Walking from Malibu to Mexico

Mother sent me back to the house with 3 new Sunset magazines, one of which featured a trek from Newport Beach to San Clemente with the author of a walkabout guide: Walkabout Malibu to Mexico: Hiking Inn to Inn on the Southern California Coast.  The author, Tom Courtney, is my age, a retired UC Berkeley professor, and has written a previous book on walking Northern California.  He's gotten a lot of local press and even a recent blurb in a New York Times blog but I haven't heard about Walkabout California that I can remember.

Naturally, the inns are not the 10 euro albergues that you find on the Camino but most of the ones Sunset lists are below $200 and I wonder if you couldn't find cheaper dives by the beach.  A query about cheaper accommodations on the walkabout forum got this reply: "There are hostels and Motel 6 along the way....and there's always airbnb."

Obviously there will be a lot of stairs as you walk up and down the cliffs by the beach so it might be a little hard on the knees.  You can buy digital sections of the guide online or download a complete digital version (pdf or kindle editions).  Maybe Juan and Mandy would like to try the 5-day La Jolla to Mexico stretch sometime, although I know that they would much prefer a cruise or lolling on the beach.

I hope that soon Courtney will come out with a Walkabout Central California since he only reaches Monterey in the Northern California volume and starts at Malibu in the Southern California volume.