Framedlight

We left Point Lobos and drove into Monterey, finding a car park near the harbour. The 'front' at Monterey had the usual sea food shacks and tourist frippery as well as the occasional sleepy sea lion. We found the berth where our boat was due to depart for the wale watching trip and had our lunch to the delight of a lame sea gull. The boat came with it's own salty sea dog!. We boarded and got a place at the rear of the boat with good visibility although the weather was still cloudy and overcast, I put on my 200mm f/2.8 lens with the 1.4 converter giving me a total of 340mm reach. Mairi had a kit 28-300mm Sigma lens on her smaller sensor camera so could do a lot better than me. I also noticed that her smaller lens was a lot less liable to shake on the moving boat. The trials of using more professional equipment. On the way out of the harbour we passed a sea otter with a baby on her back and numerous sea lions sitting wherever they could...

Following our clifftop walk we went to the outskirts of San Luis Obispo to get some shopping We then went to the public swimming pool in Avila which has a hot spring on the premises. It was a bit of a grotty pool to be quite honest but lovely to stew in the hot tub for a bit and have a swim afterwards and a much needed shower. Next port of call was Port San Luis, a little harbour and pier where we sat and watched the pelicans while we had our lunch. We saw brown pelicans which seemed to be the species in central California, and unused to them, I found them fascinating, especially the way they flew in squadrons, low over the water. Lunch over we walked along the pier to see the fish stalls with a troupe of ever ready sea birds. There were some sea lions hauled up on a raft next to a boat and, when we looked under the pier we found that the sub structure had dozens of them on it.