Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Chasing Through the Dreamtime by Barbara Land published work. Kate Cameron, her husband Aidan, and their 15-year-old daughter, Charlie, live a quiet life on their farm in Mill Valley, California. Kate never thinks much about the time she spends dreaming until her dreams become indistinguishable from her waking consciousness. With the help of newfound friend Tina Santiago, she soon understands that truly challenging events can descend upon our lives with stunning surprise, daring us to rise up to meet them. Kate’s dreams all revolve around her Aunt Catherine, a woman dead for 25 years. Catherine’s reappearance in Kate’s life leads to truths uncovered and family secrets revealed. When Catherine later approaches Kate in the dreamtime with a plea for help, we are swept along with her as she begins the process of discovering the mystery that lies at the heart of Catherine’s request. Kate’s surprising journey on Catherine’s behalf culminates with a passage back through time and in the end, Kate’s success leaves her with a new view of both herself and the spiritual world that surrounds her. Chasing Through the Dreamtime offers a glimpse into the life of a woman who comes to realize that the consequences of our actions follow us, responsibility looms, and redemption is possible when we integrate the spiritual realms with the plane of physical existence. Chasing Through the Dreamtime – A Review. When a book inspires the reader to do some research, the reader is probably going to say that that was a very good book. In my opinion, that is exactly what Chasing Through the Dreamtime did for me. I dream often, very vivid dreams, which I can most often recall the following day. However, I am not an advocate nor a believer, nor have I ever been or probably ever will be, drawn into that whole world of metaphysics but I did find Barbara Land’s book very interesting. Some of the terms used in the book which broadened by horizons were lucid dreams, monadal sequence, karmic debt, astral projected, past life regressions – certainly terms not found in my everyday vocabulary. The characters in the story were very ordinary people from a very ordinary family of Scottish heritage. Kate, the main character, who worked part time as a paralegal, was attempting to write a story as she had been told to do so in one of her dreams. The story she was to write was that of her deceased aunt, Aunt Catherine, who had died at the age of 42 and who actually turned out to be her birth mother. For someone who was writing, Kate did very little of that. Her time was spent in chasing through her dreams and there were times when the reader did not know if it was a dream or if it was reality. That is probably what the author intended but I did find it somewhat confusing at times. Aidan, Kate’s husband, a teacher and a farmer, was exceptionally supportive of Kate’s journey through her dreams. He did not seem real. He just accepted anything Kate said and did. More concern, in my opinion, would have created a much stronger personality. For example, he took it quietly in stride when her doctor prescribed Fluoxetine. Also, he did not object or express any concern whatsoever when Kate hung mugwort on the headboard of their bed. Charlie, Kate and Aidan’s 16 year old daughter, was depicted as a typical teenager. Charlotte, Kate’s mom but in truth was Kate’s aunt, proved to be the gatekeeper of the family secrets. Tina, Kate’s new friend and confidante, filled the role of believer, informant of new and different ideas and supporter of Kate’s experiences. The sentence structure, variety of sentences, word usage and grammar in the story were very well constructed. The story flowed well and held my interest throughout. There were however, several typing errors ( For example, ‘you‘ instead of ‘your’, ‘comment’ instead of ‘common’, ‘through‘ instead of ‘thought’.) Another read through by someone else, would probably have picked up many of them. There were several twists and unexpected turns throughout the book which were most intriguing and unusual – some believable, others not. Overall, I really enjoyed this book and it probably would appeal to anyone who believes in communicating with loved ones who have passed on, anyone interested in reincarnation or any aspect of the metaphysical world and perhaps to anyone who just might enjoy a well written, good fictional read. I received this book from the author through Goodreads, in exchange for an honest review. Main Range 67 – Dreamtime. Dreamtime is the Australian Aboriginal equivalent of Kinda, and like that story it requires a generous suspension of disbelief. There’s some remarkable ideas embedded in it. Hex’s first adventure with the Doctor and Ace is a brush with the paranormal set in the far future. They land in a city floating in deep space, eerily deserted, strewn with strange stones that are even creepier on close inspection. Monsters stalk in the shadows. Guerilla fighters called Dream Commandos are waging a losing battle to keep the nightmares at bay. Into the middle of all this arrives a spaceship of Galyari merchants (the avian warrior-race in The Sandman, Main Range #37), who just want to trade with the city’s inhabitants. The delightful irony is that eight-foot-tall lizard people are too normal to fit into this alien environment. Ace: I’d like to know what we’re all on. And I’m not talking about the asteroid. The Doctor is soon lost, leaving his young friends to make allies and survive as best they can. Hex falls in with a Dream Commando who may be able to help him find the Doctor, while Ace teams up with a squad of heavily-armed Galyari. The Galyari have all the emotional range of Sontarans, although they’re a lot friendlier. The Dream Commandos are a curious pair: despite their descent from down-to-earth Australians, they speak in a formal, ritualised manner, as if to evoke a mystic atmosphere like Panna and Karuna in Kinda. The result is a little stilted. In fact, apart from the well-intentioned Whitten, the setting is the most three-dimensional guest character in this story. The land itself is alive, expressing itself in various guises. Mythology is what we call someone else’s religion. — Joseph Campbell. Dreamtime’s deep dive into mythology has put off some reviewers. Westerners don’t bat an eyelash when science fiction riffs on Greek and Roman, Egyptian, or even Norse or Arthurian myths ( Battlefield, Pyramids of Mars, Seasons of Fear, etc). Kinda was a harder sell, but one could watch it without the slightest clue about its Buddhist underpinnings. Dreamtime is more in-your-face about mixing SF with mythology, and it feels more alien because most listeners don’t know a thing about Australian Aboriginal traditions. Ace: Stranger than fiction? Oh, truth, you mean. Doctor: A version of it, at least. We’re standing on it. Our feet are on terra firma. Ergo, it must be the truth, just because it doesn’t happen to fit in with our own version. Personally, I love the premise, “What if we mix Australian Aboriginal mythology with SF?” It raises a question that came up often in my studies as a myth major: what gives us the right to dismiss everybody else’s interpretation of the world but our own? This story plays with the notion that Aboriginal myths do express certain truths, asks us to reserve judgment, and then takes flight. It also poses an interesting reversal of modern-day Australia in which the descendants of white invaders have become an ethnic minority within a larger indigenous community. And it beats the drum of environmental awareness, telling a parable about people’s intimate connection to the land, which they ignore at their peril. The biggest problem with Dreamtime is that it has no more relation to the laws of physics than a giant rubber snake destroyed by mirrors. Doctor Who usually (but not always) tries to explain magic away with science, but this time, apart from a few snatches of dialogue that remind me of midichlorians, it doesn’t bother. Nevertheless, I find the world-building fascinating, so I’m willing to cut it some slack . Had it been on TV, it would have been a powerful, unusual serial that lingered in fans’ minds as something special. There’s some arresting visual imagery in it that I wish I could see onscreen. My only concern is the same caveat I have when Big Finish mucks around with Native American beliefs: it’s a subtle form of cultural appropriation when westerners play with the very traditions that an oppressed minority was forced to give up or conceal to escape persecution. I don’t know the right answer to that conundrum, but I note it. Caveats aside, I had a lot of fun with this story and listened to it several times. For listeners who found the mythology confusing, check out the spoiler section below. I’ve donned my myth scholar hat to walk you through the symbolism and explain what was going on. [Note: The finished version of this script includes a few compromises: lack of available Aboriginal actors required a kludge to explain their absence, and Ace and Hex’s story arcs were swapped after author Simon Forward learned what the new companion was going to be like.] Rating - 9/10. Writer: Simon A. Forward | Director: Gary Russell | Released: Mar 2005. Spoilerific Comments. Okay, let’s do this! Mythology explained, symbolism unpacked, archetypes revealed! (Disclaimer: I have an MA in mythological studies, but I am no expert on Aboriginal traditions. I had to supplement very cursory knowledge with hasty research.) Part One: The audio begins with a scene whose meaning doesn’t become clear until later. Australian police are trying to evacuate a shantytown around Uluru before imminent solar flares make the Earth uninhabitable (an idea borrowed from Ark in Space ). We later learn that Whitten and his squad are descendants of European settlers, while the people gathered around Uluru are Aboriginal. So they’re about to repeat the forced removal of native Australians from their ancestral lands. A thousand years later, the TARDIS lands in Uluru City. The sight of a thorny devil reminds the Doctor of Paradise Lost , a fallen Eden. Then the Doctor spots Uluru, and realises this place belongs to an older religion than the Bible. Myth: Most world creation myths tell how order arose out of chaos, and how the things we see today emerged from simpler, undifferentiated raw material. Aboriginal creation myths describe the Dreaming, a primeval era when ancestral spirits like Rainbow Serpent traced “songlines,” pathways across Australia, creating landmarks and living things. They shaped canyons, mountains, rocks and rivers with songs the way potters shape clay. Uluru is one of the most sacred landmarks in these stories, the symbolic heart of the continent. Now Uluru City is reverting back to the primordial stuff of creation, the Dawn of the world when spirit and matter were one, and when humans and other living beings slept in stones, embryonic forms waiting to be born. Myth: Aboriginal cultures continue to adapt in the modern world, so the Dreaming now includes cars. The Doctor goes searching for rock art on Uluru, seeking a pictorial record to explain what’s happened. The Dream Commandos interrupt his search. They are named named after ancestral spirits, Eaglehawk (Mulyan) and Crow (Wahn): In many parts of Australia, the Aboriginal communities are divided into two halves which are often equated with birds symbolizing the opposites, the Ying and Yang into which the universe is divided. Thus Eagle, in South Australia, or Eaglehawk, in eastern Australia, represents Day or Light and Crow represents Night or Shade, as in the Ying and Yang circle, although as in Ying and Yang, the two halves are complementary, for example marriage must take place across the moiety line and certain ceremonies cannot be performed unless both moieties are represented. — Australia Aboriginal Mythology. The Dream Commandos defend the Doctor and his friends against a pack of maurauding Bunyip ( man-eating monsters said to lurk near water holes ), but the Doctor succumbs to the Bunyip and turns to stone, becoming inapatua. “In the Dreamtime,” tells an Aranda story, “the Australian desert was silent and unpeopled. One day the Numbaulla brothers, who lived in the western sky, looked out and saw Inapatua, an embryonic people who could not see, hear or move, crouched under some boulders. The Numbakulla brothers took their knives and fashioned the Inapatua into people.” — Camm and McQuilton quoted in Australia’s Many Voices. Part Two: Galyari warriors come to the aid of Hex, Ace, and the Dream Commandos. There’s a lot of discussion but little action, until the Galyari decide to search for salvage (under the guise of searching for survivors) down in the mines with Ace and Mulyan. Hex and Wahn go to try and revive the Doctor. The Doctor has fallen into the Dreaming. As a Time Lord, he’s able to hold onto his individuality in the “primordial soup” and use the Dreaming to cross the abyss of time. He journeys back to Uluru a thousand years ago, just before it left Earth. There he meets Whitten and learns of the Phoenix Ships’ mission to rescue at least some of Australian’s Aboriginal inhabitants.Then the Doctor confronts Baiame atop Uluru and learns of his plan to carry “his people,” native Australians, to the stars. Myth: Baiame is a powerful folk hero, the Allfather of southeastern Australian Aboriginal peoples. The cliffhanger of Part Two is the opening scene of Part One: Uluru and the land around it rises up into the sky, carrying away the entire shantytown and all the Aboriginal peoples who have gathered there. Whitten and his people are caught in the crumbling chasm at the crater’s edge. Part Three: The Doctor pleads with Baiame to save Whitten’s people from being swallowed up as the earth rips open. Baiame has little compassion for them. He recalls how he was awakened when “blood seeped down” to where he was sleeping, the blood of Aboriginal peoples being wiped out by European settlers. He doesn’t wish to contaminate his people’s fresh start with the very people who hurt them. The Doctor argues that every culture has “mistakes” (rather an understatement) in its past, but that if Uluru City begins with the blood of innocent bystanders on its conscience, that guilt will corrupt the Dreaming. He thinks that’s what made it go wrong. Baiame relents and expands the borders of his natural ark (or, perhaps, draws Whitten & co onto the lip of the land mass). Having completed their tasks, Baiame and the Doctor re-enter the Dreaming and move forward in time. Baiame explains that the full powers of the Dreaming should have been unleashed only when Uluru reached another planet, where ancestral spirits would spread out to terraform the new world and sow it with plants and animals just as, according to Aboriginal traditions, they originally shaped the Earth. Baiame mentions his ally the Rainbow Serpent, a widely-revered ancestral spirit that plays a major role in many Aboriginal creation stories. The rainbow snake is perhaps the most important deity in Aboriginal Australia, being connected with not only all snake ancestors, but also such important All-Father deities as Biame and the Wandjina ancestors of the tribes of the Kimberley region of Western Australia. The rainbow serpent is also the giver as well as the guardian of the mystic healing rites of the shamans. — Australian Aboriginal Mythology. However, their terraforming has started too soon, while the colony is still in transit. The land is angry at non-Aboriginal people corrupting native beliefs with western ideas. To defend itself, the Dreaming is reabsorbing everyone, reducing the whole place back to its primordial elements. It’s trying to reboot. Meanwhile, Hex and Wahn want to awaken the Doctor, but first they have to fight off a pack of dingos. Myth: Dingo Dreaming laid down songlines that shaped the centre of Australia. Dingos’ unique interdependence with humans, living among them, made them unique among the animal spirits: they bridged the gap between the human and animal world. Afterwards, Wahn uses the bull-roarer to help Hex seek for the Doctor’s spirit in the Dreaming. The bull-roarer among the Kooris of south-eastern Australia was first made by Biame and when it is swung it is said to be his voice. — Australian Aboriginal Mythology. Fishing for the Doctor, they stir up “darker waters,” and the buildings begin to wither and wrinkle up like they’ve aged. I’m not sure whether having a Time Lord mixed in with the Dreaming is affecting time strangely, or whether time is just running out. Hex and Wahn have to flee when something else starts chasing them, a Yowie (the Australian equivalent of Bigfoot) or possibly Marmoo: To the Koori people, Marmoo was the evil spirit, in opposition to Biame. He was jealous of Biame’s and Ybi’s creation and countered this with the creation of insects. Biame came together with Nungeena, the spirit of the waterfalls, to stop Marmoo’s plague of insects by creating birds. — Australian Aboriginal Mythology. Meanwhile, Ace, Mulyan and the Galyari descend to the mines. Their discussion reveals that the Dream Commandos must be descendants of Whitten and his people. Ace observes that they’ve “embraced the Aboriginal traditions.” Mulyan explains that the Aboriginal inhabitants “were among first to be absorbed by the Dreaming. We keep the faith and the fight alive, but the Dreaming was in their blood in a way that it could never be in ours.” They reach a shallow reservoir under the city, but their path is barred by an ancestral spirit disguised as the Doctor, bent on driving away invaders. “You Galyari and your interference are not wanted here.” It identifies itself as the Rainbow Serpent, rattling off four of its many names: Jarapiri, Galeru/Galaru which sounds like “Galyari,” Kunukban and Anjuwat. It is responsible for regenerating rains, and also for storms and floods when it acts as an agent of punishment against those who transgress the law or upset it in any way. Rainbow Serpent could be mischievous, swallowing and sometimes drowning certain people yet strengthening and endowing the knowledgeable with rainmaking and healing powers. It would blight others with sores, weakness, illness, and death. — Origins of the Rainbow Serpent Myth. Part Four: Baiame tells the Doctor that a death spirit has assumed his face. He means the destructive side of the Rainbow Serpent (creation and destruction are often aspects of the same trickster figure, much like the Seventh Doctor himself). The Doctor returns to Hex and Wahn and tells them what he’s learned. Wahn admits that Uluru City has become multicultural, discarding or altering Aboriginal traditions to suit modern sensibilities. That has weakened people’s belief, which in turned has weakened the Dreaming which Baiame manipulates to provide air, water, and food for his people, not to mention propulsion for his ark. Now the Dreaming is fighting back. Unfortunately, Korshal the leader of the Galyari swears vengeance against Baiame, after his troops and mate (?) Vresha turn to stone. When Korshal attacks him, Baiame summons a bird spirit, Kookaburra, to shield him, since Galyari revere birds. Unfortunately, after encountering the fake Doctor, Korshal no longer trusts or believes anything he sees, even one of his people’s ancestral spirits. The Doctor’s desperate plan is to record and play back the sound of Wahn’s bull-roarer, amplified and projected by the Galyari ship. The bull- roarer works not only by its raw sound, but by the mind and spirit of its wielder. It pacifies angry spirits and, if a strong enough mind is behind it, controls the Dreaming like the voice of Baiame himself. The Doctor can even use it to command time. Therefore he commands things to revert back to how they were before. The people awaken from stone, and the Dreaming goes back to sleep. Now that they’re awake, Baiame says, the people can gather and sing the ancestral songs to placate the Dreaming. Presumably that will hold it at bay until they reach their destination, where it can safely be unleashed. There it can shape an uninhabited planet into a new home for Baiame’s people. Thanks to Simon A. Forward for answering my questions about spelling so I could look up a few names. The Lovecraft Invasion (audio story) The Lovecraft Invasion was the two hundred and sixty fifth audio story in Big Finish's monthly range. It was written by Robert Valentine and featured Colin Baker as the Sixth Doctor, Lisa Greenwood as Flip Jackson and Miranda Raison as Constance Clarke. Contents. Publisher's summary [ edit | edit source ] The Doctor, Constance and Flip join forces with 51st-century bounty hunter, Calypso Jonze, to hunt down the Somnifax: a weaponised mind- parasite capable of turning its host's nightmares into physical reality. Chasing it through the time vortex to Providence, Rhode Island in 1937, they arrive too late to stop it from latching onto a local author of weird fiction. Howard Phillips Lovecraft. With time running out before Lovecraft's monstrous pantheon breaks free and destroys the world, the Doctor must enter Lovecraft's mind to fight the psychic invader from within. Can he and Flip overcome the eldritch horrors of the Cthulhu Mythos? And will Constance and Calypso survive babysitting the infamously xenophobic Old Gentleman of Providence himself? Chasing the Perfect Taco Up the California Coast. I’VE never met a taco I didn’t like. Weaned on Taco Bell and my Lebanese mother’s Old El Paso tacos, I’m not terrifically choosy. High-end, low-end, commercial, authentic — even a bad taco is better than no taco. But things change. Deep, obsessive love begets connoisseurship, and a more refined understanding is sought. The plan? A trip along Highway 1, between Los Angeles and San Francisco — among the most beautiful stretches of road in the country, and possibly the hottest taco crawl outside of Mexico. My boyfriend, Taylor Umlauf, will take the wheel and help sample the goods — generous spirit that he is — with hours between to soak in the scenery. The hum and buzz of 380 miles of winding open road await — heady visions of rustic farm towns unfolding into sun-bleached fishing villages, the sun, the salt, the fresh California air. This will be our storied and scenic backdrop. But our raison d’être? Five days, 28 taquerias, 49 tacos. Eager to hit the road, we decide on a whirlwind tour of sprawling Los Angeles. In the city’s central section, Pico-Union is a largely Hispanic neighborhood that tourists rarely brake for, but it is home to the taco trifecta — King Taco, El Taurino and El Parián. King Taco owns El Taurino, and both have a terrific atmosphere — bustling assembly-line kitchens, lively patrons, Latin-themed jukeboxes. Each produces tasty blueprints for the authentic Mexican taco: saucer-size soft corn tortillas about four inches wide, topped with steaming meats that hum with cilantro, onion and a shot of hot sauce. But it is the loner, El Parián, that sways the heart. It is a favorite of the taco-blogging sensation, the great Bandini (www.tacohunt.blogspot.com), who has warned me that it always looks closed. Parking in back, we slip into a surprisingly roomy restaurant with sit-down service. In the open kitchen, enormous pots bubble with birria (stewed goat), while customers toil quietly over chips and salsa. My carne asada taco arrives, the thick, juicy strips of steak bursting with flavor and laced with ripe tomato. Flanking the plate are the requisite slices of radish and wedge of lemon. Across town, we cruise into a busy commercial strip of East Los Angeles. Those who have never sampled a fish taco would be wise to cut their teeth at the tropical urban oasis Tacos Baja Ensenada. Filled with plump pieces of fried halibut and stacked high with cabbage and an otherworldly cream sauce, it is the kind of taco you don’t look up from. Day fades to night through Venice and Santa Monica, and in the morning, we burst onto the open road. This stretch of Highway 1, just before Santa Barbara, where the road hugs the Pacific so tightly you can see the spray coming off the rocks, makes you want to laugh and crank up the music. In the summer, the wildflowers spring up, paving the way to San Francisco. You know it’s been said a million times, but this really is the great American road trip. Do rich people eat tacos? I had heard that wealthy Santa Barbara was a hotbed of authentic taco activity, but I was hard-pressed to believe it. A cruise down quaint, tree-peppered North Milpas Street, however, confirms it. The street is lined with taquerias, including the one that started the craze — La Super Rica Taqueria. Known to many as “the Julia Child joint” — she was a loyal customer until she died two years ago — La Super Rica is bright and airy, and the tortillas are handmade on the spot. On the cashier’s recommendation, I pair a taco de bistec (charbroiled steak) with a queso de cazuela (a heavenly cheese baked in tomato sauce). Just as I’m sitting down with the owner, Isidoro González, a white-bearded passer-by leans in. “It’s not just a taqueria, it’s the best restaurant in town,” he says. Heart be still, it’s David Crosby. A fellow taco-hound! “You don’t have to continue any further,” he says, eyes twinkling. “This is it — this is the place.” Starry-eyed, we proceed. Nearby, just off charming State Street, where white stucco boutiques sit neatly under manicured palm trees, is a no-frills storefront called Lilly’s Taqueria. The menu, scrolled hurriedly across a white eraser board, reads like Hannibal Lecter’s grocery list — cheek, lip, tongue, eye. I opt for the lengua (tongue), and dig into the tiny pocket. EMBOLDENED, I ask the owner, José Sepulveda, about the ojo taco (cow eye). “It sounds kind of unusual,” he says with a laugh. “They think they’re going to serve the eye right there. We chop everything, and it’s cooked and steamed.” Right. It does kind of look like browned Steak-Ums. But I also spy some gelatinous, clear bits. “Oh, that,” he says, catching my hesitancy. “That’s nothing. Just different parts of the, uh, muscle.” Oh, boy. Like the cornea? I think, plunging in. The flavor is rich, straightforward — a bit greasy, but doable. “Tacos de ojo” is also slang in Mexico for “eye candy,” as in “that Salma Hayek is un taco de ojo.” Possibly excited by the connotation, my vegetarian boyfriend leans in swiftly for a bite, then stares sheepishly at the plate before dipping in for round two. Back on the road — the whistle of the wind, the rush of passing trucks, the smell of salt air. Passing a herd of grazing cows, Taylor grips the wheel, muttering: “I can’t even look them in the eye.” San Luis Obispo is a lot like Santa Barbara, without the fancy. It’s just as cute, but the streets, lined with Mission-style buildings, are less crowded, and the shopping is feasible. On a sidewalk, four Mexican construction workers sit eating lunch. On a whim, I run through my list. They nod approvingly, but when Chapala, a little-known restaurant in nearby Morro Bay, is mentioned, the big guy on the end lights up like a firecracker: “Yes, yes! That’s the one!” Morro Bay is a fishing village about 10 miles north, with a service street that runs along roaring Highway 1. Tucked discreetly into a gas-station minimart, Chapala is easy to miss. Last November, after seeing long lines form for his homemade tacos, its owner, Antonio Dominguez, turned Chapala into a full-service restaurant, with a mariachi band that plays Friday nights. To mark the changeover, a temporary plastic sign flags in the wind. Inside, the restaurant is awash in color — a vibrant, charismatic place with big wooden chairs brought in from Mexico. Festive music competes with the clank of the kitchen as the host grabs a couple of menus. The tacos are the best yet. The al pastor (marinated pork) is kicked up with a zigzag of cream; the shrimp taco is sautéed in a homemade achiote sauce. Our next stop also turns out superb tacos, but with a beachside surfer appeal. At Ruddell’s Smokehouse, a bubble-gum-colored outpost on Cayucos Beach, the owner, Jim Ruddell, owns up to his “gringo tacos” with a laugh, but his house-smoked meats and seafood are no joke. We feast on cumin-dotted pork loin and sweet, smoky oyster tacos, to the thrum of the crashing waves. Fat and happy, we set our sights on the rocky landscape of Big Sur. The commercial world slips away as we climb the coastline, the gray-brown Santa Lucia Mountains rising suddenly over the swirling blue Pacific. Before us lies a stretch renowned for its vast, awesome splendor, a 90-mile picture postcard in the making — but alas, a taco wasteland. As the dark cliffs of Big Sur give way to the bright green heartland, Mexican farmers toil in broad hats, backs bent in the hot sun. This is Watsonville, an agricultural town, filled with taquerias catering to the ever-increasing Hispanic population. Fiesta Tepa-Sahuayo looks like a classic California hole-in-the-mall, but the festive interior brims with homeland trinkets. The tacos hardly disappoint, but my guess is that the real gems are the hard-to-find specialties, like shrimps in rose petal sauce. Santa Cruz, to the north, is a flip-flop, sand-in-the-shorts kind of place — a laid-back beach town where the college kids reign supreme along thumping Pacific Avenue. Its Taqueria Vallarta turns out to be a major operation catering to daytime shoppers and late-night partiers, and my defenses kick up. Teenagers don’t have the most discriminating tastes for food. Young America, I stand corrected. The carnitas (shredded pork) tacos are delicious, and grabbing them to go, we pick up a six-pack and head up to the Skyview drive-in movie theater. It’s a classic drive-in, screening Hollywood blockbusters and entertaining a laissez-faire policy of B.Y.O.T. Halfway between Santa Cruz and San Francisco, we turn off into the rolling green hills of Pescadero, a tiny little blip of a town with a handful of general stores, a single bar and one gas station. I have been tipped off that there is a taqueria holed up somewhere in town, and that the ingredients are straight off the farm. I ask around. “There is no sign in the window,” a local offers, “but there is a taqueria in the gas station.” Inside the gas station, it’s lunchtime and bustling at Taqueria y Mercado de Amigos. Mexican workers squeeze into booths, sipping hibiscus sodas and chatting over the sizzle of the grill and the rhythmic cha-ching of the register. Two cooks work quickly — grilling the shrimp just till the edges blacken, searing the al pastor and drizzling it with hot sauce. Outside, the quiet of Pescadero is breathtaking. We head up Stage Road to the old cemetery and take the dirt road to the top of the hill. Sitting on the trunk of the car, tacos warming our laps, we find the most beautiful spot yet — the Kelly green pastures rolling and folding straight into the Western sky, the sun beaming down on all that open land. And just when it couldn’t get any better, we realize something else — we’re holding two of the best tacos this side of Mexico. On the last day, we reach San Francisco and its Mission District. For sheer taco volume, it is equal to any neighborhood in the States. The streets are lined with murals and filled with the sounds of friends heading for happy hour, cars honking as they pass. The taco to beat here is at La Taqueria, where awards line the walls. But I’ve heard word that two other restaurants, Taqueria San José and El Taco Loco, were gaining. Clearly, I will need to sample one from each. Having barebacked it sans gringo toppings all the way from Los Angeles, I decide to indulge my American peccadilloes and load them up with guacamole, sour cream and cheese. In the Mission, this is called the “super taco.” Three carnitas are placed neatly shell to shell. At first blush, San José’s, filled to the breaking point with rice and beans, looks doomed. La Taqueria’s is clearly the looker — fresh ingredients folded gingerly into a wax paper pocket. But scraping aside the mound of rice on the San José taco, I am blown away. The pork is charred perfectly — crispy on the edges, with a center so sweet it brings a tear to the ojo. Nearby, the legendary El Tonayense taco trucks (named for the owners’ hometown, Tonaya, in the Mexican state of Jalisco) are hopping. Hitting the truck at Harrison and 22nd Streets, I sample an ace tripitas (pig intestines). It’s fitting that our last stop finds us at La Palma Mexicatessen, a tiny grocery store lined with the Mexican spices we’ve sampled along the way. In the back, kitchen workers shout orders and hand-roll tortillas to order. The crowd is lively — and why not? It’s a beautiful afternoon, and the streets of this gorgeous city are lined with tacos. Determined to cap the crawl on the perfect note, I ask another customer what he likes on the menu. He smiles broadly. The Taco Trail. Here are some of the taco places Cindy Price liked best on her trip from Los Angeles to San Francisco. EL PARIáN 1528 West Pico Boulevard, Los Angeles; (213) 386-7361. TACOS BAJA ENSENADA 5385 Whittier Boulevard, Los Angeles; (323) 887-1980. LA SUPER RICA TAQUERIA 622 North Milpas Street, Santa Barbara; (805) 963-4940. LILLY’S TAQUERIA 310 Chapala Street, Santa Barbara; (805) 966-9180. CHAPALA RESTAURANT 2816 Main Street, Morro Bay; (805) 772-4492. RUDDELL’S SMOKEHOUSE 101 D Street, Cayucos; (805) 995-5028. TAQUERIA VALLARTA 1101 Pacific Avenue, Santa Cruz; (831) 471-2655. TAQUERIA Y MERCADO DE AMIGOS 1999 Pescadero Creek Road, Pescadero; (650) 879-0232. LA TAQUERIA 2889 Mission Street, San Francisco; (415) 285-7117. TAQUERIA SAN JOSé 2830 Mission Street, San Francisco; (415) 282-0203. EL TONAYENSE TACO TRUCK Harrison Street & 22nd Street, San Francisco. LA PALMA MEXICATESSEN 2884 24th Street, San Francisco; (415) 647-1500.