I have just returned from a day trip to Ano Nuevo to see the elephant seals mating.  Allow me to share my day with you:

We left early this morning to drive the 90 minutes to Ano Nuevo, arriving a bit before 10am for our scheduled walk.  Yes, scheduled walk.  You see, viewing elephant seals is an extremely popular activity out here, and reservations are taken months in advance for the guided tours to the seal beach.  Only about 500 people a day can be accomodated, and so many are left to wait in line for returns.  (A strange seal-oriented TKTS booth thing.)  We checked in 15 minutes before our time to keep our places from being given away to the long line of anxious seal groupies.

The first thing one notices about the visitor area at Ano Nuevo is the lack of any interesting wildlife whatsoever.  It's a large area next to the ocean featuring such varied scenery as 1) sand dunes 2) scrubby little bushes 3) seal groupies 4) more sand dunes.  The attraction is obvious.  The second thing one notices is the overwhelming aroma of...overfilled PortaPotties.  I'm thinking "Is that the *seals*??"  But no, just the humans.  The next few hours will surely be worth the $4 price of admission.

A guide gathers the 10am group together to give us the little speech about safety and environmental concerns.  The speech begins with the statement that there is a lot of poison oak on the grounds this season, some of it right next to the trails.  The advice she gives:  "So don't rub up against anything you don't recognize".  Now, this just seems like good general advice to me.  Don't rub up against anything you don't know.  That's my big takeaway from this day.  Works in the woods, works in nightclubs...  The next piece of advice deals with the extreme delicacy of the preserve.  The plants are being rehabilitated, you see (is there a 12-step program for *everyone* now?)  Therefore one cannot eat, drink, smoke, chew gum, walk off the trail, or look funny at any of the ugly scrub-like plants surrounding us.  Presumably this includes the (obviously healthy) poison oak.  After warning us of the many evils that can befall us in this dangerous area, she tells us that we can meet our guide 25 minutes away at the staging area.  It's about a 20 minute walk, and time counts!  It wasn't clear what would happen if you were late, but I presume the words "seal lunch" could amply describe your fate.

The group of people we were walking with was a bit strange, even for seal groupies.  Several of them worked at a local aquarium with marine mammals, and were wearing countless T-shirts, sweatshirts, and hats with pictures of sea otters and such all over them.  They were, perhaps, a little too into the whole thing.  Among them, they had 2 small girls.  I'm not sure who were the actual parents, as the two children were left to their own devices much of the time.  Perhaps they were raised by otters?  Everyone had plastic bottles of water, serious looking cameras (10" lenses!  filters for polarization!  tripods!), and a look of determination on their faces.  They were going to see seals mate, damn it!

We set off on our first trek of the day, eyes on our watches to avoid being late.  We walked for about 5 minutes when we got to a fork in the trail.  Hmmm.  We picked the right-hand trail.  About 10 minutes later, another fork, and another right turn.  Thankfully, we arrived at the staging area with *minutes* to spare.  I assume that this is some kind of process to weed out insufficiently appreciative would-be seal voyeurs.  Having won the first game of the day, we sat down, drank from our bottles of water, and awaited our guide.  He arrived, and proceeded to give us our second safety lecture.  Did you know that there is a state and federal law that you must stay at least 25 feet from all marine mammals?  (Probably had a rider about highways in Montana or something...)  Elephant seals weigh about 2 tons, and they can move very quickly (??).  They can crush a small car just by sitting on it.  (Why they would be sitting on a car was never mentioned.)  I fully expect to see a Jean Claude van Damme movie with an elephant seal starring as the evil Russian mobster next summer  (Under Seal - 2!)  Having been apprised of the apparently quite high chance of death by seal, we set out on hike #2.

Half an hour later (more poison oak, more precious scrubby bushes, more sand...), we arrive at the seal passion pit.  The first thing one notices about the seal area of the beach is the incredible, indescribable, almost palpable...stench.  Overfilled PortaPotties would be a major line of cologne next to lounging elephant seal.  Holding our breath, we approach the holy beach where the seals are resting on their yearly honeymoon.  A ranger spends about 10 very serious minutes pointing out major seal behavior to us.  "That is the alpha male, defending his harem from the beta male."  (Visual image - one huge slug-like mammal rolls over and belches at another one)  "That is a female guarding her pup."  (Visual - one slightly less huge slug-like mammal waves a flipper in the general direction of a much smaller slug-like mammal)  And so on.  The general picture is of a beach covered in car-sized garden slugs, occasionally flipping sand on their backs.  Periodically one would get upset and would rear up, (Visual - Jabba the Hut), and shimmy over to another one, where it would proceed to either:  1) beat hell out of it with its flippers, 2) land on it with a cloud of sand, or 3) attempt to mate with it.  How the latter was different from the other two was not immediately apparent to me.  Mating behavior is particularly appropriate for this Valentine's Day weekend - the male rolls over to a female, thwacks her on the head with a flipper, flops down on her to hold her down, and then bites her on the back of the neck to get her to rear up.  Then he tries to go at it, while the female roars and attempts to get away.  And they say romance is dead.

We moved to two other viewing positions - the same beach, from 15 feet higher! - during which time the seal people were constantly pointing and exclaiming over the fascinating seal behavior.  The one thing that they kept saying was "She seems to be resisiting!"  Now, I might be missing the point here, but if some truck-sized garden slug thwacked *me* on the head and then proceeded to pin me down, I'd be reaching for my handy can of mace and screaming for 911.  Yet the seal people seemed genuinely confused by the female's lack of interest in mating.  (Leads me to wonder about how those 2 obnoxious little girls were conceived...)  Meanwhile, we're all madly taking pictures and using binoculars to get closer to the action.  Nature lovers, that's us.  The two little girls kept rolling around in the sand, sometimes well within the federally mandated 25 feet of the marine mammals in question, but managed not to get eaten (damn).  I know they'll remember this experience fondly until the end of the weekend.

Unfortunately, even the best days must come to an end.  We made our way back to the staging area, were lucky enough to choose the right path to get us to the parking lot, and drove home.  Sandier, sweatier, and satisfied.  The seals had mated, and we were there.