A letter from San francisco....V

Ventana Wilderness.

There are two ways to drive south out of San Francisco. Route 101, a sometimes 8 lane freeway that takes you out past the airport and which is hot, crowded, noisy and insane, or Highway 1, which you can pick up by Golden gate bridge and is considered by many to be a national treasure.

Highway 1 runs along the coast, hugging it, embracing it following every twist and turn of the Pacific. It runs North of the Golden gate bridge too, but if you drive south, through the city and the suburb of Pacifica (very good place for learning surfing apparently) you start to cross what will be Pumpkin fields in the autumn and after an hour come to Half Moon Bay. From then on you are on a small two-lane highway, the Pacific Ocean on your right, farms on the left.

And nobody.

The next town is Santa Cruz but before you arrive there are many bays, creeks and beeches where you can poke around in tide pools or sleep with the sound of surf in your ears. Of course there are many reminders that camping is prohibited but that doesn’t stop people doing it.

So everyone camps by the sea but moves on early in the morning before the authorities start work.

After Santa Cruz, highway 1 follows the sweep of the bay and takes you to Monterey three hours from the city, next is Carmel though it is difficult to say where one ended and the next began, then there is The Carmel River beach, an almost perfect little bay of pebbles, mysterious blue sea and dark brown kelp beds off shore.

This is the beginning of the Big Sur and another hour will take you to Big Sur River and the Pfeifer Big Sur state park. Another half mile and the visitor centre is where you check in and register for the 10-mile hike along the pine ridge trail, through the Ventana wilderness to Sykes hot spring.

I first heard about these hot springs when I visited the Big Sur in 1985 and since then I have wondered what the experience would be like.

Well, it’s a long walk. And it takes about five hours to arrive. And it gets hot and you can’t carry enough water AND food AND tent to sleep in, though on the return trip I saw someone carrying a guitar - and the last 10 miles are the worst.

Oh and its really hard to find the springs when you get there.

But you can see the distant ocean sometimes, smell the eucalyptus, walk under some unimaginably high redwoods, watch the blue jays darting through the pines and pick wild sage and fennel.

The springs are natural hot springs that rise halfway up a small cliff, and overtime and with a bit of help from humans, they have created five pools in the cliffside where you can lie and soak, occasionally taking a cool bathe in the river that flows alongside.

And you can watch small trout watching you and watch the water lizard dive.

And feel good.