California Characters

Here follows a (very long) study of a few characters observed at the Monterey, Santa Cruz and Pigeon Point HI hostels:

1. First up is the little imp of a man with a silky red Christmas scarf hanging round his neck, somewhat similar to Mr. Tumnus in the tales of Narnia. Brimming full of Christmas spirit he had a knack for getting in everyones way and business. He appears to spend most Christmases in residence at the Monterey hostel. He was all about sharing and was forever cooking up concoctions in the kitchen for everyone to eat. There was a vegetable soup, fish, cookies with 'real butter' and a cake with 'real butter'. Sadly there didn't seem to be many takers.

I got the feeling he thought he was the only person left in the world who cooks dinner from scratch. We seemed to disappoint him because we had bought all our Christmas food and were proceeding to cook proper meals and some bread. On Christmas when we were cooking our $11.25 brussel sprouts he swanned into the dining area and announced that our sprouts and food were free for all 'There's still more food to come from the oven and there are more sprouts in the kitchen'.

I found it more difficult than normal to communicate with Mr. Tumnus. Conversation examples:
'Is that egg bread?'..'No it's a Swiss Sunday bread'..'No, but does it have eggs in it'.
On Christmas day we're shouting down the computer on skype to the deaf 99 year old grandma. Across the room he asks 'Are you aupair?'. 'A what?'-'An aupair, it's just that you seem to be talking to a small child and you were making Swiss bread'. Aaah, Bless as they would say...

2. Character number two was the lady staying in our dorm room for a few nights. The clam chowder was a really good deal down at the wharf (people round California have got a big obsession with clam chowder) and she did have a couple of margaritas. Anyway, in the morning I thought I smelt really bad and Jenny thought she smelt really bad. Turned out the margarita lady had been sick and had left it festering by the bedside. The Canadian lady in our room managed to make an escape to a different room, but we were left going to sleep with noses cloaked with paper towels smeared in organic hand soap.

3. The third, although we met him second was the man who ran the Santa Cruz hostel. He was though almost not characterful enough to deserve a place in the California characters shortlist. He was very much involved in the local hosteling movement, having set this hostel and the Monterey hostel up. In his youth Peter had traveled all over England and Scotland, proceeding to tell us all the hostels he had ever stayed at over there. We had never heard of most of the places (I probably have a better knowledge of North America than England). He was also keen to tell us about the great railways he had seen and of his admiration for Isambard Kingdom Brunel. He was greatly disappointed that we didn't want to come and watch the X-factor with him in the TV room, featuring a singer from Santa Cruz. The following night it seemed he repeated his tales of the railways and the hostels of the United Kingdom to a less than impressed Matt, an Englishman living in Canada holidaying in California and frequenting the same last three hostels as us.

4. Yo, an elderly lady who was freezing cold stayed in our dorm room. She was so cold despite the heating being put on full pelt. Shivering in her bed Sarah from Hawaii crept over to cover her in additional blanket. She was in Santa Cruz revisiting places she'd been with her mother and catching up with friends. Someone 'incredibly sweet' had given her some cookies wrapped with a bow and cellophane, which she eagerly showed us. When we left it was all about 'happy holidays' and 'Lord be with you'. She looked almost tearful, gave me a hug and told me purple was her favourite colour.

5. At the Pigeon Point Lighthouse we came across a hilarious man who was holidaying with his family and friends. He thought he could definitely see the Ano nuevo elephant seals without paying. In the evening he came into our building baring a plate of food for Matt and later a chocolate Brownie for us, which his daughters and friends had just baked, and 'definitely didn't contain anything dodgy'. After I played the piano he couldn't wait to tell me that his twelve year old daughter plays 'Ode to Joy' and not very well. His biggest problem of the evening was regarding his visitation to the hot tub. Should he get changed into his trunks, wear his towel there and freeze on the way, or should he go in his clothes and change there. Dilemmas. When he came back he was full of tales of how he had stayed in for just a little bit longer and was getting changed when the next group made an appearance. Anyway, his enactment was pretty funny.

6. Carl the near to retiring coastguard from Florida was searching for somewhere to settle down. It was a toss up between somewhere in Florida and Monterey, which is why he was visiting Monterey (although in the morning he had forgotten he was in Monterey). It definitely had to be somewhere near the coast, because having spent his entire working life as a coastguard, he gets sick when he leaves it. As a child he had lived in Norfolk and attended day school in Sheringham. One day he got two questions wrong in a test and laughed when he got the results back, which in turn resulted in a beating from his teacher. Steaming he went home and plotted. The next day he got questions wrong again, laughed and got beaten. In response he took the whip and beat his teacher. And told her never to beat any of his classmates. Carl then had to go to the headmaster who gave him a beating, and in response Carl beat him back. Strangely no letter arrived for his mum and no-one heard about it at home. His classmates never got another beating. Apparently it was all because his mum paid the school in cash, and she was too good a customer to lose.

7. But the creme of the crop, the greatest fodder for any conniseur of human folly was who I now call the peacock lady. For the second time in the Monterey hostel it turned out that I was not just cooking our own meal but someone else's at the same time. Turning the heat down on the French girl's pasta was small fry in comparison.

The curly haired lady with slight limp in her step had no reservations in asking for help, or in holding back her complaints. She had some frozen prawns, but they were too frozen she ascertained by squidging them around, so she'd have to cook them. She kept telling me to tell her to 'slow down and take it easy' as she was very tired and apparently might cut herself while playing around with her prawns. No stovetop, no electric pots, is there no frying pan?, no that one's too big, no that one's too big, can't I use that one hun? (no I'm using it, how about this one..[and the one you just didn't want to use is exactly the same size]. Once she'd decided on a pan, I had to move it for her, plug it in for her, turn it on for her, almost wash her feet for her. Then it wasn't heating up quick enough, was it on? yes it was on. Tom....(the poor man working at the front desk) is it on? can you check it's on? Why isn't it heating up quickly? Poor Tom, I'd got him into the kitchen to open the beans with the broken tin openers and now there was no escaping for him either. Tom why don't you have hobs? Tom can't we put it in the oven (yes we can broil it)? Tom will you put it in the oven for me- I don't know how. Everytime Tom would inch out the door, there would come the inevitable... Tom, and he'd have to spring back into the kitchen. I was at least very grateful that Tom could provide a diversion, albeit briefly and stop the demands flowing in my direction.

Finally when the tins had been opened (Tom had searched the entire kitchen, managed with difficulty to open one of the tins and then a lady travelling with her sister and three dogs in the car, as well as a tin opener, opened the other for me) we sat down to eat our top cuisine of pasta and beans. The peacock lady came and sat herself next to us. She was keen for us to go in the morning to a danish pastry shop with her, but we wouldn't have had time. One little habit she had that was immediately observable to the discerning vegetarian was that she would squeeze her prawns, pop them into her mouth and then with her juicy fingers grab at my sleeve to get my attention (as if she didn't have it already!). Never has there been such competition as to who is going to wash the dishes. I left Jenny at the phrase 'so tell me about your dog'.

In the evening as we were packing our bags in the living room conversation turned to the lady who had been sick and in whose bed the peacock lady had now taken up residence. Naturally she was worried to possibly be sleeping in that bed, but Jenny assured her it was nothing she could catch, just a case of one too many tipples. Sleeping soundly in my bed I was awoken at 4a.m. by a persistent tapping sound, which I then noted was coming from the door. I couldn't understand why the peacock lady wasn't getting up to open it, before it dawned on me how stupid I was being and that it would actually be her at the door.

In the morning as I was getting up the peacock lady snuck up on me and thanked me for my help and understanding, before requesting that we take her to the bus station when we left. Seeing no way out we got ourselves ready while she practiced yoga on the sick patch. While Jenny skyped home the lady told me about her mission. Apparently we were on a mission to get away from it all, whereas she was on a mission to find herself a husband. Clipping her curls up high on her head she declared that she had to make herself look like a peacock to attract a husband. Her plan was to buy herself some golf balls, go to a Pebble Beach golf course (where the rich people hang out), and (without knowing how to play golf) pitch a few balls and stumble across a nice gentleman of similar age. Although she had already got her Amtrak ticket home, she was hoping that she'd have to postpone it.

She then went on to tell me about her 'child'/kitten, who was emptying its cat litter right now and how it should really have a friend when she goes away, but she can't really afford one. I was torn away from this most interesting conversation and sleeve tugging (at least the fingers were no longer coated in prawn) by mum who it seemed 'desperately' had to talk to me on skype.

Big Sur coastline

Along with half of California we drove along the scenic highway 1 coastal route as far as Big Sur. The advantage to this was that I didn't feel like I had to drive fast to prevent the people behind me from getting angry, because everyone else seemed to be driving slowly too. First we stopped off at Point Lobos, according to the artist Francis McComas "The greatest meeting of land and water in the world." Perhaps we're feeling a bit coasted out, because although it was beautiful it was not that much different to the Cornish coast. The main difference though were the five migrating whales we saw going past. Once again Jenny had to drag me away, or we'd have spent the whole day whale watching. The scenic drive to Big Sur was scenic, but we were really starting to feel that we've seen this all already.
After queuing to get in to the Pfeiffer Big Sur National Park and immediately having to decide where we were going for a walk, we headed up to a valley overlook and then to the waterfall. It was a hot but nice stroll through the oaks even though the waterfall was not much compared to the water full waterfalls of Oregon.

Christmas

On Christmas morning, once we'd got the obligatory phonecall to the family over and done with, we had a whale of a time. Driving the deserted streets to Pacific Grove, just North of the Monterey hostel, we took a look at the Monarch butterflies. There weren't nearly as many as I was expecting, considering this is meant to be the biggest Monarch butterfly wintering colony in California. But the morning's main spectacle was to be seen from the northernmost point of the Monterey peninsula. First we saw one whale, then more whales, and at one point three whales to our right and two whales to our left, that we didn't know what direction to look in. We must have seen at least fifteen whales, all of them headed southwards, grey whales, presumably on their migration. When we'd finally dragged ourselves away from the whales (I feel like I've become addicted to watching them)we drove back to Monterey, along with what now seemed the masses (seems the Americans take a while to get started on Christmas before they hit the roads en masse in their cars). From the hostel we walked to a beach where loads of harbour seals were hauled out before going to prepare our overexpensive sprouts, roast vegetables and vegan stuffing, while dancing around all the other people in the kitchen who were preparing a communal Christmas dinner in the hostel.

Monterey aquarium

Getting up at the crack of dawn we waited around to be the first to request the Monterey aquarium guest passes from the hostel's manager. Having got the passes we arrived at the aquarium at opening time. A crowd assembled round the sea otter enclosure to watch the feeding. I couldn't help but feel sorry for these three otters which can't be released back into the wild. Their enclosure as pitifully small and they were being fed bits of squid and fish, but not the shells you seen them hacking open in the wild. Voted the second best aquarium in the US lots of people seem to rave about the Monterey aquarium, but we weren't feeling too impressed,had we actually paid the $60 entrance fee we'd have been even more unimpressed. The tanks all seem pretty small, one poor penguin was trying to build a nest with no nest material, a turfed puffin swimming desperately into the glass trying to find freedom and shoals of fish would have to swim in circles all day and night. There was an area where you could go and touch starfish, sea slugs, urchins and other rockpool beasts. Surely this is a horrible existence for these animals being touched all day and perhaps constantly thinking they're going to be eaten. Perhaps they're not thinking anything though..

Thankfully the aquarium doesn't have any other marine mammals apart from the otters. There is just the big tank of the Pacific ocean. The star exhibit there was a really close grey whale. We were walking around when Jenny said she'd seen a whale right outside. So we rushed out to the balcony to join a few of the staff looking at the whale. It was so close that you could see the barnacles on its back, but it was tricky to imagine how big it was. After about five minutes what seemed like all the aquarium's visitors had emptied out onto the deck to look at the whale. Even the staff seemed excited that it was this close. By the time we'd seen enough of the whale there were very few people still looking at it.

In the aquariums auditorium we went to an interesting talk on biomimicry, inspiration from nature for great inventions. Bumps on the leading edge of humpback whales' flippers have inspired a new design for windturbine blades. Bumps on the edge of blades can lead to 40% increase in output. There's also a new car design based on the boxfish, which is a very square yellow fish that maneuvers well into small spaces and is very fast. Mercedes-Benz makes the cars, although I don't think they're selling them yet. Apparently they can get 80 miles to the gallon.

Sea otters

A short drive around the University of California Santa Cruz (which wasn't quite as exciting as I remembered it to be) was followed by the drive to Moss Landing, said to be the best place for sea otter spotting. Lots of cars were parked at the state park, but most of those belonged to the surfers. On a sand bar loads of harbour seals were lying, on a pier hundreds of sealions and between the two were some of the sea otters taking it easy. We managed to spend probably around three hours looking at sealions and sea otters swimming past, after which we drove to the sealion pier to examine them more closely.

At Moss Landing harbour I thought it was pretty pointless trying to see seaotters, but we discovered a really close one feeding on mussels attached to a pier. A friend then joined it and they frolicked through the water together, up and down the harbour. As the sun began to set we headed onwards to the Monterey hostel where we'll be staying till we leave California.

Santa Cruz

We didn't get in the car today!! Instead we walked along the coast seeing sealions, seals, sea otters, egrets, many surfers and another whale. We were heading to the Natural Bridges State Park to go rock pooling (or tide pooling as they call it here) and then see the monarch butterflies in the grove. Rock pools in England seem to be more easily accessible, whereas here they were on a rock plateau. The pools were really deep and we had to be particularly careful not to slip in them, we can't cross the Atlantic on the cargo ship with any broken legs. There were many large green anemones, purple sea urchins, purple starfish, orange starfish, some little pink coral-like things, mussels coating the rocks, a range of brightly coloured slimes and sludges and Jenny managed to find some crabs. Sharing the rocks with us was an egret, some gulls, oyster catchers and other excitable rock poolers.

The monarch butterflies were all flitting around in the sunshine, so the number of them resting on the eucalyptus trees wasn't that great, but there were still plenty of them. Notices told the onlookers to talk in hushed voices and creep along the boardwalks, one man however seemed to think that playing his ukulele to the monarchs was permissible. On the walk back we passed lemon trees in gardens and a small twig with tangerines on it. Opposite the hostel a grand old house has been fumigated, we are presuming against termites. The house now resembles a gigantic yellow and blue striped circus tent.

Redwoods

Being on a roll with losing things we searched high and low for my room key, before giving up and resigning ourselves to the loss of the $20 deposit. Turned out I'd never taken the key in the first place and that's why I couldn't find it!

We then drove to the Big Basin Redwoods State Park (the first state park established in California), past the spot where four years ago Sorrel and I had wandered aimlessly and seen pitiful redwoods, because we'd didn't have a car. You just can't get to most of these places without one sadly.

These redwoods seemed far more impressive than those at Muir Woods, and looking at them was much less of a tourist circus. One of the trees had its middle burnt out in a forest fire and you could look right up the middle of it at the sky. 'Mother of the forest' is the tallest tree in the park, it did measure 329 feet, but lost its top in a storm. After walking around the redwood trail in the basin where the huge trees are we went on a hike along the river, up the valley, into the chaparral, to the ocean viewpoint and then back down into the redwoods (a round walk!). Whilst walking alongside the river we discovered another bobcat slinking up the path in front of us. It amazes me that there are only a handful of bobcat pictures on the nature picture library website (where Jenny used to work) since we're finding it seemingly easy to discover them.

Once again it was hard to get a true sense of scale and appreciate the great height of the redwoods. To be in the presence of such old and tall trees though is humbling, I can't help but be impressed by them. Jenny though I feel has seen more than enough of the redwoods.

Jenny cruised us along the road to Santa Cruz where we're now staying in the hostel, which stocks its kitchen with a bounty of out-of-date freebies. Although there's no cranberry and grain Christmas special like I had when I was last here there are mountains of radishes, bags of spinach, a packet of mixed organic salad leaves, some cake with a lengthy list of additives, plenty of a-bit-too-green-for-comfort potatoes, onions, loads of carrots, some cabbage, breads in all shapes and sizes (the apple cinammon swirl loaf will make a good breakfast) and quite a bit more. We can't help wondering why we bothered doing a big shop in San Francisco.