On Hwy-21/off 1-5, 25 miles North of San Diego. Approaching Encinitas takes you through many acres of poinsettia, a shrub of Central American origin with a red, yellow and white bloom. During the May to September blooming period, the sight of the flowers might well awaken dormant horticultural interests. If so, pay a call on Quail Botanical Gardens, 230 Quail Gardens Drive, where beds of madly exotic plants give way to pine-cloaked hillsides and untouched chaparral, preserved as a bird and animal refuge. Just north of the town centre, the towers of the Self Realization Fellowship (http://www.yogananda-srf.org), a meditation-based sect founded in India at the turn of the century and settling here in the 1930s, overlook yet more well-tended gardens.