anniebrooks: Day 12 Cambria to Big Sur

We travelled north along Highway 1 to Big Sur, and found ourselves in a bizarre little hotel called Deetjuns Inn. That’s bizarre with a capital B. No locks on the doors for example, just a very small catch from the inside. I can only imagine this is because the Americans who come to visit Big Sur are in search of Spiritual Awakening. There are spiritual gardens, spiritual art, and spiritual walks everywhere you look. People are way too busy working on their spirituality to be bothered with being burglars. They did say to lock your valuables in your car though (which we did with a very British thoroughness). The information sheet also came with another warning:

“Big Sur’s hungry raccoons come out after dark and seem to know if you have food in your room! We suggest you keep any food in your car at night to prevent midnight visits from these cute but persistent marauders. All of us at Deetjun’s hope that you will enjoy your stay at the Inn”. Highly unlikely if we have raccoons in our bedrooms I would say...and when they say ‘food’, are raccoons clever enough to know that the Lemon Whip handcream I nicked from The Fogcatcher Inn isn’t proper food...and how do they get in? Can they come down the chimney? Do they get in through smallish cracks? The Bees and I were in enough of a spin by this horrifying dilemma that we had to have a private conversation about it without Tim (who was heard to say “Anybody would think there in the middle of f***ing Borneo”). We came up with a three-point plan to ensure our ongoing safety while here. It crossed my mind we could sleep in the car. Borneo be damned.

The place is run as a non-profit-making foundation, “established to preserve the restaurant and Inn for transient guests so that the public may enjoy the natural beauty, charm and scenery of Big Sur Inn, as requested by Helmuth ‘Grandpa’ Deetjun is his will”. Some of those profits could go to providing guests with keys to their rooms, and better showers (one of the Bees and my lips are sealed as to which one, had conniptions on seeing the dribble of water pretending to be a shower) – just a thought.

However, it is charming, in a home-spun, insecure and frightening kind of way. I look forward to becoming more spiritual and less anxious over the next couple of days. On the way here Highway 1 also turned into a nasty Alton Towers-type thrill-ride and continued in an unmerciful series of twists and bends (with signs warning of rock-slides) so by the time we got here I was decidedly green about the gills. A couple of years ago on a holiday in Italy I became nauseous lying on a lilo in a swimming pool which had nobody else in it, so I have to admit, it doesn’t take much.

In 1984 there was such a massive storm in Big Sur that a large proportion of the Highway got washed out to sea and you couldn’t get from one end of the area to the other for 14 months while it was rebuilt. They are also dogged by big fires every now and again - an unforgiving landscape. Very spiritual though.

Each room here has journals (going back over a decade) where people leave their innermost (mainly spiritual) thoughts. We did come across one though which said, ‘the journals in this room are really boring. The ones in my sister-in-law’s room are way better – full of drinking, sex and debauchery’. Guests seem to want to write dreadful poetry although there are some quite good sketches. Bella bought a stamp of Obama which she put all over one page with the words ‘Yes we can’ which will no doubt wind up some future guests.

We left it rather late to find anyone to take our daily pic, so put it on a timer. Will do better tomorrow.

Roger and out.