Monterey

As you'll have read from Rosie's post, we went to Monterey at the weekend.  We went originally on our Honeymoon (many years ago).  We had one scheduled trip and made time to return later in the holiday because we enjoyed it so much. It has a wonderful feeling apart from the very touristy Cannery Row.  The aquarium was the real big draw for us this time as we knew the children would love it.  They all spent ages watching the really big kelp forest tank.  This was a good two stories high and really felt like part of the ocean.  It contained sharks (cue screaming from the girls), star fish, a school of anchovies and the highlight, a wolf eel which Owen recognised from Deadly 60!  Twice a day, visitors are invited to watch feeding time which is done, of course, by SCUBA diver....

Her name is Anne!

The diver wears a full face mask and is miked up to enable her to talk us through what she's doing and what fish are in the tank.  Owen and Rose sat right at the front and were fascinated throughout.

Isla wanted to get up close to the tropical fish. Nemo was her favorite.

As well as all of the wildlife in the aquarium, there is plenty going on outside.  From a deck around the aquarium you can watch wild sea otters in the bay, catching crabs and using rocks to break open the shells to get to the unfortunate crabs. Owen has put a few photos on his blog entry. He was the first to spot the sea otters and said " I could sit here all day watching them". He also enjoyed the sea otter exhibit inside the aquarium where the staff talked about training, exercise and diet.

Taking advantage of a short break in the weather, we rented a five man bike...

We were amazingly lucky to see a passing school / pod of dolphins swimming along the coast, jumping out of the sea as they went along. People were rushing to the waters edge just to get a glimps and there were a few surfers out on the waves with them. Awesome as they say here.

We also saw a typical Californian sight of sea lions sunning themselves on the beach.  The best bit was when a larger than usual wave came in and dragged a few of the closer ones out to sea. I remember this sight from when we came a good few years ago. I love that it is so hard to tell the sea lions and rock apart.

Can you spot them?

We had a wonderful weekend and are now confident to continue our weekend exploring all sharing one motel room!

Love Jo and Dave too