Malibu: El Matador State Beach

Between the last post, and this one, and the upcoming post (spoiler), it should really be called "Adventures with Brittney." Or something along those lines. But due to ease of search within the blog, and SEO obligations, it shall remain as boring as "Malibu: El Matador State Beach." So basic.

This was quite the adventure of highs and lows.

When Britt was here though, along with the flower fields, we also ventured to this beach in the afternoon. Traffic wasn't terrible – I was expecting worse anyways – but parking could have been awful. There's not that much street parking and I'm always weary of finding the parking signs of when you're not allowed to park there etc.

Luckily we didn't need to do that because – after several go-rounds – we found a space in the tiny parking lot provided! #smallmiracles

We walked down a staircase to see the beach below. It's lined with architectural attractions in the form of rocks. It was a lot more crowded than I thought it would be – people frolicking in the ocean, some taking model shots in front of the rocks, and some that actually were models posing for whatever they were shooting.

I had gotten a tip that if you walk a little further down to the right, during low-tide, there's some caves that most people don't know about. After walking a good long ways down the stretch of beach, I'm not exactly sure what they were talking about. But I found a set of "caves" that might be covered during high tide, so I'll go with that. (It's definitely better to go here during low-tide because of the ability to get around the rocks.)

There's so many (kind of scary-looking) birds, sea anemones (baby ones too!), and just sea life it was like being at the tidepools.

My favorite moment was when I saw this one large rock and thought to myself, "Britt's probably going to want to climb it. And you know... I wouldn't mind climbing it either." It was maybe 25 feet up or something. Sure enough, when I looked behind me after walking a bit farther, Brittney was climbing that rock.

She made it to the top by the time I got to it. It wasn't a very fast climb up for me. The rocks at the bottom were really spiky. But we both made it to the top and looked out over the ocean. It's kind of freeing being that high, and there was a sense of accomplishment. I did almost get vertigo if I looked down too long or moved too quickly. Plus I can't imagine that the bird poop that covered the top was very hygenic.

After awhile of soaking it all in, we both climbed down. I was definitely not a glamorous climb-downer, but I made it! I felt like one of those suction cupped sea anenomes – latching on to every part of the rock until I was able to jump the last couple feet.

My least favorite moment that will haunt me for days to come and deter me from going back to this beach for a long long while is what happened after all these joyous ventures.

I felt some itching on my body as we were laying on our towels. I tried disregarding it because I know that it could be a mental thing, being at the beach and thinking of sand fleas or whatever. Either way, it didn't seem like a big deal. But the itching persisted, and I started feeling it on my legs. I had put my sweater and my pants back on because it had gotten colder. As I was looking at my phone, this tiny little thing dropped onto it. It might have been a little bigger than a grain of sand, but it visibly moved and had super tiny legs. It was weird. Tiny bugs are the worst because they're hard to see. After I killed it (please forgive me) I looked at my sweater to see if it had dropped from there. I found another one. And another one. And another one. I pulled my sweater off after finding what I could on the outside. There were more on the inside. Then I looked at my pants. I found more.

Are you creeped out yet? I was surprisingly calm considering. I got out of my clothes real quick though. Luckily I brought an alternative set of clothing so I wore that. But I still didn't feel safe. Britt started finding them on her clothes too.

Appropriately, we decided it was time to go home.

It may have been because of the rock we climbed. We're not sure. But take a look at the photos below to see if it's worth the risk of going and finding out (I believe it is, despite those awful last moments).