Hello from Oceanside! We are just a few miles from San Diego and we should reach it by tomorrow!

Tonight we will be hosted in Carslbad by Jodi, another nice member from the warmshowers community. Since we agreed to meet later in the afternoon, we decided to spend some time at a local library, which we usually enjoy a lot and a gift that lately had not had the chance to indulge ourselves with.

Since our last post in Monterey, we had cycled all the way down to Big Sur and San Luis Obispo. We went across several State Parks: Garrapata, Andrew Molera, Pfeiffer Big Sur, Julia Pfeiffer Burns, Limeklin, Morro Bay and El Chorro.

After that, we went across several State Beaches: Pismo, Refugio, El Capitán, and Carpinteria.

On 23 December we made it to Leo Carrillo State Park. To our dismay, and after almost 80 km riding our bicycles, we discovered it had burnt during the Malibu wildfires earlier this year. A lifeguard that was ending his shift told us Leo Carrillo was closed and the closest option to pitch a tent at a campground was to go a few miles back to Sycamore Beach. During those days our main concern every time we camped was to get our tent dry before we went to sleep. Because of the changes in temperature after sunset the dew cumulated very easily on the tent and we always needed to pitch it some time before sunset to get it dry.

This was the main reason why we were not happy at all with the bad news. More particularly because the road was not particularly flat, also because the idea of getting back from where we were coming from –to cycle it again the day after– was not the most appealing one. However, since it was Sunday and nobody seemed to be working in the campground, we decided to take a closer look around. We discovered some areas of the campground were not affected at all by the fires and managed to pitch our wet tent under a tree. We were expecting some ranger to come and invite us to leave the place while we were cooking dinner –or even at night– but we were lucky and that never happened. The morning after we left before sunrise and –at least from our side– nobody knows we were there that night.

We could even pay a short visit to Hollywood Boulevard in downtown LA on Christmas’ eve. That day we enjoyed the nice trail parallel to Highway 1 and the bikeway to Malibu, Venice Beach and ended up in Torrance.

On Christmas we were extremely lucky to be hosted by Ken, one of the volunteers of Warmshowers, and his partner Kenny! We had a wonderful evening in Long Beach and enjoyed a delicious meal and very interesting conversations… and we also met their three dog, we were proud to be licked by Alvin –one of the dogs– and Pak made a new friend: Meepers, their bird.

After our stay in Long Beach, we continued south to Crystal Cove and San Onofre. And this is how today we reached Oceanside.

We had a ball with tough rides climbing the hills and enjoying the terrific views in Big Sur, then came the nice beaches and trails; although we also had a nasty experience with a hoard of racoons and watch from the very first row a show of ‘mother nature’ when an eagle was having some rat lunch. We also met and had nice chats with new people: like Robin, who was just passing by in Carpinteria; Nicholas, who was cycling to Thousand Oaks for Christmas; Ryan, who was just commuting in San Mateo; and many other people who just stopped to ask us about our trip and story. And last but not least, especially the last two evenings, we could enjoy magnificent sunsets and sunrises! Lucky us!

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