What a day. Our Motel for the last couple of nights, lays on a small complimentary breakfast for it's guests in the reception area. Ahead of the ladies, Oskar (birthday tomorrow!) and his father begin helping themselves to coffee,apple juice and toast. A blonde lady walks in with a newspaper in her hand.
"Hi, good morning! Well I guess I slept better last night than I did previously, I was up at four yesterday, couldn't sleep, heck knows why, wanna read a section of my paper? You can go on right ahead, I'll read it after you".
The lady has been staying at the motel for a month now; "I had an altercation with someone!"
"Oh well", I say, "it could be worse!" What I mean, is that at least the Motel is very good and if I ever left my wife and kids and ended up in a bloody great big room with a huge Telly, en suite bathroom and a maid making up my bed and bringing me clean towels everyday, it wouldn't be so bad...
"Yea! Heck yea, could be a lot worse. I don't bother the maid every day though, I make my own bed, just call on 'em for the towels and toilet paper"...
She used to be a lifeguard on the sunny beaches in L A back in the day. She, like me, is also a 1964 baby. But, she didn't study, never went to college and now regrets it, doomed to live out her days waitressing (her words).
Anyway, yesterday, while I was looking after Oskar, who had a bad leg, Liz took Stash down to the harbour to see about booking a boat trip to see some Whales.
They came upon a bunch of Sea lions which hang around down there. So today after that breakfast, we packed up and dressed warmly for a ten o' clock boat journey out to sea and on the way, Nastassja took us to the spot at the end of one of the piers, to see these beautiful beasts. There are lots of them, along with some Harbour Seals and Sea Otters.
After a little trouble finding Bella, the boat we were taking, we finally met Christian, the very lucky owner of this fine sailing boat. Losing his job a couple of years ago, he decided to continue what he loved doing anyway, but now takes people out with him for a modest fee. So he now lives and works on Bella, runs it singlehandedly and that suits him fine.
We were joined by a couple and their three year old son, got the kids into their lifejackets and off we went.
Now, I am still sore from our Indonesian boat Hell experience, so when Christian tells Oskar there's a bit of a wind out there and it may get a little rough, I get a bit uncomfortable, but in fact everything is fine, there's a bit of rocking, but I think we cut our sea legs on that one so it's all good!
To be honest, I don't think Christian realised we were all there specifically to see Whales, I think he was just taking us out to see whatever we came across. However, once he got wind of what we really wanted, he extended the trip and took us out a little further. Just as we were all relaxing into our, ' isn't it lovely just being on a boat on the Ocean'...Christian let out a scream; "whales at one o'clock!!"
Sure enough, some way in the distance, you could see a bunch of Grey Whales blowing spouts of water. Every now and then a huge tail would appear and everyone would scream excitedly! Now, this was something else. I think at that point, just about everyone wanted to marry Christian, who was screaming, "isn't that just awesome!!"
There were maybe five Grey Whales together out there and they seemed to hang around for some ten minutes, after which, the boat was turned and we started back to Monterrey.
Just when we thought it couldn't get any better, more Grey Whales doing their beautiful thing, blowing spouts of sea into the air...today is a very, very special day.
Christian's trip comes with lots of hidden extras; he lifted Oskar onto the front of the boat where he rode out the last twenty minutes sitting there, trapped, but loving every minute of it. Muesli bars anyone? And the guy himself is just brilliant to be around, very rough, but a beauty!
We bid farewell and got back into the car, continuing on to San Francisco.
A guy who served us in a phoneshop in Hollywood, recommended our next stop.
Mystery Spot is a strange place indeed, where water runs uphill and gravity is...well, everything is just wrong. If it is all just an elaborate hoax, it's enough to make you feel just a little bit weird! Yes. It's up there in the hills of Santa Cruz...
Tomorrow, Oskar is going to be eight! We are at Hotel Whitcomb in San Francisco. A wonderful lady, Jan, our Consierge, recommends us a diner to eat at.
"It's real casual but they put it all into the food! Tell 'em Jan sent you!"
It was indeed casual and they do put it all into the food. And "in too deep" by Genesis was playing as we sat down...
Location:Monterrey, CA
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