Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
20
Big Sur River Inn
B5
21
Nepenthe
C6
Drinking & Nightlife
22
Rocky Point
A2
Entertainment
Big Sur is more a state of mind than a place you can pinpoint on a map. There are no
traffic lights, banks or strip malls, and when the sun goes down, the moon and the stars are
the only streetlights - if summer's dense fog hasn't extinguished them, that is. Much ink
has been spilled extolling the raw beauty and energy of this precious piece of land shoe-
horned between the Santa Lucia Range and the Pacific Ocean, but nothing quite prepares
you for your first glimpse of the craggy, unspoiled coastline.
In the 1950s and '60s, Big Sur - so named by Spanish settlers living on the Monterey
Peninsula, who referred to the wilderness as
el país grande del sur
('the big country to the
south') - became a retreat for artists and writers, including Henry Miller and Beat Genera-
tion visionaries such as Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Today Big Sur attracts self-proclaimed
artists, new-age mystics, latter-day hippies and city slickers seeking to unplug and reflect
more deeply on this emerald-green edge of the continent.
