Santa Cruz

After making the bed in the van both Josh and I could smell something less than pleasant. Josh asked me if it came from me and I said no and that I thought it was him. He told me it wasn't him so we just stopped thinking about it and I climed into bed listening to a podcast. Josh however had decided to try to take pictures of the stars so he stayed outside for a little while longer. After I while I could hear him bang on the side of the van and thought he tried to scare me, so I just ignored it and put my earphones back in. After a while he opened the door and asked if I had heard him bang and yell my name. I said no since I hadn't heard him say anything. He then told me there had been a massive skunk next to the van and when it started walking towards Josh he banged on the van to scare it away. So then we knew where the weird smell came from. It must have been underneath the van when we smelled it.

The next day, relieved that we could not see any signs of the skunk, we started driving towards our next adventure, Santa Cruz. On the way we drove past Wine Country with HUGE fields (I'm telling you, you could not see where they ended) of grapes. It was pretty impressive. Reaching Santa Cruz we started off by having a really nice brunch at one of the cafés and then taking a stroll in the town center. The center was small with a few interesting shops so it didn't take long before we headed towards the Santa Cruz seafront. The place reminded me of Brighton with a pier and a small theme park, and on this particular day the weather looked a lot like Brighton too. It was cold! The best thing about the pier in Santa Cruz was the Sea lions that, apparently, often keep locals up at night with their howling. There were sea lions everywhere underneath the pier and some of them were fighting about particular spots to rest on. Sometimes they also showed us what they had been eaten, which was not particularly pleasant to watch.