The Californian central coast is probably one of the most acclaimed coastlines in the world. We passed through pretty quickly, but got a great feel for the place and it didn't disappoint! We stopped at places with familiar names like Santa Cruz, Monterey and Big Sur, but Highway 1 was just as brilliant as the towns it linked, hugging the coast with postcard views around every bend.

One of the main reasons this coastline is so famous is for the surfing! The sport of surfing pretty much originated here and there were statues, museums and cafe's with names like 'the surf shack' to remind us of that. Aidan was tempted by some good waves at Ano Nuevo and the world famous Steamers Lane in Santa Cruz, but settled on watching instead due to crowds, cold water and the fact that he'd have to hire a board and wetsuit.

A highlight for us was the Monterey Bay Aquarium. We had been told not to miss this place by a Parks Ranger the day we arrived in California and thought we'd better not let him down. The drive into Monterey wasn't exactly the highlight... We had a campground in mind, but the street names and directions we found online were a bit confusing... Ultimately we failed and spent the night sleeping in the car park at Walmart instead. We were so impressed with the aquarium however, that we put that last night behind us and laughed when daylight and a map showed us just how close we were to finding the mentioned campground!

The aquarium is built around the remains of the original sardine tinning factory, which has its own unique history, although we were more interested in the 1.2 million US gallon (gigantic) deep sea tank with a huge school of live sardines, massive yellowfin tuna and hammerhead sharks. The tank was set up like a movie theatre and we were told they even hold wild Great White Sharks at times for research purposes! There were also lots of rescued seabirds and otters, and a healthy focus on conservation, research and public education. Surprisingly, the most impressive exhibit in the end was the 'Jelly Experience'. Set up like a scene out of an Austin Powers film, there were dozens of different jellyfish species, lit up to show amazing psychedelic colours as they grooved around in front of us. Yeah baby! The aquarium apparently are one of the first to successfully propagate jellyfish in captivity, which is not an easy feat. They practically had to kick us out of the place at closing time!

The aquarium wasn't the only place we saw wildlife though. At Ano Nuevo we hiked for two miles out to a beach to see hundreds of noisy juvenile elephant seals basking in the sand. The adults were out in the ocean, and won't come to shore until late December, but even the juveniles were massive, some weighing up to a tonne! They were pretty entertaining, particularly the older males which were developing the distinctive trunk-like snout, as they practiced fighting to eventually attract a mate. Further down the coast, near San Simeon, we stumbled upon the exact same scene but this time they were only metres from the highway! This colony had arrived after the highway was built, and local naturalists and volunteers were struggling to control the crowds of tourists that flocked to this much more accessible elephant seal hang-out.

It didn't end there though. Whilst cooking our dinner at the Pfeiffer Big Sur campground, we heard a lot of noise coming from the trees next to us. Dismissing it as noisy deer, we carried on cooking soup in the dark. Only minutes later, Jess looked up to see a cars' headlight illuminating a full-size adult mountain lion, frozen in its tracks less than 50m from us! The park ranger came around later to investigate and we realised that, sensing the danger, the cougar was the reason the deer were making such an unusual amount of noise!

Later that night we went for a drive and spotted a bobcat running across the road in front of us! We also saw our first skunk (that wasn't dead) on the side of the road. We must have given the skunk a scare, because we could smell it for the next couple of miles. It was then that we realised that faint smell of weed that we were sensing along the roads of California was actually skunk. It turns out the two smells are pretty similar, until you get really close to a skunk, in which case you can definitely distinguish the two!

The reason we were up that night driving around is a good story too! A friend had told us about this mysterious, exotic place called the Esalen Institute half way along Big Sur. This institute
happens to be an old family estate converted into a retreat centre. A natural hot spring has been channeled into a series of outdoor concrete tubs on the edge of a cliff overlooking the ocean. Sounds pretty amazing eh? Well, unless you're a registered guest at the retreat centre they only open the baths up for the general public from 1 until 3 am each night, with a 20 person limit. Being low season, we were able to register that day and headed off to this exciting place after a few short hours of sleep.

The strange midnight opening time made it all a pretty mysterious and magical experience. Along with about a dozen others, we were guided by torchlight down to the baths, shown the change rooms and let loose for a couple of hours in the dark. They had a 'clothes optional' policy, so we decided to make the most of this strange experience and left the swimmers behind. Besides, it was so dark that all we could see were the shimmer of water and thousands of gleaming stars above us. It was an indescribably liberating feeling, to soak bare in this mineral-rich water, looking up at the stars with the ocean waves crashing against the cliffs below! It was definitely a once in a lifetime experience that we'll not forgot in a hurry.

The beaches around Big Sur were pretty awesome too. We explored Pfeiffer beach, which has strange purple sand, and spotted a pair of huge turkey vultures feasting on a sea gull. The coastal walk along Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park provided magical views of a huge waterfall pouring from the cliffs straight onto the sand and the remains of a beautiful mansion built on the same clifftop!

We hit a few nice little towns on the way out of Big Sur, enjoying an amazing farmers market in San Luis Obispo,
Danish pastries and wine in Solvang and more beautiful beaches in Carpinteria. The weather has kept getting warmer and we keep getting closer and closer to the glamorous entertainment capital of the world, Los Angeles!