The journey to Vancouver Island takes about an hour and a half and the views of the islands were lovely even with the grey overcast weather - I can imagine how pretty it would be on a blue sky day.
We arrived in Victoria in the late afternoon so stocked up with camping groceries in Save on Foods - foreign supermarkets are always interesting but we had fun scooping up bags of cereals, sweets, nuts and trail mix from the bulk buy bins - perfect for getting lots of bits and pieces like we needed for a few days camping. We pitched our tent in the Goldstream Provinical Park campground which is only 15km from Victoria but feels like the proper wilderness - I was quite scared of bears but luckily the rain dripping from the trees onto the tent disguised any rustling noises which would have freaked me out!
Goldstream Provinical Park is home to Mt Finlayson - one of the highest points on southern Vancouver Island and has great views down to Victoria. So after a saucepan of oatmeal (save on the washing up...), we set off to clamber up to the top. It was quite a scramble and definitely broke my new shoes in, but the views from the top were well worth it and we saw a few eagles circling on the thermals.
The walk had taken a bit longer than we thought and as it just started to rain as we got to the bottom, we jumped back in the car to Victoria city centre and headed straight for a late lunch at Red Fish Blue Fish - a take away in a shipping container on the harbourfront which serves the tastiest fish and chips, fish tacos and other fish related sandwiches etc. It lived up to it’s rave reviews :-) We ambled around Victoria city centre for the rest of the afternoon - it’s a lovely little town with a lot of old buildings from colonial times and the parliament house and the Fairmont Hotel are beautiful examples. As it was Sunday, not much was open so we just headed back to the campsite to sit by the fire and keep and eye out for bears :-)
We decided to make the next day a long driving day so that we could stay 2 nights on the west coast of the island. We stopped in a few little towns on the way - Cowichan Bay is a gorgeous little fishing village just north of Victoria but unfortunately all the shops etc don’t open on Mondays so we just had a coffee and butter tart (drool) at Zoe’s cafe before heading onwards.
We then stopped in Cheminaus to stretch our legs - after the demise of the logging industry in the area, the Cheminaus population decided to turn their little town into a tourist attraction and did so by painting murals depicting life on the island on the buildings across town.
We had a quick lunch in Nanaimo before driving across the island to Tofino on the rugged windswept west coast. The drive over the island is amazing and there was still a lot of snow on the tops of the mountains and patches on the ground in some shady parts. We decided not to stop for photo ops on the way there in the hope that the weather would be better on the way back! We found a nice campsite right above Mackenzie Beach so plonked our tent on a site overlooking the beach for a couple of nights. We popped into Tofino village for dinner at a waterfront pub where I continued to munch through British Columbia’s seafood and fish supply with some sockeye salmon yumyum.
Tofino is the place to go for whale and wildlife spotting, so we booked ourselves on a boat trip and spent the afternoon bobbing around in the inlet and on the ocean looking for wildlife. We headed up the coast through the inlet and paused by a couple of river mouths to look for bears - one person thought he saw one through his telephoto camera lens but by the time we had got in position, he had disappeared into the forest. We continued to scan the beaches and found a few sealions perched on a rock who promptly slid off into the water as we got closer. Further north, we came across a group of sea otters chilling out in the waves - they were less bothered by our boat and just carried on floating with their feet poking out of the water.
Our actual destination for the boat trip was to Hot Springs Cove. A 20 minute walk along a boardwalk leads to some natural pools filled with water from the hot springs. On a cold wintery day, a soak in the 40C water was just what was needed. It began to rain quite heavily while we were soaking so we had cold water dripping on our heads as we lay in the hot water :-) Once our fingers had turned to prunes, we got changed and had a quick snack under the watchful eye of a cute little blue bird (not a bluebird) who was clearly waiting for us to leave so he could eat our crumbs.
We returned to Tofino via the open ocean which had about a 3m swell so it was quite choppy. We were on the lookout for whales (mostly grey whales but sometimes humpbacks) but unfortunately didn’t see any but it is a bit early in the year at the moment. We did stop by a little island which had a large population of seals, sealions and eagles and watched them bask in the late afternoon sun for a while.
It was gone 8pm by the time we got back to the campsite so we had a quick dinner of past and scallops we had bought from the supermarket in Tofino (probably the poshest campsite dinner we’ve ever had) and warmed our feet by the fire.
That night was definitely the coldest night we’d had (car said 6C on our drive back from Tofino brrrrr) and my lightweight sleeping bag hadn’t done a very good job on keeping my feet warm so we went for a little walk along the beach to warm up and to let the tent dry as much as possible before packing it away. And that was the end of the stress-free part of the day as we ran over a pothole about 5 minutes after leaving the campsite and got a flat tyre :-( Luckily the car had a spare so Chris popped that on and we did a slow drive back across the island to the bigger towns to search for a replacement tyre. We did stop at a few points on the drive back as the weather had brightened a bit, and we saw a black bear on an embankment, but unfortunately it wasn’t a point where we could stop to take photos.
After trying a few garages and a coffee spilling incident, we gave up on our tyre hunting and checked into a resort hotel just north of Nanaimo. After 4 nights camping and a stressful tyre day, it was just what we needed. The hotel had an indoor pool and hot tub but we headed straight to the outdoor hot tub overlooking the bay. The water bubbled our cares away and we then treated ourselves to a posh meal in the hotel restaurant where I had some very very tasty crab fresh out of the bay.
We finally found a replacement tyre the following morning in Nanaimo in a very friendly garage - they even left a carnation for me as ‘the lady of the car’ :-) We had missed the early ferry so we had a bit of time to kill in Nanaimo before heading to the ferry terminal to catch the boat to Horseshoe Bay. The weather again was a bit grey and drizzly so the views weren’t as good as can be so we found some seats and relaxed for the hour and a half journey back to the mainland. Horseshoe Bay is just northwest of Vancouver and on the road to Whistler so we bimbled up the Sea to Sky Highway stopping at Shannon Falls on the way.
We arrived in Whistler in the late afternoon so headed straight to our accommodation for the night. After checking the weather report and seeing minimum temperatures of -8C, we didn’t fancy camping (and our tent was dry....) so we booked into a yurt at a big RV park just north of Whistler village. The yurt was lovely and cosy and it was nice to be ‘camping’ but warm :-) We went for dinner in the village and it was very odd to be in a ski resort in the shoulder season - a couple of lifts and a few runs were still open so there were a few people still in their ski/snowboard gear but it was very quiet. Being there in the off season meant there were some really good deals to be had - most of the shops had really good discounts on their winter wear (if only we had room...) and some of the top restaurants had prix fixe menus for $19-$39 when one course would cost you over $20 in the peak seasons. We ended up in a posh italian restaurant on their $10 pasta night and the servings were enormous and very very tasty. We rolled back to the yurt and had a lovely warm sleep not disturbed by bears :-)
The following day, we only had the morning to spend in Whistler as we had to drop the hire car back in Vancouver by 5pm. So we had a wander around and checked out the olympic rings and new parts of the village added since we came in 2006. It is such a lovely place and it was a shame that we didn’t have more time there due to the whole tyre debacle. We’ll definitely be back though :-)
The weather had perked up a bit on the journey back so we stopped at a few veiwpoints to take some snaps.
We said goodbye to our hire car (and it’s new tyre) and jumped on the skytrain to Pacific Central Station to embark on our next leg of our adventures!
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