2016/09/18

Channel Islands

A few days ago, I finally made it to the Channel Island Santa Cruz, which is part of the National Park Channel Islands South of Santa Barbara and Ventura. You only see a silhouette of the islands from Santa Barbara and indeed, it takes 1 h 15 min to get their with a catamaran boat. It's easy to book a ticket to the islands, but depending on the date you have to do it up to three weeks in advance! The boat trip itself is about 60$, but kayaking is a lot more pricey and starts with 120$ per person; you'd kayak for maybe 1.5-2 h. I was highly surprised that snorkeling is on top of that with 180$ (probably because of the equipment). Since the Channel Islands are famous for their sea caves, kayaking might be worth its money, but we "just" went hiking which was fantastic as well:

 


Sometimes, whales can be seen from the boat, but we "only" saw dolphins and seals. But there are foxes on the island! They look for food and even steal money from purses, so you have to watch out.