As I awoke to yet another perfect bluebird day, I vowed to take not one of these beautiful late autumn days for granted.
The palms rose high into the brilliant blue sky, they were perfect too. We walked from the surfers parking lot to town via the bay, we took the long way around. There was no hurry.
The offshore wind blew the top of the breaking waves and magical, sunlit spray flew through the air behind them.
Ventura had quickly begun to feel like home. After weeks on the road, travel worn and weary, we parked several nights in this bohemian surf town just north of LA. We spent the earliest part of the mornings in the ocean before making our way into the pedestrianised centre in search of coffee.
There was no shortage of good cafes and we tried a new one almost every day. Kaapicat had some beautiful light on it that morning. We went inside to order. The woman behind the counter had silver hair and waited silently as we looked at the board where the coffee selection was written. They had French press, we agreed we’d both like the same. I turned to the silver haired woman with a smile and asked for two caffetières. She looked at me blankly. ‘I don’t know what that is’. I checked the board again, corrected my order to two French press. Despite speaking the same language, there was so much difference between my British English and the American English.
We carried them outside. The street was quiet; a few pigeons hopped around, the sun crept around. A woman sat near us, talking loudly on the phone about her back pain and whether she should go to a chiropractor.
The floor tiles were quite beautiful and reminded me of Portugal. Some words in the centre marked the spot as the old post office. How much the town had changed since, gentrified and modernised. Yet Ventura still had a special charm. It was missing the overly affluent feel that so much of Southern California exuded. Somehow it felt more down to earth, more diverse. The fancy clothes shops were local boutiques, not expensive designer brands, and anyway they were outnumbered by thrift stores. Proper gritty, cheap, trawl through the stuff thrift stores. The surfers were mostly van lifers and beach bums. We fitted right in.
The oat milk curdled inside my coffee. I was used to it, I didn’t mind. To even be given the option of oat milk was lovely. Seven or eight years ago when I became vegan, it was black coffee or very occasionally there would be soy milk, which would almost always curdle dramatically. This light separation of my oat milk was nothing to worry about.
Back out onto the streets to explore. It felt like Spain, not only in the architecture - red roofs and white render - but also in the way everyone seemed to sleep in late. Somehow we had done so much already and yet there was no one around, the shops still shut. Ventura was all ours. We decided to allow ourselves a few more days in this delightfully lazy and familiar routine before we hit the road again.
Part of travelling was knowing when to go slow.
🐌