members had to make do working on ranches or as labourers for the new ‘land owning’ families. In 1834, the United States ‘took California’ from the Mexicans but did not recognise the rights of its indigenous people.

In 1901, a small but significant change came with the founding of the Santa Ynez Reservation land on which Chumash Indians could freely set up home. The settlement of the land took a while as the people had to cope with adapting traditional practice to modern living. But adapt they did and today there are a number of Chumash descendants living on this land who are now on their way to attaining economic self-sufficiency due to revenue created from the nearby Chumash Casino, hotel and spa.

Like their ancestors before them, who lived in balance with nature, protecting the environment and natural habitat is a prior concern for the Santa Ynez Chumash community. They have set up their own environmental office which is in the process of developing several management programs. These include: renewable energy development (focusing on solar power and alternative fuel for vehicles); natural resource protection (which not only involves habitat management but also educating their children about the importance of natural resource protection); solid waste management; ‘greening’ tribal operations in the casino and beyond and forming an environmental advisory committee made up of people from the community to ensure that all voices are heard and that all remain engaged with the schemes.

A short walk away in main town Santa Barbara, the unified façade of the smart, Spanish Colonial Revival tiled shop fronts and restaurants began to seem a little deceptive over time. We noticed a return ‘with a vengeance’ of the Chain Store along the main street (designer stores abound). The side streets contain a plethora of small, independent stores and cafes, but the town centre is awash with the usual suspects who can afford the high rents. These invasive species may be dressed in the local style but they serve to mark a sea change which heralds the beginning of the slow descent south towards Malibu, LA and Orange County where money will get you everything you think you want.

Considered by many as the playground of estate agents, wine connoisseurs and LA weekend-breakers, Santa Barbara is also home to many environmentalists, bohemians (who have since made a buck or two through the art and property scene) and protesters (not that any of the aforementioned list is mutually exclusive of course). Groups as diverse as the Tea Party and the Occupy movement have made Santa Barbara their protest ground, highlighting that this is shared home turf for people who are ideologically worlds apart. Whatever the focus of the protest, the right to be able to do so is an integral part of the Santa Barbara ethos (anti-oil, anti-war, animal rights, school dress code and university-related protests have all taken place here in recent years). Individual protesters have also become part of the regular Santa Barbara scene – some sitting on benches along the main street daily, striking up conversation with anyone who seems interested (a ‘down with evil’ banner attached to a flowery bike which moved from fence to fence while we were there was a feature that made us smile). Down by the beach, things take a slightly bizarre turn with what has become locally known as the homeless carnival – those sleeping rough on the beach use their blankets during the day to set up inventive coin tossing games to encourage people on the pier to part with their change. This is apparently more effective than busking and perhaps with a recession on, people are beginning to appreciate a little better what ‘being down on your luck’ feels like.

Despite its Riviera sheen, Santa Barbara has not escaped the pressures of recession. Our host Marie told us that the dented the property market, for one, has meant that many people are not living the ‘high life’ they had become accustomed to any more. Instead, there is a movement back to thinking and acting less LA and more Lo-cal. For every mainstream shop on the high street, there is an equivalent independent cafe, bar or shop to be found in the side streets. There are also weekly local produce markets as well as the beginnings of a local skill bartering scheme. Marie’s son teaches Yoga and apparently sometimes gives free lessons in return for ‘credit’ which he can use on services from others signed up to the scheme – reminiscent of the way things used to be before our reliance on currency. It’s been really great to note the number of inventive, proactive schemes such as this we have come across throughout our Californian trip so far.

Santa Barbara was an interesting experience overall. The highlights: Marie’s gorgeous home-made breakfasts at the B&B; finding an international food store where we were able to procure that which is both the holy grail and dark destroyer of sandwich spreads – Marmite; discovering ‘Plum Goods’, an inventive local store which supports ‘resource revival’ by stocking a range of creatively recycled (sorry, up-cycled) items including watches made from bike parts, paints made from fruits and notebooks made from old homework diaries; and finally, going for our first proper swim at a ‘hidden’ beach accessed by a path just off the railway track a little way down the coast. The low point: caving in and watching ‘One Day’ – it never was going to be as good as the book was it?

The garden buzzed with the sound of hummingbirds, and chickens pecked around the front garden or clustered around the back door in the morning wanting to conduct an inspection of the kitchen before scuttling off to the English ‘Tea Cozy’ cafe next door to hoover up cake crumbs. Without getting too carried away, the place was quaint, relaxing and charming. The sitting room was conducive to conversation, with a large dining table and arm chairs and we got to know some of the other guests over dinner (such as the lovely Alexandre and Katherine from Montreal) which was a nice way to wind down in the evening.

Walking and cycling around is encouraged in Cambria and it was great to leave the car behind and walk to the local farmers’ markets and farm shops (Linn’s Easy as Pie Cafe is a must-visit, if only to try the mysterious Olallieberry Pie). The Cambria Farmers’ Market was also particularly fantastic and most of the locals that we spoke to around and about chose to shop there rather than at a superstore. Making the most of the food samples, I became slightly addicted to the caramelised walnuts from the nearby Mount Olive Organic farm (luckily, they were very nice about my one too many trips to their table). They also had a great selection of other produce on offer, so in an attempt to steer away from fatty oils for a while, I stocked up on some fruit instead. Mount Olive doesn’t use chemical pesticides, herbicides or fungicides but instead use their own earthworm casting (the worms gradually release nutrients and inoculate the soil with healthy bacteria and fungi, stimulating plant growth), their own compost, EM (Efficient Microbes), and old-fashioned farming practices to produce what they call ‘the best’ and I couldn’t really argue with that statement (their peaches, nectarines and apricots were magnificent). We did occasionally stop obsessing about non-peanut butter related food long enough to explore the local beaches and in particular their tide pools, which were crammed full of star fish, anemones, urchins, abalones and hermit crabs. A nearby Harbour seal seemed to enjoy being splashed by the surf while Oyster Catchers darted around trying to avoid it. Although the weather was pretty grey, it was a peaceful place to recharge.

On beaches a little way up the coast at San Simeon, tiny tide pools and harbour seals were replaced by colonies of massive Elephant Seals. These were the first E-seals (as they later came to be known thanks to the local ‘E-seal news’) I had ever seen and this particular group were huge, blubbery males who had come ashore to molt. Many had scars and tissue wounds from recent minor spats but it was too hot while we were there for any serious altercations and most of their energy was instead being diverted into keeping cool, by spraying themselves – and any unlucky creatures who crossed their path – with massive amounts of sand.  

Just above San Simeon but seemingly another world away, stands Hearst Castle, a sort of European-inspired Disney land built by the newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst on ground he used to camp on as a child. It’s an oddly magnificent place but it’s the stories of its inhabitants, both permanent and fleeting (from Charlie Chaplin to William Churchill and a whole lot in between) which were really captivating. To ‘earn’ their visit, Hearst decreed that all guests must dress up and perform a play for him during their visit – some of which are briefly shown on a film screened in the ‘castle’ cinema. By all accounts, Hearst was something of a puppeteer and he certainly built the sets from which to pull the strings. From Spanish-style villas and Romanesque baths to modernist tennis courts and medieval halls, it is definitely worth a visit (and you may spot a zebra or two, descendants of those which used to form part of Hearst’s on-site zoo, but are now free to roam the plains that surround the crazy settlement).

After a few days in Cambria, we decided to stop off for a night in Morro Bay, just to see the famous volcanic boulder rock. The people we were staying with used to climb and camp on the rock as kids, but today you can only walk the base of it (the reason given that it is a protected falcon nesting site). The harbour in front is alive with pelicans, sea otters and very noisy sea lions. As dusk fell, the enormity of the rock (as well as the level of noise from the sea lion colony) seemed to grow against the background of the sunset. Despite being a working fishing and factory town, the rock seems to continually draw in tourists to the Bay: as one (stoned) guy told us, ‘I come here to feel the “prehistoric beauty” of the mound’. As the sun set more people gathered at the dock – whether to watch the fading light or indulge in a little rock-worshipping, I don’t know – but whatever you’re into, California certainly never fails to entertain.