California road trip, part 3

On Saturday 30th August we woke up early at the Courtesy Inn in San Simeon and drove the few miles to the Hearst Castle Visitor Centre so we were there immediately at 8 o'clock when it opened. It was a good call to be there early, since it meant we got tickets even though we had no advance bookings - all of the later tours were full. So at 8:20 we got on the bus which drove us up to Hearst Castle on the first of the five guided tours available.

Hearst Castle is a 165 room Renaissance-Moorish-Medieval holiday house built on top of a high hilltop overlooking the Pacific. "The Ranch" is the creation of William Randolph Hearst - a newspaper millionaire who lived during the first part of the 20th century. The "castle" was built with the help of architect Julia Morgan during the 30s, 40s and 50s.

The main house - Casa Grande - is actually more of an estate than a castle and is surrounded by guesthouses, a lavish outdoor swimming pool, lush gardens, tennis courts, swimming hall and a private zoo. Hearst filled the castle with priceless ancient treasures like ceilings from European monasteries, fireplaces from medieval Italy and exotic artifacts. He had money to buy anything. Hearst used to invite famous people to stay as guests at the house and even had a private airstrip at the foot of the hill (at the time that part of California was much more isolated, making the construction of the castle and even more remarkable feat).

One of the guest houses at Hearst Castle

The Neptune outdoor swimming pool at Hearst Castle

After the death of W.R. Hearst the property eventually passed to the State of California and was opened to the public. The tour we did - the Experience Tour - is the recommended tour for first time visitors and costs $24. It gives an overview of the property and goes through the swimming pool; one of the guest houses; the larger living room, the dining hall and the billiard room in the main house; and ends in the swimming hall, which makes you feel you've time travelled to ancient Rome.

The Roman style swimming hall

During our visit there the groundlevel was covered in a thick layer of fog reaching all the way as far as the eye could see over the Pacific. Fortunately Hearst Castle lies very high up (something like 500 m) so it was above the fog. In other words, the sun was shining up there and we had a terrific view of the property and the surrounding landscape. The whole place was unbelievable and a must-visit if you're driving by. With the fog covering the sea, it felt like we were in an airplane or really, really high up, which was kind of cool, but it would also have been nice to see the ocean from the hilltop.

The tour lasted for about 1½ hours, and ended with a 20 min National Geographics documentary movie of Hearst Castle down at the Visitor Centre. It was interesting and informative.

From San Simeon we drove south on Hwy 1 to Santa Barbara pretty much without any breaks. The route isn't as scenic as in Big Sur and there really wasn't anything special to see. One town we drove through - Guadalupe - felt like we had entered Mexico, at least architecturewise. Next to the road a girl was jumping up and down with a sign saying "Honk if you're horny!" She was definitely American. We'll leave it up to the reader to decide wether or not we obeyed her.

We arrived in Santa Barbara quite early in the afternoon, so we had plenty of time to walk around after checking in at the Santa Barbara Tourist Hostel (which by the way is in a good location close to the beach, clean enough and a wee bit unecessarily expensive). The main street in Santa Barbara is very pleasant to walk along. There were quite a lot of people and many shops in beautiful Mission-look buildings with red-tile roofs and whitewashed plaster walls. We immediately felt that this town was alive. The beach and wharf buzzed with activity and we stopped among other things to listen to a large group of people improvising and playing on their drums. In the evening we went for another walk downtown and stopped for a beer at the Santa Barbara Microbrewery bar. Believe it or not, but those were the first and only beers we enjoyed during our whole California road trip! It's true, we're not kidding! Quality beers they were as well.

JBB on the pier in Santa Barbara

On the next day - our last day in the US - Sunday 31st August we had an early start again and headed for Camarillo. There we went shopping at the Premium Outlets. After spending over three hours and a lot of Giigan's money we continued to Hwy 1 and followed it all the way to LA past Malibu and Ventura, among others. The beaches along the way were absolutely packed! The amount of people and cars was horrifying. Apparently the sunny weather and the next day Labor Day holiday had chased most of LA's population to the endless stretches of sand. Luckily the traffic in our direction was managable and we made good speed. We even had time to go for a stroll on Venice Beach.

Unlike most people who desparately tried to park their cars as close to the beach as possible, we found a parking spot relatively easy a couple of blocks inland. It suited us perfectly since it meant we got to walk along the canals (it's not called VENICE Beach for nothing) on our way to the beach. In itself the actual beach in Venice Beach was nothing our of the ordinary to our eyes. The beach and pier at Hermosa Beach looked more or less exactly the same.

The canals of Venice Beach are a bit secluded, but we (accidentally) found them

Venice Beach concluded our road trip. From there we drove to the airport, returned the car and played "Heitä Sikaa" and "Bismarck" until the flight to the Cook Islands left at 23:15.

As a conclusion let's just say the road trip was jolly fun, intense and definitely worth doing. It could have lasted longer but at a more sedate pace. At least now there is still so much left to see that a return trip has to be done at some point. If you're driving along Hwy 1 sometime in the future, we'd recommend doing it from the north to the south like we did. Most of the best vistas may be concentrated to the beginning of the journey that way, but stopping at and continuing from the turnouts and resting places is so much easier, not to mention the fact that you don't have to gaze across a lane to see the view. Those 3 meters of asphalt do matter and it's also more thrilling to just have half a meter and a metal rail between yourself and a drop of several hundred meters :D

MORE PICTURES from this part of the road trip are viewable here!!!

*End of part 3 and the road trip story*

P.S. Keep up the good work on the commenting p.front, you are in the lead! Who else is reading this blog, or is it just one guy? If you're having trouble figuring out how to leave comments, try clicking the link at the end of each post saying "X comments" where X is an integer between 0 and what in the future hopefully will be a very large number.

California road trip, part 2

So on Thursday 28th August we headed north away from LA on Interstate 5. The first part of the drive was pretty interesting as the road wound over the mountains to the north of LA. It was interesting to notice how the haze that filled the air disappeared once we got out of the LA valley. After an hour or so the interstate descended into the California Central Valley. The motorway was then very straight and there was nothing else to see than fields to the right and left. In other words a very boring stretch that lasted for several hours. We stopped once to fuel the car and it was hot like in an oven in the valley (which is huge by the way, as everything else in CA).


The drive got interesting again when we reached the latitude of Santa Cruz. We left the interstate and followed highway 152 past San Luis Reservoir State Park (a gigantic artificial lake, we think) and over the Coastal Ranges. It was a really nice drive which took us over the mountains to the sea and finally to our destination; the cozy seaside town of Monterey at the southern end of the Monterey Bay. The drive from LA took us 6 hours, the distance was roughly 600 km.

We immediately felt at peace in Monterey; the atmosphere was totally different than in LA - relaxed, friendly and safe. We checked in at the Hostelling International Monterey hostel, which proved to hold the high standard of other HI hostels, and then went for a walk.

Sadly the time was so much that we didn't have time to visit the Monterey Bay Aquarium which is supposed to be superb. It "explores the rich and varied sea life of the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary". Well, you can't get everything and now we have something to visit in Monterey the next time as too.


It was a warm and sunny late afternoon/evening so instead we decided to walk along the shore towards Pacific Grove, which is a small town just next to Monterey. It was absolutely gorgeous and the houses along the way were amazing! We walked for several hours but didn't quite stay long enough by the sea to see the sunset since the breeze from the Pacific got pretty chilly as the sun approached the horizon.







In the evening we did another walk to Cannery Row and Fisherman's Wharf, but didn't go for a fancy, expensive dinner even though the seafood looked delicious (we are budget travellers after all!). Our supper consisted of ham and cheese on crackers, washed down with Dr. Pepper. Yummy.

Next morning (Friday 29th August) we bought breakfast at Subway (only $5 for a footlong!) and took the most scenic route out of Monterey, i.e. through Pacific Grove along Sunset Drive (which we walked along the evening before) and via the Seventeen Mile Drive.

In the morning (we headed out at around 8:30) it was very foggy, but most of it cleared away as we parked on the shore in Pacific Grove and ate our subs. By the time we reached the gate to the 17 Mile Drive (yes it's a toll road but the $10 per car are well worth it) most of the fog had retreated to the sea. We have only one word to describe this scenic coastal route from Monterey to Carmel: amazing! If your're in the area it's a must drive. There are a lot of marked points of interest along the way, for instance beautiful beaches, bird rocks, lookouts and famous golf courses. The 17 Mile Drive area is the home of such well-known (at least if you play golf for real) courses as The Links at Spanish Bay, Spyglass Hill (which is open to the public) and Pebble Beach.







We can warmly recommend the 17 Mile Drive to everyone and suggest you start the drive from the Pacific Grove Gate as we did, since you then have easy access to the beachside resting points, vista points and other points of interest without having to cross the road. Also this way you don't have an extra lane to gaze over as your eyes are turned toward the shoreline and the waves of the Pacific.

Unfortunately we didn't get a good view of Pebble Beach Golf Links (much to JBB's annoyance) because there weren't any vista points and we didn't bother to stop there as there was a tournament in progress. We also missed "the Lone Cypress" which allegedly is one of California's most enduring landmarks, so we'll just have to visit both Monterey and the 17 Mile Drive in the future again! What a shame! *sarcasm*

We exited the road at the Carmel Gate, drove through smalltown Carmel along Ocean Avenue and continued south on Highway 1. It had taken us nearly 2 hours to complete the 17 miles plus the couple of miles from Pacific Grove to the starting point.

Our next stop came pretty soon, as Highway 1 passed Point Lobos State Reserve just 4 miles south of Carmel. Point Lobos S.R. is "the crown jewel of California's state park system" and has been said to be "...the greatest meeting of land and water in the world". We can certainly agree with that as the pictures will show you. Principally Point Lobos is a collection of extremely cool cliffs that the waves keep crashing into. Throw in some trees, beaches, birds, seals, sea lions and other aquatic animals and you've got a state park. We were certainly impressed. The park isn't huge, but we decided to take the car in instead of parking it half a mile short of the entrance and main gate and walk the whole way. It saved us a lot of precious time, even though the entry fee was $10 per car. On our way through the gate we once again got proof of the fact that Finland isn't such a well known country for everyone. The guard at the gate was really friendly and gave us some tips on what to go and see in the park. When he asked our nationality we answered that we were Finnish. The old man says OK and mutters something about checking to see if there are any guide booklets in our language. He half disappears begind the counter and reappers a few moments later saying "Danish! Here you go guys, enjoy your stay in the park!".

What a laugh we got driving away from the gate! The guy must have been thinking back there "What did those guys say? Something -ish, or maybe -nish... Let's see what we got here... hmm... Danish! Yes, that must be it!"

So we ended up with a Danish brochure, no harm in that, it was still readable, but funny none the less.






In the park we walked the Cypress Grove trail (Cypress Cove was spectacular, pictures above), the Sea Lion Point trail and the Bird Island trail. Although we occasionally heard the noise, we didn't see any Sea Lions on the Sea Lion Rocks due to a nasty fog that had rolled in from the Pacific. Still, we got remarkably plenty of sun while on Point Lobos and especially China Cove and Gibson Beach (pictures below) were painfully perfect in the sunlight. Bird Island was indeed very well named - it was all white from all the bird shit!








Before leaving we quickly drove to Whalers Cove, but didn't get out of the car since the place paled in comparison to the earlier sites we visited.

From Point Lobos we continued south along Hwy 1, our goal for the day being the little town (or cluster of motels if you prefer) San Simeon about 90 miles away. Between those two points the road snakes up along the steep cliffs right above the shoreline. Needless to say, the view is breathtaking. The view in the Big Sur area was particularly fantastic and the only downside was the cloud-/fogsheet lying over the Pacific. But the coast was clear and the sun was shining so we got a good look of the steep coastline plunging into the ocean. There were many vista points and turnouts where we stopped and took some pictures. Notable landmarks in Big Sur are the Bixby Creek Bridge and the Point Sur Lightstation (you can't actually drive there, but you can see the tremendous rock it lies on from Hwy 1).








We stopped for a couple of hours on the Pfeiffer Beach, which according to Drive Around California by Thomas Cook books is "Big Sur's best and hardest-to-find beach". The beach has no sign from Hwy 1 and is not visible from the road. The trick is to find Sycamore Canyon Rd, the only paved road west off Hwy 1 between the Big Sur Post Office and Pfeiffer-Big Sur State Park.


The secluded beach has some beautiful cliffs and a white strand. We enjoyed the sunshine from full horizontal positions, but didn't venture into the water due to dangerous undercurrents. (We saw one man playing ball with his two dogs and he had to rescue one of them once when it didn't have the strength to swim ashore. Another time a wave caught one of the dogs, which was turned upside down as it crashed into it. Looked very funny as four feet pointed skywards among the white foam for a moment, but not safe at all.)



From Pfeiffer Beach we drove without major stops to Hearst Castle right next to San Simeon. The beach at McWay waterfall in Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park could have deserved a visit, but it was pretty late and paying an entrance fee again seemed excessive at that point (the fee to Pfeiffer Beach was $5 per car). Sadly we didn't have much of a view for the rest of the drive that day, as clouds and fog from the Pacific had rolled in over the coastline. The only point we saw clear blue skies at again was when the road climbed reeeeeeeally high above the clouds.


One thing to note when driving between Carmel and San Simeon along Hwy 1 is, that the distance is not long, but it takes a long time due to all sharp bends where you can't go faster than 30 km/h.

To finalize the description of the day, let's just say that we popped in to the Hearst Castle Visitor Centre (more on that in the next part), checked into our room at the Courtesy Inn motel in San Simeon, had dinner at the Manta Ray restaurant and went to bed!

*End of part 2, the last and final part will follow soon*

California road trip, part 1

All good things are worth waiting for and this is certainly true when speaking about our major blog post featuring our five day road trip in California. It has now finally been completed and is hereby presented to you, albeit in a couple of parts released with a few days’ interval so you won’t loose interest after the first three paragraphs when there’s more than half left. On the plus side though, we now have pictures available for you (the main reason why we delayed releasing these texts until we were in NZ was the difficulty of getting our pictures uploaded while on the Cook Islands). Enjoy them!

Before we start on the road trip though, just a few words about our current situation: we are now in Auckland, New Zealand and are staying at one of the YHA hostels in downtown, right next to the main street (Queen Street). We have fixed all urgent practical matters, i.e. we have NZ phone numbers, bank accounts, a postal address and have applied for our tax numbers, which we will get in 10 days. Our NZ phone numbers are:

Jungle Bunny B: +64 21 050 9323
Giigan: +64 21 051 0278

Please use these if you need to contact us by phone, as receiving calls and text messages is free for us, and we seldom have our Finnish SIM cards in our phones over here (just maybe once a week or so to check if any text messages have been sent to our Finnish numbers).

If you want to donate money to us for our travels, we can also arrange payment information for you to our new NZ bank accounts as well. That won’t be a problem at all. ;D

We’ll stay the next few days in Auckland, the rest even we don’t know yet! OK, let’s get on with the road trip:

After more than 13 hours in the air and 7 hours waiting at Heathrow for a connecting flight, we arrived at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) around 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday 26th August (2008). The bureaucracy at the airport was pretty painless; we avoided being caught by secondary inspection officers and proceeded to pick up our rental car with the convenient shuttle bus provided by the rental companies. Of course we didn’t notice that each rental company had their own shuttle bus and that we were on the wrong one, but it really didn’t matter much since the car rentals are all located pretty much at the same place. It felt good getting out of LAX, that airport sure is the worst we have ever visited. It feels like a prison - excuse us, a correction facility. (Sona seemed more homely, and definitely more colorful!)

At the rental company we were greeted by a happy surprise: apparently they were out of cars of the class we had booked and paid for in advance, so we got a complementary upgrade. In our case that meant we got to drive away with a Chrysler PT Cruiser (you’ll see a picture later). Not a bad deal even though it meant a slightly larger fuel consumption for our road trip.

Next stop was Hermosa Beach (about 15-20 km south of Santa Monica) where our accommodation - the Surf City Hostel - was located. At this point we want to point out to everyone who’s going to drive a car in LA at some time that a navigator is essential in this city and surroundings. At first we had thought about going the traditional way using an old-fashioned map, but thankfully we decided to buy a GPS receiver for JBB’s telephone and us it as a navigator while still in Finland. It saved us a lot of time and gray hair while driving around the maze that greater LA is.

And yes, you need a car in LA if you want to get somewhere. The commuter traffic is almost a yoke here if you’re used to the capital area in Finland.

With our navigator we quickly found the correct beach and street where the hostel was supposed to be. However, we had to search quite some time until we found the small door leading to the hostel next to two bars right on the pier avenue. Surf City Hostel certainly didn’t make much noise on the façade, but apparently it didn’t have to, since we were told they had no free beds when we arrived.

Of course we had bookings, but they were (not for the first time we heard) overbooked.

Well, this news didn’t freak us out and make us yell at the receptionists, no. Instead we took it all very calmly and were very understanding, which was much appreciated by the staff (they seemed to have had some bad experiences). Our sympathetic attitude and zen-like demeanor made them very helpful and friendly. The next day one of them even helped us find a good store selling hiking equipment and went as far as calling them to ask if they really offered what we were out to get.

As you might have guessed, we didn’t have to sleep on the street that first night. After some time they had managed to arrange one normal bed for us and prepared another one on the sofa in the TV-room. We had been traveling for over 24 hours at that point so it suited us fine; we just wanted to be able to lie down and rest our heads on pillows for a change. Giigan ended up sleeping in the bed and JBB on the sofa, which was very narrow and somewhat hard, but good enough. For half price for the both of us that first night it wasn’t such a bad deal.

The next morning the owner of the hostel was working at the reception and she cleared the whole mess up. She was French and had a terrific accent, almost impossible to understand :) She gave us a couple of nice beds in a mixed dorm ensuite room for the second night.

All in all, if you need budget accommodation in the LA area we can recommend Surf City Hostel. The location is superb right on the beach, it’s only a 15 min drive from LAX and the staff are nice. It’s not the cleanest spot in the universe, but it’s not the dirtiest either.


Our first whole day (Wed 27th Aug) in LA was mainly spent driving around the city. First we visited a couple of malls and then returned to the hostel and Hermosa Beach, where we walked to the end of the pier and enjoyed the sunshine and the view of the beach. Giigan had actually ran for about 45 minutes that morning on the beach when we woke up early and JBB was still asleep. There were quite a few people on the beach and we would have loved to join them, however, we had different plans. We sat down in our PT Cruiser again and drove to REI, which is a shop selling hiking equipment. From there we bought ourselves some quality sleeping bags for bargain prices. We were actually quite lucky in a way with our travel dates in the States, since the Labor Day (first Monday in Sep) sales had already started. So not only did we benefit from the propitious $ exchange rates, the bags were also on sale!


From there we went sight-seeing. We drove to Santa Monica, then to Beverly Hills and finally arrived in Hollywood, where we made the observation that the letters on the hilltop are actually much smaller in reality than on TV. But it was cool anyway.

In Hollywood we ate some fast food for lunch/dinner. The KFC drive-in could however not get our orders right. Giigan ordered a meal with chicken wings and a Pepsi, and JBB had the same. What we got was two of something called a Mash Bowl and no Pepsi. We were the only ones in the line, so we don’t know how they could have possibly got our orders so completely wrong. Anyway, we drove away with our mysterious bowls (which we later discovered containing some very salty fried chicken nuggets and potato mash) and decided to try out the food at El Pollo Loco’s. It was horrible! Stay away from that franchise!

At this time it was pretty close to sunset, so since Griffith Park was nearby we decided to drive there and watch the sunset. Griffith Observatory is the perfect spot for this. The observatory lies on a hilltop very close to the Hollywood letters. They are clearly visible from there. The sunset was very beautiful, but it would have been even more beautiful if you could see something else than a gray haze when you look out over LA and towards the ocean. The smog was really much worse than we thought it would be.


We also walked a short path on a trail starting at the observatory, but didn’t cross paths with any rattle snakes which a sign warned us of. That pretty much sums it up for our first day in California. LA is a really big place - in fact you have a hard time understanding it if you don’t visit the place - full of street after street with shops, more shops and houses. The drive back from Griffith Park to the hostel took an hour and it was all through densely built urban areas. The highlight of our drive back was the motorway (one of the many) at dark. It felt like we were in a car game like Need for Speed or something. 6 lanes, tail lights of lots of other cars in front of you, other motorways crossing on multiple bridges overhead, high speeds, plenty of curves… very thrilling!


Next morning at 9:15 a.m. we started driving north away from LA.

*End of part 1, keep you eyes open for the continuation very soon!*

P.S. Thanks to everybody who were present at the farewell party! We didn't get to go to Suomenlinna due to the weather, but had a nice time anyway. Here are a couple of pictures from the party.