Saturday, June 4th

23:14 PDT - Tosj | Day 3, at 7.45 sharp, my mobile phone rings it's wake up call. We immediately turn on a computer to see if Phillip Seibel, a german computer science student and participant in the Biococoa project is on-line already. We have never met Phillip before and only know him from e-mails and a view chat sessions...

Today we will take him on our car trip along highway 1 south to Santa Cruz, CA and further to Pinnacles National Monument. To have a good start of the day, we first go to our Boudin Bakery in 5th street to get some coffee and croissants. With our breakfast under our arms we set out to Dollar rent a car where we get to hear that "we only have an SUV", so we buy that silly marketing trick and not much later we drive out of the garage with a real Jeep Liberty: Mek en Tosj in front, Phillip in the back...

We try to get on highway 1 just around Twin Peaks, but because we don't have a detailed map, we took "the scenic route" with a bit of a d-tour. In the end we merge onto the highway and off we are, southbound along the magnificent shores of the pacific ocean. We cruise through small towns with quite some police around, checking for speeding, but we are not pulled over. Perhaps we get some bills later! Around 11.30 we have lunch in Santa Cruz, because Alex is not capable of reading the time from his wrist watch... But because it is still early we decide to drive quite some miles further to go to the eastern part of Pinnacles National Park.

Once we get to Pinnacles, it is about 2.00 p.m. and we decide to not go to the caves (the Bear Gulch Cave is closed), but to take the High Peaks Trail and the Condor Gulch Trail for a more than 6 miles long hike. We start climbing on the western part of the trail and quite soon enjoy the views that become better and better. While our new water bottles are warming up in the sunlight, we reach what we think at that moment, our highest point and can only say that the views are spectacular. We already see some big birds circling above our heads and continue the trail towards the High Peaks where the view is even more magnificent and we are silenced by the beauty of characteristic nature over there. On the real highest peaks of the trail we get really close to some lizards, squirrels and: Condors! Some of the birds circling above our heads have the characteristic pink heads of a condor. We first hardly can believe we are actually looking at these protected animals, but the color of their heads is very well visible and we enjoy these creatures for several minutes. At those highest peaks we definitely had the nicest moments of our trip to Pinnacles and with camera's full with photographs we start our descent in southern direction.

Down at the Bear Gulch Visitors Centre we refill our water flasks and refresh ourselves for the trip home, because it is already past 5:00 p.m. With a long, but nice ride over highway 101 we arrive back in San Francisco, where we have to park our car above the car rental place. But with all the one-way streets in town it is difficult to first find a gas-station and then the correct route to the parking lot. We almost stopped on the middle of the crossing of Market street and 3rd street, but in the end we managed to park the car, so we will be able to drive it 'down-stairs' tomorrow morning before 9 a.m. Opposite of the parking we found a Lori's Diner where the starved trio had diner. After a wealthy shower to get rid of all the dust we gathered in Pinnacles, we are now almost ready for a nice cool beer and some sleep for our first WWDC 2005 day: Student sunday.