After leaving our awesome West Hollywood Hotel yesterday morning, we headed out through Beverly Hills and onto the U.S. Route 101 which heads out of L.A. and joins up with the Pacific Coast Highway. After about an hour's driving we noticed a sign for Zuma Beach - next turn off. And with that, without hesitating, Simon took that turn off and towards Zuma beach. No real reason other than to get a photo and most likely then head away.

While Simon and I were standing outside the Zuma beach entrance cheering to 'Chief Jacob', Uns had chatted to the local security guard and found out how to get to the free beach just around the corner. So we quickly jumped back into the car, followed the security guy and found ourselves a spot on the beach for the afternoon. Zuma beach turned out to be a fantastic spot and spent quite some time there in the sun before moving on.

From Zuma beach we continued north via Malibu which I expected to be more of a beach town, but mainly just a whole lot of huge, seafront facing celebrity homes. From Malibu we carried on to Santa Barbara where we planned our next stop and a walk around there. We landed up having to drive out onto the pier and park on it which I found rather weird, but clearly the done thing there. Santa Barbara was fantastic - rather quiet but incredibly picturesque. After a walk down the pier, Uns and I headed into the old town to check it out, then back to the beach to meet Si and Suzie and continue our journey back on the Pacific Coast Highway.

Before arriving into Cayucos, our destination for the night, we pulled over into a roadside stop to watch the sun set over the ocean, which is always a favourite of mine. Then it was into Cayucos, a small quaint beach-town just off the main highway which is about half way between L.A. and Big Sur, so made a convenient stopover for last night. We were staying at On The Beach Bed And Breakfast, which was up the top end of town, so after getting dropped off, we had a bit of time to check-in, use the Jacuzzi tub and get ready for dinner. We were recommended to try out Cayucos Sea Shanty for dinner which specialise in outstanding, freshly caught local seafood. We were a bit late in arriving there, but they said they'd stay open, and glad they did as we all thoroughly enjoyed our meals.

After a fairly rushed meal at Sea Shanty, we headed down the road for a beer at the Old Creek Ale House, which seemed very much a locals pub, especially with the wall behind the bar full of named ale glass - not only do they have their 'usual' there, they have their own glass too. After a beer inside there, we crossed over the road to The Old Cayucos Saloon, aka The Cayucos Tavern & Card Room. It was your very typical saloon bar, with a hitching rail outside to tie up the horses, a bunch of guys playing cards out back, a room with a pool table and Big Red (real name Eric) serving us from behind the bar. We planned to just have one or two in there, but certainly wasn't easy to leave the Saloon, and landed up having an awesome night just sitting by the bar chatting away to Big Red. At least it was an easy and short walk home from there.

This morning we were up early for sunrise down on the beach. Uns woke up early so we figured we'd get up and photograph watch the sunrise which is always better on the beach I think. It probably wasn't the most spectacular sunrise I'd seen, but we did manage to spot dolphins swimming just off the coastline, which was good to watch. Then once the day had broken, we headed back for breakfast which was an interesting mix of frittata and waffles, all home cooked there, and all very tasty. After a decent feed we headed up to the roof top jacuzzi and chilled out there for a while until Si and Suzie came round to pick us up, but could've quiet easily spent the rest of the morning chilling out in the hot tub overlooking the beach and sea!

The plan for today is continue north on the California State Route 1 (Pacific Coast Highway) for a couple of hours which will take us into Big Sur, our accommodation for the next couple of nights. Looking forward to that, but worried how quickly the days are going by...