Down in Monterey Harbour I have a brief walk around before going on a kayak tour of the bay. There is a festive atmosphere around the old town, with a band playing on the bandstand at the bottom of the pier to a busy crowd. The canned fish industry was the origin of Monterey’s wealth, but the tinning works are now the restaurants and souvenir shops. It’s not cheap tat that they sell here, but some of your more imaginative, robustly constructed and pricier tat. I do get a t-shirt emblazoned with shark jaws for $20 though.
On the kayak tour, the guide is an older lady in her late fifties I would say. She has probably retired from her ‘proper’ job and taken this up as a fun hobby that earns her some spare change. She is very friendly and informative but has a disconcerting habit of laughing at the end of each sentence even though there is nothing obviously funny about what she is saying.
The harbour is famous for its submerged mangrove forest, a densely packed habitat for sub aquatic life and a meal ticket for the seal and sea lion colonies. It also popular for divers and there are many dive boats around us, though it does strike me that it would be easy to get entangled in the densely packed plantlife below us.
This year, there are only a handful of seals about while the sea lions number in their hundreds. The seals are inquisitive and swim closely around our kayaks, with our guide accidentally hitting one with her paddle. The sea lions, most of which are adolescents but are still double the size of the seals are, in contrast, entirely unwelcoming. And they smell. As we round the rock pier on which the sea lions gather, I am relieved when I get far enough away for the stench to whither.
It’s very windy today. Despite having ruined a camera after being dunked into the sea the last time I was on a kayak when I was in New Zealand, I have brought my new camera which I bought in a mall near LA, this time taking the precaution of keeping it in a dry bag. However, this means that every time I want to take a picture, which with all the seals and sea lions about I do often, I have to stop to take it out. This means the wind blows me all directions, sometimes spinning me around in circles. With one hand holding my camera, I approach a gang of adolescent sea lions playing off the rock pier and a gust takes me directly towards the middle of them. All but one bolts off like a circle of skaters suddenly splitting out to all corners of the rink, but the last one hangs around for a few moments to aim a protest bark or two in my direction.
There are remnants of old demolished tinning works along the coast, neighbouring the expensive hotels and restaurants built in typical Californian style wood panels and carved balcony banisters. The ruins of the tinning works, which are no more than blocks of concrete, are still there because of strict planning laws in place presumably to retain remnants of Monterey’s history. However, it is clear commercial interests prevail in the end, even if it does take a few decades.
For dinner, I go to an English pub in town, which is populated largely by drunk twenty somethings. However, it sells Strongbow cider, the most widely sold cider in the UK. This has never been my favoured cider, but it is cheaper than at home, a reflection of the British Government’s tax policy on alcohol....however, it also tastes worse than at home.
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