Nevada / California: 16.09. – 02.10.2009

On September 16th we got Visitors from home: Corina and Marcel, their suitcases weren’t just packed with their cloth but also with things for us, like good old Swiss chocolate, fennel seed tea and so on, we had a feeling that it was Christmas, Thanks a lot to the two of you. But also Christina and Adrian have made their way to the City of the impossible and so the six of us made Las Vegas even more insecure.

But our second visit to the City of gambling was not as covered in luck as our first one. Besides that nobody wanted to belief us that we are older than 21, and that is how it came that Markus got escorted out of the Casino by a 2m tall security guard. That was until Sonja could bail him out by getting his ID. After that ordeal we passed by the supposing world best age guesser. But with 27 even he was closer to 21 than to the real age.

After two days of Luxury, relaxing on the pool, great food and gambling it meant to say our farewells. The four of them went west and we took the road back to California straight to the Yosemite National Park. According to the travel guide is the Park with its size of 3’000 square kilometer one of the most attractive and diverse landscapes in North America. We only can agree with that. The Valley with the steep cliffs, the lakes the waterfalls and the wide meadows of the plateau, we liked it all. And we spent a few days exploring that patch of land. But the widely know black bears of Yosemite know for their ruthlessness and even breaking into cars, we have seen none of them. Even though the pictures displayed let us follow the rules closely and so Nisto was stripped of all our food supplies.

After the beautiful Landscape we went back to San Francisco, this time in we expected sunshine. But that was only true for half of the town, the other half was still nicely covered in an ocean of fog. Never the less we greatly enjoyed our visit, we besides other we also discovered the famous Chinatown and the Fisherman’s Warf, before we continued south along the coast.

In Monterey we’ve made our first stop. Markus has heard that there is some great diving in the area and of course we didn’t want to miss that. The best spot is supposed to be Point Lobos State Reserve. But there one needs a permit and on weekends that is almost impossible without reservation. So we settled for the Monastery Beach just outside of the reserve and we have not been disappointed. Diving in a Kelp forest with hundreds of sea stars, corrals, flatfish, crabs and anemones is just wonderful.

In the meantime Corina and Marcel where on their way back from their tour through the land of the canyons and so it came that we met again in the area of Morro Bay. Together we spent a day talking, laughing, cooking, a glass of wine out of real glasses at a nice little one foot Campfire in the National Forest.

The next target was the Cannel Island National Park by Ventura. We didn’t want to go on the Island but we wanted to see them from below. With a little back and forth we could found a dive boat for Thursday so we could spend two days in beautiful Santa Barbara.

Our Dive day began at the inhuman time of 5:30. Even since we were ordered to the boat at 6am no one of the crew was seen at all as we started caring our equipment on the boat still in the dark, slowly one or two shirts of the boat where recognized but a “good morning” was not heard at all. Right on time at 7am the boat started till then nobody has said a word and till today we still don’t know where the life vests would have been. Fortunately we did not need them. As the day went on the crew warmed up and the three dives where one better than the other and we have even seen Sea Lion, Eagle Rays and a Cormorant going for Breakfast.

Now it meant hallo Los Angeles and Hollywood. But that’s for the next story.

Till soon

Sonja and Markus

Here it goes to the Pictures…

Here it goes to the Underwater Pictures…