Grover)
♣ 2

ONWARD TO CARMEL/POINT LOBOS!

Picking up from where I left off......

The morning after, B & I woke up bright and early, had home made breakfast courtesy of Kevin's mom, popped by a Dollar Tree (I LOVE DAT PLACE, MAN!) to get a backseat-full of snacks and refreshments for the road trip, and made our way to Point Lobos.

Now before you scroll down to look at the magnificient photos, I'd like to point out that:

(1)Thas' the grey pullover from Walmart that saved my skinny ass from freezing throughout the rest of the trip,

and that

(2)Point Lobos is hands down the most beautiful place I've ever been,

and finally that

(3)A lot of the websites we've been to don't tell you that these points of unbelievable beauty charge you for parking. It's a minimal sum (like less than US$5,) but I still think it's good to know for budgeting purposes.

This is what I imagine Heaven to look & feel like.

It was 10-12 degrees cold, with just the right amount of wind, and the glorious sun beating down on us. AHHHHHHHHHHH~ (To facilitate your understanding of my exclamation, try imagining the sensation one gets when he takes the first sip from an ice cold can of coke on a ridiculously hot day. Okay now take that sensation and multiply it by infinity.)

We read something about the different coves on Tripavdvisor, but since there really weren't that many signs pointing out the different coves, we kinda just drove to the last parking lot and walked around from there.

We did eventually find China Cove though!

The colors are just as, if not more magnificent in real life.

I think we must have spent 3 hours at the place; I really didn't want to leave.

You probably can't see it from here, but in the backdrop are houses. DREAM HOME! (looks on wistfully)

After Carmel we went on to look for the famous Bixby bridge, and...........

clearly missed it.

We didn't even realize that we had passed it until, well, when we took this picture, zoomed in, and saw it in the background. We had a pretty good laugh about it. Also! What a huge banana, no?

NEXT STOP: NEPENTHE!

After 5 minutes of driving down the Big Sur, we lost all reception (What a surprise. Not. American telcos have such terrible reception that they make even Singtel-while-underground-in-the-MRT look good.) Being the techno freaks that we are (ok he is, I'm just overly-reliant in general), we didn't carry any maps, and had to stop an older couple to ask if we were indeed driving along the Big Sur.

The drive to Nepenthe was made extra exciting when B made the decision to drive at 100km/h on a NARROW, ONE WAY road BORDERING THE OCEAN.

He thinks he's the stig.

But in his defense, it really did feel like we were on Top Gear.

The drive!

When we finally saw signs of civilization, we had arrived at our destination.

B read about Nepenthe, and insisted that we went

and what a glorious, glorious lunch we had.

After lunch, we drove on for about 2-3 hours (by which time we were exhausted as hell and desperate for some rest,) before reaching The Elephant Seal Vista Point!

Let the look of composure on B's face kid you not. Because the sun was setting, the cold was starting to set in, and the fact that the winds were insane really didn't help. We practically ran to see the seals, huddled up as we were ogling at those fat and lazy (but so adorable) elephant seals, and raced back to the car.

At one point I think I dared Bervin to go down to the shoreline to see if he would get eaten up.

#bestgirlfriendever

And later, after driving for another 2-3 hours, we arrived at Juliet's place at Grover Beach.

More about that later, because it's a loooooong story!