Osolos Sossolosos (USA Day 137)

The morning fog had rolled in and mainly lifted, its remnants visible on the horizon and its entrails dripping all over our poor tent: the soggiest it’s ever been despite not having seen a speck of rain. We packed up amidst the freezing dampness and clambered aboard our bikes, knowing that the sun would take all morning to emerge over the eastern hills and we didn’t have that long to wait.

I’d emerged from the tent a few times in the night to interrupt racoon raids. We’d prepared pretty well against them, but still they’d managed to extract a pannier from under the awning of our tent and were having a good attempt at opening it. I’d caught them red-handed and tried my best to shoo them away, which amounted to chasing them (and these are dog-sized creatures, with their little bandit masks and tiny human hands) down a pitch-black path, then whispering something like, “and STAY OUT” as they blinked flagrantly back and planned their next incursion. Minutes later, we heard the clang of the next site’s bear box, and saw them in the morning searching the grass for various missing food items.

This is all to say, we’d slept, but not soundly, and coffee was needed. Unfortunately, when mini marts or gas stations appeared on the beautiful horizon, the prices were fittingly extortionate for one of the most beautiful roads on the planet. No matter how caffeine-impoverished my snoozy mind, I wasn’t paying four dollars for a premade filter coffee squished from an urn.

After twenty miles of hills, the land levelled out and we made excellent progress into more arid, desert-like surroundings. The hills to the east spread out, the road widened, and the landscape took a well-needed sigh. Far too intense a topography to maintain for the rest of the coast, I reckon. Can’t blame the poor guy. Anyway, we weren’t too bothered because we saw a sign that mentioned elephant seals, then a beach full of big brown blobs, then a car park where we could pull over.

Oh lord. Elephant seals stink. They’re easily the size of a limb-free cow, and seemingly made from blubber, cod liver oil and a generous chin. They lay there in their hundreds, flicking flipperfuls of sand over their stinking backs to cool off or maybe ward away flies. Occasionally, they coughed. One or two of the beasts would caterpillar its way towards the waterline, its rolls of blubber shuddering with the impact. On land, their movement is all belly and no legs; their pathetic flippers waiting by the side until there was some water to bat around. When the seal reached the wall of stinky brethren who’d installed themselves like a troop of kettling police officers right at the water’s edge, quite the tussle would occur as one guy tried to occupy the space quite densely occupied by other, equally flubbery beings.

The wilderness stripped itself away bit-by-bit, the final slice being a field of ‘wild’ zebras grazing the arid grass. Apparently, William Randolph Hearst (a local millionaire) brought a pocketful of the punk horses over in order to shoot them, but at least two escaped and started a new life on the California coast. Oddly, the ones we saw looked very much within fences, so I think while this story pleases tourists, the real reason for their presence is most likely the future prospect of fashionable yet oh-so-cruel striped trousers for the Hearst family.

We pushed through a string of seaside towns, packed with the kinds of seafront summer homes that estate agents could sell in their sleep, except that most were a hill and a freeway away from the actual beach. By the time we’d got through Morro Bay and were heading towards Los Osos (os), the majority of the joy had slipped away with the majority of the sunlight. Until,

“Wow, you guys are fast!”

Another cyclist pulled up to our spot with his hand out. “Ivan? Amy?”

This was our host-to-be, Richard, who’d cycled out to meet us. With a relieved sigh, we relinquished navigation responsibility to him and cruised through some quiet, breezy backroads that skirted around a gorgeous wetland streaked with meandering channels of brackish water and coated with a deep red heather. We reached Richard’s home in Los Osos, scrubbed ourselves human and ventured out again, this time in a car, straight back to Morro Bay for punchy shrimp tacos and salsa hot enough to boil your knees.