Weekend Escape: Santa Barbara : Cave Rave : Two Grottoes, One a Gallery of Ancient Art, the Other a Refuge for Roaring Sea Lions, Draw a Father and Son to Natural Wonders

It was one of those once-in-a-lifetime experiences, something I might have dreamed about but never thought I’d witness.

As our charter boat, the Condor, motored through the peaceful waters of the Santa Barbara Channel one late August afternoon on its return from a day at Santa Cruz Island, we were surrounded by dolphins.

Not three, not four, not even 20. Without exaggerating, there must have been four or five hundred adults and dozens of pups. The brine literally boiled with the fabled creatures, port and starboard, bow and stern. It was astonishing, this school . . . this pod. . . .

“Its a ballet of dolphins,” said Fred Benko, the cultured sea captain whose other passion is opera. “Isn’t it beautiful?”

Indeed, it was the perfect climax to a fascinating weekend with nature.

*

I had planned this short trip from Los Angeles with my 9-year-old son, Erik, to explore two very different caves with similar names. My reading told me that Chumash Painted Cave State Historic Park, in the hills above Santa Barbara, preserves ancient ritual art by one of North America’s most prolific native cultures. The other site, the Painted Cave on the sheer northwestern coast of Santa Cruz Island, promised glimpses of marine life in one of the world’s deepest sea caverns.

As it turned out, our Saturday visit to the Chumash cave paled in comparison to our Sunday cruise to the Channel Islands.

We made the two-hour drive from our Eagle Rock home to Santa Barbara on a Friday night and overnighted at the El Prado Motor Inn, slightly worn-at-the-edges but in our price range. After Saturday morning pastries and espresso (in Erik’s case, orange juice) at the Earthling Cafe and Bookstore three blocks down State Street, we headed up California 154 toward San Marcos Pass and turned off onto Painted Cave Road.

Steep and narrow, the road wove through the chaparral-cloaked hillsides of Los Padres National Forest, still recovering from the devastating Painted Cave Fire that caused almost $4 million damage in June, 1990. Ripe prickly-pear plants sprouted here and there, and red-tailed hawks swooped overhead. Looking back, we could see a thick band of morning fog shrouding the coastline half a mile beneath us. Erik, who doesn’t like winding roads and isn’t yet impressed by views, feigned illness: “There went my chocolate croissant,” he said.

Two miles from the intersection of 154, a small, easily missed state parks sign in manzanita woods announced the Chumash Painted Cave. The turnout was just large enough to accommodate three vehicles; the “park” wasn’t much larger.

A short scramble up a rocky dirt path took us to the sandstone cave, which is perhaps 20 feet deep, 25 feet across at its mouth and 15 feet high. An iron grille across the cave entrance discourages vandalism but makes viewing difficult; on the day of our visit, a red-and-white rose in full bloom had been inserted in the screen.

Much of the interior of the grotto is covered by complex geometric symbols and animal motifs, painted in natural blacks, whites and red-ochre colors. From the grille, which is as far as any visitor can venture, Erik identified one of the mysterious markings as a shark, another as a spider web; I picked out a corn stalk, a full canoe riding across the waves, a peace symbol-like star-within-a-circle.

Archeologists have dated the paintings to the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, and surmise that one particular marking--a black circle outlined in white--depicts a total solar eclipse of 1677. They believe shamans drew the symbols to communicate with their gods, perhaps seeking their involvement in human affairs.

Erik didn’t have a long attention span when it came to the cave paintings. His biggest fascination was with a lizard: “It’s as big as an iguana!” he shouted.

Well, a very small iguana, perhaps. But it was an easy step from the reptile-sighting to convince my son, once we had returned to the city, that we should stop by the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History. The museum was featuring an animatronic dinosaur exhibit. Besides, I wanted to learn more about the Chumash culture.

After our museum visit, we were as hungry as dinosaurs. A friend had recommended La Super-Rica Taqueria, a Milpas Street institution acclaimed by such experts as Julia Child. We ordered tacos, picked them up from the open kitchen and ate in the courtyard under a canvas roof. This was gourmet Mexican food--the beef tacos are made with New York steak, for example, and all the tortillas and salsa are homemade--and best of all, nothing on the blackboard menu cost more than $5.80.

I had promised Erik that the rest of the day was his. That meant a lengthy swim in the El Prado pool and a late-afternoon matinee performance at a State Street cinema of “Surf Ninjas,” in which an Asian holy man rocks to the strains of “Ba-Ba-Ba, Ba-Baba Ran.”

Erik wanted “ real Mexican food” for dinner--I guess that meant he preferred ground beef to steak--so we supped at the nearby Acapulco restaurant. “This is high class!” he exclaimed over his burrito.

*

Heavy clouds hung over the Santa Barbara Channel at 8 the next morning as the 88-foot Condor pulled away from Sea Landing with Erik and I, 94 other passengers and eight crew aboard. Traveling at a speed of 11 knots, it took about 2 1/2 hours for the diesel-powered Condor to cover the 27 miles to Santa Cruz Island.

The clouds lifted and clear skies greeted us as we reached the northwestern shore. Formerly dominated by the Christie Ranch, Santa Cruz Island is now 90% owned by The Nature Conservancy, and is part of the National Park Service-administered Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary, one of 13 such preserves in the United States.

As we traced the island’s coastline at the foot of steep cliffs, barren except for some hardy succulents, we kept an eye out for harbor seals and California sea lions. Many of them sunned on the rocks or dove in search of food. Sea lions’ strong flippers enable them to move easily on land; seals are equipped mainly for life in the water, and can only slither along on solid ground.

The Condor slowed to a halt within sight of Profile Point, a rocky outcropping that bears a resemblance to a human face, and began loading passengers six at a time into a pair of skiffs to explore the Painted Cave, just south and a little east of our anchorage. Erik and I snared lifejackets (with emergency lights attached) and climbed into the prow of the first boat.

I felt like Jonah entering the mouth of the Biblical whale as we approached the cave’s gaping entrance. The walls and ceiling quickly tapered to a narrow passage, like a large worm-hole, and pitch blackness greeted us as our pilot’s lone flashlight beam guided us into the 1,200-foot-long depths of the cavern. The cave is “painted” by mineral deposits and rock formations, but after the first couple of hundred feet, as the outside light declined and the moderate stench of sea-lion dung grew, we saw none of that.

Instead, we heard a sudden and dramatic roar from the depths ahead. Erik jumped in his seat. “Let’s get out of here!” he said. The pilot’s beam revealed a huge bull sea lion perched atop a rock islet, bellowing at us to protect a harem that wallowed in the dim light on rocks behind him. “Don’t get any closer!” my son shivered.

We backed off and returned down the passage to the Condor, accompanied by a quintet of sea lions who headed out to sea in a series of dolphin-like dives.

It was a brief 10-minute excursion, but a thrilling one. And we were glad to have been at the vanguard of the explorers. With 96 passengers aboard the Condor, 16 separate skiff trips were required; by the time the later boats enter the cave, the sea lions are less disturbed by the motor noise, and fumes from the outboard begin to blend with the smell of the dung. If nothing else, the experience is less authentic.

While the other passengers went on their cave-exploration trip, marine biologist Gary Robinson, manager of Santa Barbara’s Sea Center marine museum, and a colleague donned scuba gear to gather an amazingly diverse collection of sea creatures. Sea stars and nudibranches, sea urchins and other invertebrates were brought aboard for passengers to touch and study. Erik was so enthralled, he didn’t even want to break away for his lunchtime hot dog, prepared in the Condor’s galley.

When the time came for Robinson to return the marine life to its natural habitat, he and Captain Benko invited Erik and I out into the skiff with them. En route, we took a diversion into a second sea cave, nicknamed “Old Boomer” because of the way the surf roars in its recesses, and past a rocky shoreline on which a large colony of juvenile sea lions basked in the sun.

Benko--a pharmaceuticals salesman-turned-fisherman who designed and built the Condor himself--waxed poetic about the Painted Cave. Then he grabbed his binoculars and stared toward the horizon. “There’s a stir in the water ahead, two, three miles,” he said. “It might be dolphins. We’ll see if we can catch up with it.”

Catch them we did. And the dolphins placed an exquisite exclamation mark on an unforgettable weekend.

Budget for Two

Gas to, from Santa Barbara: $18.40

2 nights, El Prado Motor Inn: 165.00

Six meals for two: 70.71

1 roll Kodachrome film: 8.33

Museum admissions: 8.00

Movie, 2 Cokes, popcorn: 12.75

Condor cruise to Painted Cave: 95.00

Parking at Sea Landing: 5.00

FINAL TAB: $383.19

For Condor reservations and information: Sea Landing, Breakwater, Santa Barbara 93109; tel. (805) 963-3564. Special cruises, including the one we joined, are organized by the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, 2559 Puesta del Sol Road, Santa Barbara 93105; tel. (805) 682-4711. The museum also provides information on Chumash Painted Cave State Historic Park.