Tofino It had been a year since our first attempted trip to Vancouver Island was thwarted by the Icelandic volcano grounding all of the flights in Europe (although that did result in an unexpected and fantastic week in the Alps). It was time to try again.
Greenland Sunday - On the way to Vancouver we flew over Greenland. There are snow covered mountains on the right and you can see that the sea ice has just started to melt and crack after the winter freeze.
Suburban Having arrived in Vancouver, we went to pick up our hire car. The car we've booked (a Jeep SUV) wasn't available (as usual), so we were offered a "free" upgrade to a Chevrolet Suburban, which can be seen here parked next to a Smart car. It probably wouldn’t be too bad out of town, but we would have to drive it round Vancouver for two days at the end of the holiday. So we politely declined their generous offer and asked for something a bit more "normal" sized.
Mercedes Handily, the only thing they had to hand was this rather super Mercedes GLK350. I'm surprised these aren't sold in the UK, as they'd fit nicely into the popular "small" SUV class.
Horseshoe Bay As it was already late afternoon, we decided to head for our first overnight stop, the Horseshoe Bay Motel. We were staying there as it's handy for the ferry to Vancouver Island that we would be catching in the morning.
Horseshoe Bay Marina We managed to stay awake long enough to have a quick look at the marina and grab a bite to eat.
Ferry Monday - We were booked on the 10:15 ferry, but our body clocks had ensured that we were wide awake at 4am. So, rather than hang around, we decided to head for the first ferry of the day at 06:30. This is Judith watching our ferry departing Horseshoe Bay.
Cathedral Grove On the drive from Nanaimo to Tofino, we stopped for a break at Cathedral Grove, which offered a short walk through one of the rainforests that used to competely cover Vancouver Island. There was a sign warning us to leave the forest immediately if the wind picks up. Apparently big branches regularly fall from the trees and the trees themselves are somewhat prone to blowing over due to their shallow roots (there are so many nutrients available on teh surface that they apparently don't need a broad, deep root system). Fortunately there was hardly a breath of wind.
Rainforest The rainforest was amazing. Everything was vividly green. Every branch was covered in moss. Fallen trees had new trees growing on them.
The Big Tree This is Judith standing in front of the biggest tree in Cathedral Grove - an 800-year-old, 250 foot tall Douglas-fir called The Big Tree.
Pacific Rim National Park After leaving Cathedral Grove, we drove into the Pacific Rim National Park. First stop in the park is the Wickaninnish Interpretive Centre (that, for convenience, I shall subsequently refer to simply as the WIC), which is a small museum that provides a bit of history about the park and the area. It’s also got a very nice restaurant. This was the view of the WIC from the beach.
Beach This was the view of the beach from the WIC. The logs have been washed up on the shore by the tide.
Walking We were planning to walk a short trail here, but we discovered this sign at the trailhead. Rather than risk getting eaten by a bear on our first full day here, we decided to give the walking a miss...
More Beach ...and take a few more photos of the impressive beach.
Beach Judith looking out over the beach to the south of the WIC. Not so many logs on this bit for some reason. Maybe something to do with the rip tides, which were mentioned extensively on information boards?
Wick Inn We left the WIC and finally made it to the Wickaninnish Inn. Apparently the original Wickaninnish Inn used to be where the WIC now stands, around 10 miles away. However, it had to close when the Pacific Rim National Park was created in 1970 because hotels aren't permitted in national parks in Canada.
Lexus The Wickaninnish Inn has two complimentary Lexus RX450h SUVs for the use of drivers with a Canadian licence. Not much use to a UK licence holder though. Doh!
Room This photo looks a bit odd. But you'll have to take my word for it that it's tricky taking a picture that shows a) a room, and b) what's outside a room at the same time. Nevertheless, our room was really nice.
View This was the fabulous view of Chesterman Beach from our balcony.
Chesterman Beach Having deposited our luggage in our room, we went for a walk up/down Chesterman Beach. This was the view of the Wickaninnish Inn from the beach.
Rocks This is a picture of some rocks on Chesterman Beach.
Hotel View Another view of the Wickaninnish Inn from Chesterman Beach.
Wick Inn And another view of the Wickaninnish Inn from Chesterman Beach. As you can gather, the views were excellent.Having done so much walking on the beach and taken so many photos, we were done in for the day and returned to the hotel for a good night's sleep.
Breakfast Tuesday - Here's Judith having breakfast in the hotel's Pointe restaurant. As ever, the view was magnificent.
Radar Hill After breakfast, we decided to go for a walk up Radar Hill. This turned out to be not quite what we expected, as it's possible (indeed required) to actually drive to within 100m of the top. Still, we parked up and headed off up the trail. At the trail head there was the usual reminder of potential maiming and death ahead.
Radar Hill View And this was the view from the top of Radar Hill. Well worth the 60 second walk from the car.
Hummingbird There were loads of these hummingbirds in the area and they made a fabulous noise as they whizzed about. I think this is an Anna’s Hummingbird.
Wild Pacific Trail After leaving Radar Hill, we drove the 25 miles-or-so to Ucluelet, the only other town in the area. There was a short circular coastal walk, called the Wild Pacific Trail, on the edge of town. It was a very picturesque and well maintained trail, with many excellent view points and places to sit and admire the view. Like this one.
Wild Pacific Trail And this one.
Bald Eagle Bald Eagles regularly swooped overhead. Unfortunately they only ever seemed to land in the tops of tall trees a long way off, so it was tricky to get a good picture of one.
More Views I've got loads and loads and loads of pictures of fantastic views like this, but I think you've probably got the idea of how incredibly scenic it was by now.
Bear! We decided to pop back to the WIC for some lunch. A couple of hundred meters from their car park we came across this little bear munching on something by the side of the road (presumably the corpse of some poor unfortunate hikers). This was the first real, live bear we'd ever seen in Canada.We stopped by the reception desk at the WIC to report the sighting (they like to keep track of where people see bears). A couple were already excitedly/nervously reporting having seen another (full-sized) bear on the trail we decided not to walk on yesterday (due to the sign saying "Bear in area. Travel with caution.").
Lunch Excitement over, we settled in for a very nice lunch and the lovely view of the beach from the restaurant.
Rainforest Trail A After lunch we drove a few miles to the Rainforest Trail, which was actually a pair of trails - the imaginitively named Rainforest Trail A and Rainforest Trail B. Unfortunately Rainforest Trail B was closed due to the trail getting wrecked by falling trees in a recent storm (remember earlier when I mentioned that the trees have a tendency to fall over during storms - evidently that advisory sign wasn’t kidding).To minimise the impact of the trail on the forest, rather than clear the ground and build a regular path, they've built the boardwalk you can see in the photo. It's a good way to get around, but it's very slippery in places due to the perpetual dampness of the forest and care is needed whilst walking about.
Boardwalk Judith admiring a very large fallen tree.
Grice Bay Having safely completed Rainforest Trail A, we drove the couple of miles to Grice Bay. There wasn't really anything to do there apart from fish, launch your boat (if you've got one) and/or admire the view. This was the view.Finally it was time to head back to our hotel for some dinner and a rest.
Whale Watching Wednesday - Whale watching day. First thing to do was suit up. These bright suits would allow us to a) stay afloat, and b) be spotted easily in the hopefully unlikely event that we fell out of the boat.
Whales It didn't take long for us to find a couple of Grey whales, feeding in a kelp bed just off the shore. It's pretty tricky taking photos of the whales as it's difficult to know where they're going to surface. I've got loads and loads of largely rubbish photos like this.
Fin Although this looks a lot like we’re being stalked by Jaws, it’s actually the tail fin of a diving whale.
Seals - or maybe Sea Lions There were lots of seals and sea lions about. I’ve no idea how you tell the difference when you can only see their heads poking out of the water.
Sea Lions Out of the water, identification is a bit easier. These are sea lions (I think).
Trans-Canada Highway Back in Tofino, we were having a bit of a walk about when we discovered the western end of the Trans-Canada Highway. At 4,990 miles in length, it’s one of the longest roads in the world. And it ends here, with a bench.
Schooner Bay Trail As it was still fairly early, we decided to go for a walk on the Schooner Bay trail. After around half-an-hour of walking through more rainforest (I haven’t included any photos of that as you’re probably a bit rainforested out by now), we made it to the beach. Schooner Cove is reached by walking along the beach, but only at low tide. Unfortunately the tide wasn’t low enough for us to make any further progress, so we had to turn round at this point.And that was it for our Wednesday explorations. Back to the hotel for a lovely curry.
Bear! Thursday - We were up early for a bear watching trip. And it didn’t take long to find one. Apparently they go to the shore as the tide is going out to search for crabs hiding under the rocks. It was so quiet here that we could easily hear it munching and crunching on them. It didn’t seem particularly bothered by the presence of our boat, although our guide assured us that it would definitely perk up if we were to venture onto the shore.
Harbour Seals These are clearly seals because, as we now know, their flippers don’t look large enough to assist them in moving around on the rocks.
More Bears In the next bay we saw this bear with a couple of cubs.
Close Up This boat moved in for a close-up view.There were a couple more bears in a couple more coves, but nothing close enough to get a photo of. All in all, a pretty exciting morning out though.
Botanical Gardens Back in Tofino we popped in to the Botanical Gardens, which seemed to have as many interesting sculptures as it did plants.
Chickens They also had some chickens.
Lost? Even though the gardens weren’t huge, their stylised map made navigating around in the forested sections moderately challenging.
Grrr! This might have given you a fright if you stumbled across it in the dark. Or not.
Reception View Back at our hotel, the view from reception was still looking fantastic.
Beach ND10 As it was still relatively early, we went for another walk all the way down Chesterman Beach and into Cox Bay. This is a ND10 photo converted to black and white. I took a few other ND10 photos, but I haven’t really got the hang of them yet. I thought this one looked moderately interesting though.
ND10 This is another ND10, although you’d be fairly hard pressed to tell. It was taken on Chesterman Beach on the way back to the hotel.
Mussels Friday - Out for a walk on the beach after breakfast and the tide was as far out as we’d seen it all week. Masses of mussels were visible on the rocks below the hotel.
Bald Eagle While I was photographing the mussels, this Bald Eagle landed on a tree right outside the hotel’s restaurant. It was about now I was really wishing I’d bought that 500mm reflex lens. Not that I’d have taken itwith me onto the beach to photograph the view.
Wet We decided to walk the three miles from the hotel into Tofino so that we could enjoy a couple of beers with lunch. On the way in it started to rain and it continued to rain for the rest of the day. Fortunately, we’d come prepared for this sort of weather, as Judith is demonstrating here.We had a fantastic lunch in the Shelter restaurant too.
Shark Bait Saturday - It was time to check out of the hotel and head back to Vancouver. A last look at the view and the surf school were off out to play with the sharks.
Ferry On the drive back to Nanaimo we saw a couple more bears just walking by the road (one just a few hundred yards after we’d stopped to have a look at a lake - yikes!). If you want to see bears in the wild, this really is a very good place to come.The rest of the drive to Nanaimo was uneventfully pleasant. It was pouring with rain for the first hour of the ferry journey back to Vancouver. When the rain stopped, I popped outside to take a few photos. This picture of the sky behind us gives an indication as to why the weather had been so bad. The sky just above the horizon is positively black.
Pan Pacific View We made it to our Vancouver hotel, the Pan Pacific at Canada Place. The view from our room on the 20th floor was fabulous, as it should be considering the stratospheric amount we were paying for it.
Coal Harbour Quay Sunday - Our hotel was about a mile from Stanley Park, so we took a stroll along the waterfront to the park. This was the view of the Vancouver skyline across the Coal Harbour Quay.
Skyline The Vancouver skyline from Stanley Park.
Burrard Bridge Having walked around (some of) Stanley Park, we headed down English Beach towards Granville Island. This is a photo of the Burrard Bridge from Sunset Beach.
Granville Island Judith couldn’t be bothered to walk all the way to Granville Island, so we hopped onto the entertainingly tiny False Creek Ferry instead.Granville Island was absolutely rammed with tourists, most of whom appeared to have turned up in their cars. We popped into Granville Island Brewing for a rest and a break from the melee outside.
Yaletown On leaving Granville Island Brewing, we caught another False Creek Ferry to Yaletown, where we soon found ourselves having another pit stop in the Yaletown Brewing Company.
Steamworks Brewing Company Remarkably, shortly after leaving Yaletown Brewing, we found ourselves in the Steamworks Brewing Company in Gastown. It was almost like we were on a pub crawl.After all of this walking and “resting”, we finally headed back to the hotel.
Hotel View This was the view of the approaching sunset from our room. The large dark green area on the right is Stanley Park, where we were walking earlier.
Capilano Salmon Hatchery Monday - Flying home day, but the flight wasn’t until the evening, so we still had some time for sightseeing. First stop was the Capilano Salmon Hatchery in the Capilano Regional Park, which was quite interesting and very picturesque.
Grouse Mountain After leaving the Capilano Regional Park, we drove a couple of miles up the road to Grouse Mountain. Despite being May and a pleasant 12C at the bottom of Grouse Mountain, there were still several feet of snow at the top.
The Grouse Grind Which would explain why the Grouse Grind was still shut. The Grouse Grind is a slightly-less-than two mile trail that climbs around 2,500 feet up the side of Grouse Mountain. I was hoping to have a go at it while we were here, but evidently that was not to be this time. Oh well, it’s just another reason to have to come back to Vancouver again.
Grouse Mountain View It was pretty cloudy at the top of Grouse Mountain when we arrived, so we had some lunch while we waited for the weather to hopefully clear, which is kindly did. And when it did, the view was excellent.
Marine Drive Foreshore Park After leaving Grouse Mountain we decided to head in the direction of the airport. We drove through the University of British Columbia, which was very impressive and about the size of a large city. Between the University and the coast is the Marine Drive Foreshore Park, where we stopped to take this photo. On the beach you can see many, many rafts of logs. No idea why they choose to store them here.
Mercedes View There was just time to take one last photo of our excellent hire car before we headed back to the airport.Well, we had to wait a year longer than expected to get to Vancouver Island and Tofino, but it was definitely worth the wait. We had an excellent time and the weather was much kinder to us than we were expecting and prepared for. Now we’ve got somewhere else to add to our growing list of places we’d really like to visit again.