Big Sur, USA

The Coast of All Refuges


Nice view
A woman admires a sandy cove from a Big Sur viewpoint.
bixby bridge
The Bixby Bridge, which continues Highway One over a deep canyon.
Big Sur Inn
Entrance to Big Sur Inn, an inn on Highway 1, California
peaceful but little
Rough seas shake a Big Sur inlet.
the usual conflict
Conflicting sea lions on a beach in Big Sur.
the ideal vehicle
A mobile home parked in a dune area of ​​Big Sur.
white ocean
Mist covers the entire ocean scene off Big Sur.
rodent life
A squirrel analyzes opportunities.
sweet add
A stream of fresh water plunges into a cove bathed by the Pacific Ocean.
ocean of mist
Characteristic fog from the Big Sur region fills the inlets above the Pacific Ocean.
organized herd
Herd of cows roam a bare, hot slope at the tops of Big Sur.
Mail Inn
Big Sur Inn mailboxes on the edge of Highway One.
white tide
Mist above the Pacific Ocean fills successive inlets along Highway One.
marine comfort
An elephant seal leaning on the cold sands of Big Sur.
Bixby Bridge 1932
The Bixby Bridge, added to Highway One in 1932.
random sunset
Sun almost setting over the Pacific Ocean to the west of the American continent.
Over 150km, the Californian coast is subjected to a vastness of mountains, ocean and fog. In this epic setting, hundreds of tormented souls follow in the footsteps of Jack Kerouac and Henri Miller.

Los Angeles was long ago to the south, like San Simeon, the last town worth mentioning, only because press magnate William Hearst built an impressive 165-room mansion there that his eponymous corporation later donated to the state of California.

Gradually, Highway 1 surrenders to the concerted encirclement between the Santa Lucia mountain range and the Pacific Ocean.

It starts to zigzag up and down slopes and valleys that spill out onto a prehistoric and wild coast, “the greatest meeting of land and water in the world”, as the vast community of artists who admire the place has become accustomed to classifying it. .

Cove, Big Sur, California, United States

Rough seas shake a Big Sur inlet.

The Natural Magnetism of Big Sur

Every year, more than three million visitors cross each other on the whimsical curves of the route or on the arched bridges that cross the various gorges.

After sunset, there are no lights on electric poles or even houses. Only the distant tracks left by the cars that still circulate stain that domain, almost entirely uncolonized.

Viewpoint visitor, Big Sur, California, United States

A woman admires a sandy cove from a Big Sur viewpoint.

Remote, isolated and deeply natural, Big Sur emanates a strong geo-spirituality that does not go unnoticed. Some monasteries were installed on its elevations so that the resident communities of religious could take communion.

Faith or not, the feeling of being in a sanctuary prevails slope after slope, reinforced whenever the endless blanket of fog veils the frigid Pacific and strokes the warmer tongues of earth like a meteorological incense.

Hovering fog, Big Sur, California, United States

Mist above the Pacific Ocean fills successive inlets along Highway One.

A few thousand outlaws or hermits also spread over 400 km2 of those parts in the hope of benefiting from the purification. Some remain for the rest of their lives. Others bend under the weight of loneliness and, sooner or later, give up their vows of recollection.

Jack Kerouac's Trip of Refuge

In the 60s, Jack Kerouac became the most famous personality to respond to the appeal of the coast of all retreats. In the autobiographical novel “Big Sur” – which he will have written in just ten days – Kerouac takes on the role of Jack Duluouz and narrates his physical and mental degradation, aggravated by the growing pressure from fans that he seeks to abstract by consuming alcohol in proportionate amounts.

In the book, at some point, Duluouz gives in to his weakness and a first refuge from the devouring Beat scene of San Francisco in the hut of Kerouac's poet friend Lawrence Ferlinghetti in Bixby Canyon.

Bixby Bridge, Big Sur, California, United States

The Bixby Bridge, which continues Highway One over a deep canyon.

But Duluouz handles the demands of Frisco's libertine society as badly as he does the heartbreaking isolation of the seafront or the death of his cat Tyke.

As suddenly as he had arrived, he returns to the city. But he continues to seek Big Sur's blessing, later tormented by Billie's demand for love – the character of the mistress of Neal Cassady, another influential Beat poet – who demands Jack to marry her.

The Dead End Escape from Kerouac

Duluouz, or Kerouac, as we prefer, rejects the commitment and returns to the call of bohemian drinking and life. Neither Big Sur nor fate saves him.

Mist, Big Sur, California, United States

Mist covers the entire ocean scene off Big Sur.

Thereafter, the real Jack enters a spiral of decline that only ends, in October 1969, with his death, caused by hemorrhage following aggravated cirrhosis.

From the top of one of so many frightening cliffs, we have yet another of the sights Kerouac both admired and feared, for some reason often dubbed Puerta del Diablo, others Devils Canyon and with similar obscure names.

Waterfall, Big Sur, California, United States

A stream of fresh water plunges into a cove bathed by the Pacific Ocean.

The raw abyss of prehistoric rock, the distorted branches of cypresses, the subtle beauty of sage and other shrubs, and spontaneous floral arrangements anticipating long waterfalls that merge with a relentless surf.

Inebriated, paranoid and fearful, Jack felt in these dizzying Big Sur scenarios a threat similar to that of the realities and people that haunted him.

The Inspiration Unveiled by Kerouac from Big Sur

However, just as otters, seals, and elephant seals swim among strangling colonies of slime and algae and manipulate the overwhelming power of the waves, so other Beat Generation authors were inspired by the constant harassment of admirers and thrived on terms creative despite the hypocrisy that had begun to rage at the heart of their newly spawned movement.

Sea Lions, Big Sur, California, United States

Conflicting sea lions on a beach in Big Sur.

Kerouac has not stopped producing. His creations, however, show the intensification of a feeling of intimidation and smallness towards the world. Back in Big Sur, impressed by the brooding and permanent explosion of the ocean against the American continent, the writer arrived at “Mar”, a 22-page poem in which he noted its variations and contrasts.

The Natural and Literary Reality of Big Sur

The sea water of Big Sur is icy and no bather ventures into it. Offshore, neither sailboats nor the expected oil tanker or freighter ply the wild sea, only, from time to time, the occasional migrating whale.

Inland, in the most remote valleys of the mountain range, the temperature can drop by 10º in a few minutes. In winter, it reaches negative values, a cold that the strong humidity enhances. In the hottest months of summer, fires caused by lightning assume Dantesque proportions and generate an opposite effect.

Cows, Big Sur, California, United States

Herd of cows roam a bare, hot slope at the tops of Big Sur.

This contrast and the harshness of life in the Cordillera de Santa Lucia was well known by the forerunners of Kerouac, the first artists who moved and based their daily lives on the reliability of oil lamps and stoves.

Robinson Jeffers, in the 20s, was the first. His poetry gave rise to the romantic imagery of Big Sur that attracted followers. Henry Miller lived in the mountain range from 1944 until nearly the time Jack Kerouac visited it.

His essay/novel “Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronimous Bosch” deals with the pleasures and suffering arising from “escape the air conditioning nightmare” of modern life.

Henri Miller, Orson Wells and the Others

Miller also made it known that, on one occasion, a traveler knocked on his door looking for “the cult of sex and anarchy” and that he returned home, disillusioned, for not having found anything he was looking for.

Miller's presence is also referenced in Richard Brautigan's work “A Confederate General of Big Sur” in which a pair of young men there try the idyllic life that other authors had promoted, erecting small tents in which they are molested by plagues of flies and other insects, the low ceilings, the visit of businessmen in nervous breakdown and the croak of thousands of frogs that prevented them from catching up on sleep.

Taken by literature and conversation in the bars and cafes of haight, Castro and other neighborhoods of San Francisco, Big Sur ended up also arriving in Los Angeles and Hollywood.

Big Sur inn-Big Sur, California, United States

Entrance to Big Sur Inn, an inn on Highway 1, California

In 1944, during a tour of the area, Orson Wells and his wife Rita Hayworth were so impressed with the landscape that, on impulse, they bought a cabin. They never got to spend a night there.

Later, the house gave way to a restaurant, Nepenthe, ironically, the Greek name for an ancestral medicine for heartbreak, a sort of classical-Hellenic anti-depressant.

In 1965, Richard Burton and Elisabeth Taylor starred in the classic "The Sandpiper", one of the few films shot in Big Sur and taking on its panoramas as real sets.

The film crews arrived and soon departed. Big Sur played on movie and TV screens but little or nothing changed.

Henry Miller's ashes still lie there and, as the writer summed up in connection with fidelity to that magical place, the only people who are so fond of staying as "ingenious and self-sufficient souls" and this is a rare combination .

It is found among the painters and poets of the new generations. Even these, in greater numbers, live more and more with each other to avoid being crushed by the superiority of the sky, land and sea, of the eternal forces in dispute in the great Big Sur.

Sunset, Big Sur, California, United States

Sun almost setting over the Pacific Ocean to the west of the American continent.

Key West, United States

Hemingway's Caribbean Playground

Effusive as ever, Ernest Hemingway called Key West "the best place I've ever been...". In the tropical depths of the contiguous US, he found evasion and crazy, drunken fun. And the inspiration to write with intensity to match.
Saint Petersburg e Mikhaylovkoe, Russia

The Writer Who Succumbed to His Own Plot

Alexander Pushkin is hailed by many as the greatest Russian poet and the founder of modern Russian literature. But Pushkin also dictated an almost tragicomic epilogue to his prolific life.
Key West, USA

The Tropical Wild West of the USA

We've come to the end of the Overseas Highway and the ultimate stronghold of propagandism Florida Keys. The continental United States here they surrender to a dazzling turquoise emerald marine vastness. And to a southern reverie fueled by a kind of Caribbean spell.
Around the World - Part 1

Traveling Brings Wisdom. Find out how to travel around the world.

The Earth turns on itself every day. In this series of articles, you will find indispensable clarifications and advice for those who make a point of going around it at least once in their life.
Florida Keys, USA

The Caribbean Stepping Stone of the USA

Os United States continental islands seem to close to the south in its capricious peninsula of Florida. Don't stop there. More than a hundred islands of coral, sand and mangroves form an eccentric tropical expanse that has long seduced American vacationers.
Saint Petersburg, Russia

On the track of "Crime and Punishment"

In St. Petersburg, we cannot resist investigating the inspiration for the base characters in Fyodor Dostoevsky's most famous novel: his own pities and the miseries of certain fellow citizens.
Upolu, Samoa

Stevenson's Treasure Island

At age 30, the Scottish writer began looking for a place to save him from his cursed body. In Upolu and the Samoans, he found a welcoming refuge to which he gave his heart and soul.
Anchorage to Homer, USA

Journey to the End of the Alaskan Road

If Anchorage became the great city of the 49th US state, Homer, 350km away, is its most famous dead end. Veterans of these parts consider this strange tongue of land sacred ground. They also venerate the fact that, from there, they cannot continue anywhere.
unmissable roads

Great Routes, Great Trips

With pompous names or mere road codes, certain roads run through really sublime scenarios. From Road 66 to the Great Ocean Road, they are all unmissable adventures behind the wheel.
Great Ocean Road, Australia

Ocean Out, along the Great Australian South

One of the favorite escapes of the Australian state of Victoria, via B100 unveils a sublime coastline that the ocean has shaped. We only needed a few kilometers to understand why it was named The Great Ocean Road.
San Francisco, USA

San Francisco Cable Cars: A Life of Highs and Lows

A macabre wagon accident inspired the San Francisco cable car saga. Today, these relics work as a charm operation in the city of fog, but they also have their risks.
The Haight, San Francisco, USA

Orphans of the Summer of Love

Nonconformity and creativity are still present in the old Flower Power district. But almost 50 years later, the hippie generation has given way to a homeless, uncontrolled and even aggressive youth.
savuti, botswana, elephant-eating lions
Safari
Savuti, Botswana

Savuti's Elephant-Eating Lions

A patch of the Kalahari Desert dries up or is irrigated depending on the region's tectonic whims. In Savuti, lions have become used to depending on themselves and prey on the largest animals in the savannah.
Young people walk the main street in Chame, Nepal
Annapurna (circuit)
Annapurna Circuit: 1th - Pokhara a ChameNepal

Finally, on the way

After several days of preparation in Pokhara, we left towards the Himalayas. The walking route only starts in Chame, at 2670 meters of altitude, with the snowy peaks of the Annapurna mountain range already in sight. Until then, we complete a painful but necessary road preamble to its subtropical base.
Alaskan Lumberjack Show Competition, Ketchikan, Alaska, USA
Architecture & Design
Ketchikan, Alaska

Here begins Alaska

The reality goes unnoticed in most of the world, but there are two Alaskas. In urban terms, the state is inaugurated in the south of its hidden frying pan handle, a strip of land separated from the contiguous USA along the west coast of Canada. Ketchikan, is the southernmost of Alaskan cities, its Rain Capital and the Salmon Capital of the World.
Era Susi towed by dog, Oulanka, Finland
Adventure
PN Oulanka, Finland

A Slightly Lonesome Wolf

Jukka “Era-Susi” Nordman has created one of the largest packs of sled dogs in the world. He became one of Finland's most iconic characters but remains faithful to his nickname: Wilderness Wolf.
Camel Racing, Desert Festival, Sam Sam Dunes, Rajasthan, India
Ceremonies and Festivities
Jaisalmer, India

There's a Feast in the Thar Desert

As soon as the short winter breaks, Jaisalmer indulges in parades, camel races, and turban and mustache competitions. Its walls, alleys and surrounding dunes take on more color than ever. During the three days of the event, natives and outsiders watch, dazzled, as the vast and inhospitable Thar finally shines through.
Gray roofs, Lijiang, Yunnan, China
Cities
Lijiang, China

A Gray City but Little

Seen from afar, its vast houses are dreary, but Lijiang's centuries-old sidewalks and canals are more folkloric than ever. This city once shone as the grandiose capital of the Naxi people. Today, floods of Chinese visitors who fight for the quasi-theme park it have become take it by storm.
Meal
Markets

A Market Economy

The law of supply and demand dictates their proliferation. Generic or specific, covered or open air, these spaces dedicated to buying, selling and exchanging are expressions of life and financial health.
Culture
Shows

The World on Stage

All over the world, each nation, region or town and even neighborhood has its own culture. When traveling, nothing is more rewarding than admiring, live and in loco, which makes them unique.
Reindeer Racing, Kings Cup, Inari, Finland
Sport
Inari, Finland

The Wackiest Race on the Top of the World

Finland's Lapps have been competing in the tow of their reindeer for centuries. In the final of the Kings Cup - Porokuninkuusajot - , they face each other at great speed, well above the Arctic Circle and well below zero.
scarlet summer
Traveling

Valencia to Xativa, Spain (España)

Across Iberia

Leaving aside the modernity of Valencia, we explore the natural and historical settings that the "community" shares with the Mediterranean. The more we travel, the more its bright life seduces us.

Ethnic
Gizo, Solomon Islands

A Saeraghi Young Singers Gala

In Gizo, the damage caused by the tsunami that hit the Solomon Islands is still very visible. On the coast of Saeraghi, children's bathing happiness contrasts with their heritage of desolation.
Sunset, Avenue of Baobabs, Madagascar
Got2Globe Photo Portfolio

days like so many others

Tulum, Mayan Ruins of the Riviera Maya, Mexico
History
Overall, Mexico

The Most Caribbean of the Mayan Ruins

Built by the sea as an exceptional outpost decisive for the prosperity of the Mayan nation, Tulum was one of its last cities to succumb to Hispanic occupation. At the end of the XNUMXth century, its inhabitants abandoned it to time and to an impeccable coastline of the Yucatan peninsula.
Brava Cape Verde Island, Macaronesia
Islands
Brava, Cape Verde

Cape Verde Brave Island

During colonization, the Portuguese came across a moist and lush island, something rare in Cape Verde. Brava, the smallest of the inhabited islands and one of the least visited of the archipelago, preserves the authenticity of its somewhat elusive Atlantic and volcanic nature.
Northern Lights, Laponia, Rovaniemi, Finland, Fire Fox
Winter White
Lapland, Finland

In Search of the Fire Fox

Unique to the heights of the Earth are the northern or southern auroras, light phenomena generated by solar explosions. You Sami natives from Lapland they believed it to be a fiery fox that spread sparkles in the sky. Whatever they are, not even the nearly 30 degrees below zero that were felt in the far north of Finland could deter us from admiring them.
Lake Manyara, National Park, Ernest Hemingway, Giraffes
Literature
Lake Manyara NP, Tanzania

Hemingway's Favorite Africa

Situated on the western edge of the Rift Valley, Lake Manyara National Park is one of the smallest but charming and richest in Europe. wild life of Tanzania. In 1933, between hunting and literary discussions, Ernest Hemingway dedicated a month of his troubled life to him. He narrated those adventurous safari days in “The Green Hills of Africa".
Nature
Annapurna Circuit: 5th - Ngawal a BragaNepal

Towards the Nepalese Braga

We spent another morning of glorious weather discovering Ngawal. There is a short journey towards Manang, the main town on the way to the zenith of the Annapurna circuit. We stayed for Braga (Braka). The hamlet would soon prove to be one of its most unforgettable places.
Mother Armenia Statue, Yerevan, Armenia
Autumn
Yerevan, Armenia

A Capital between East and West

Heiress of the Soviet civilization, aligned with the great Russia, Armenia allows itself to be seduced by the most democratic and sophisticated ways of Western Europe. In recent times, the two worlds have collided in the streets of your capital. From popular and political dispute, Yerevan will dictate the new course of the nation.
Hell's Bend of Fish River Canyon, Namibia
Natural Parks
Fish River Canyon, Namíbia

The Namibian Guts of Africa

When nothing makes you foreseeable, a vast river ravine burrows the southern end of the Namíbia. At 160km long, 27km wide and, at intervals, 550 meters deep, the Fish River Canyon is the Grand Canyon of Africa. And one of the biggest canyons on the face of the Earth.
holy plain, Bagan, Myanmar
UNESCO World Heritage
Bagan, Myanmar

The Plain of Pagodas, Temples and other Heavenly Redemptions

Burmese religiosity has always been based on a commitment to redemption. In Bagan, wealthy and fearful believers continue to erect pagodas in hopes of winning the benevolence of the gods.
Correspondence verification
Characters
Rovaniemi, Finland

From the Finnish Lapland to the Arctic. A Visit to the Land of Santa

Fed up with waiting for the bearded old man to descend down the chimney, we reverse the story. We took advantage of a trip to Finnish Lapland and passed through its furtive home.
Santa Marta, Tayrona, Simón Bolivar, Ecohabs of Tayrona National Park
Beaches
Santa Marta and PN Tayrona, Colombia

The Paradise from which Simon Bolivar departed

At the gates of PN Tayrona, Santa Marta is the oldest continuously inhabited Hispanic city in Colombia. In it, Simón Bolívar began to become the only figure on the continent almost as revered as Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary.
Burning prayers, Ohitaki Festival, fushimi temple, kyoto, japan
Religion
Kyoto, Japan

A Combustible Faith

During the Shinto celebration of Ohitaki, prayers inscribed on tablets by the Japanese faithful are gathered at the Fushimi temple. There, while being consumed by huge bonfires, her belief is renewed.
The Toy Train story
On Rails
Siliguri a Darjeeling, India

The Himalayan Toy Train Still Running

Neither the steep slope of some stretches nor the modernity stop it. From Siliguri, in the tropical foothills of the great Asian mountain range, the Darjeeling, with its peaks in sight, the most famous of the Indian Toy Trains has ensured for 117 years, day after day, an arduous dream journey. Traveling through the area, we climb aboard and let ourselves be enchanted.
Weddings in Jaffa, Israel,
Society
Jaffa, Israel

Where Tel Aviv Settles Always in Party

Tel Aviv is famous for the most intense night in the Middle East. But, if its youngsters are having fun until exhaustion in the clubs along the Mediterranean, it is more and more in the nearby Old Jaffa that they tie the knot.
Women with long hair from Huang Luo, Guangxi, China
Daily life
Longsheng, China

Huang Luo: the Chinese Village of the Longest Hairs

In a multi-ethnic region covered with terraced rice paddies, the women of Huang Luo have surrendered to the same hairy obsession. They let the longest hair in the world grow, years on end, to an average length of 170 to 200 cm. Oddly enough, to keep them beautiful and shiny, they only use water and rice.
Masai Mara Reservation, Masai Land Travel, Kenya, Masai Convivial
Wildlife
Masai Mara, Kenya

A Journey Through the Masai Lands

The Mara savannah became famous for the confrontation between millions of herbivores and their predators. But, in a reckless communion with wildlife, it is the Masai humans who stand out there.
Passengers, scenic flights-Southern Alps, New Zealand
Scenic Flights
Aoraki / Mount Cook, New Zealand

The Aeronautical Conquest of the Southern Alps

In 1955, pilot Harry Wigley created a system for taking off and landing on asphalt or snow. Since then, his company has unveiled, from the air, some of the greatest scenery in Oceania.
PT EN ES FR DE IT