more and higher res photos here.
On Sunday we headed to La Jolla for a pre-purchased kayaking + snorkeling tour of the La Jolla coastal caves.
Unfortunately neither of us had slept that well because the AC unit in our hotel room made a jarring noise (a lot like a phone vibrating on a desk) every five minutes; at 3am I decided to time it. Of course it took us till 3am and two calls to the front desk to figure out where the noise was coming from.
But, tired as we were, it was a beauiful day on what has been called the “diamond” of the California coast. The sun was out and the water was clear. It would have been a lot of fun if we’d had more than a few hours of sleep. We made it to the caves and hopped in the water. Underneath the waves the water was cold but not freezing. We swam through kelp and seaweed forests and too many Garibaldis to count.
At one point we swam over to an area where the water goes through the coast to ….something… on the other side. Our guide only let us swim into the middle of the tunnel so we never found out what was on the other side.
In some ways the snorkeling was more interesting than in Hawaii. Although the water wasn’t as warm, the landscape was far more interesting. On the rocks below us there were long grasses (?) moving back and forth with the water in a hypnotic dance. Dotted on the grasses everywhere were the neon orange Garibaldi’s, not afraid of big mammals at all.
As we were swimming back to our kayaks from the caves a sea lion swam by underwater. Neither of us could get t0 our cameras quick enough to catch it as it effortlessly zipped by.
A few minutes later I decided to swim over to where the sea lions were sunbathing on the rocks. At that time there were a few that decided they wanted to be playful and hop in the water. So for about twenty minutes I swam in the middle of a swirling sea lion hangout underwater. Every time they’d swim by they would look directly at me, probably wondering if I was related to the idiots that had hiked down on the cliffs to harass their sunbathing friends above the water.
After we got back to the kayak shop we were ready for some food so we walked up the street for some Italian.
Later (after a shower) we headed to the gaslamp district, which is really nothing more than a SDSU hangout for college kids looking to get drunk.
