Given a good forecast for a couple of days, Tony and Gwen offered to take us off on a tour of Vancouver Island. Well actually the tour was planned to be just a small part of the south of the island. The island is huge – at 290 miles in length and nearly 100 miles wide at its widest point, it is the largest island in North America (and 43rd largest in the world) – around the size of Wales. With many parts being completely inaccessible with no roads, it meant that we could only manage a small part of it in two days.
So, we headed first to Victoria – the capital of the island and also the capital of British Columbia. A population of over 350,000 in Greater Victoria makes it a substantial city and is a base for ferries (to Canada and America), seaplanes (or float planes as they call them) and various tourist activities like whale watching. We headed for the museum and managed to see a whale straight away. OK, it was made of plants, but …..
The museum was fascinating and very well presented. We looked around various galleries about natural history and the First Nations people. Vancouver Island has been the homeland to many indigenous peoples for thousands of years and the museum took us through many aspects of their customs, language and lifestyle. The main groups, by language, are the Kwakwaka’wakw (also known as the Kwakiutl), Nuu-chah-nulth, and various Coast Salish peoples. However, within this there were multiple other groups and languages.
Just before lunch we then headed off for lunch close to East Sooke at a lovely converted farm. From there we headed to East Sooke Regional Park for a lovely walk through mature Arbutus trees.
From there we headed on up the coast and did one more stop at one of the trailheads on the Juna de Fuca trail (which goes 30km along the coast). We followed the trail towards China Beach for just over a kilometre – beautiful through the trees, but not easy walking as you had to pick your way over tree roots. The trees clearly have priority over walkers here … We got to a suspension bridge across the river and decided to turn round there as time was marching on.
Finally we drove on to our destination for the night – Port Renfrew. Gwen had round a beautiful cottage to stay at for the night – right on the waterfront looking over the bay at Port Renfrew. A lovely day was rounded off with a meal at what might have been called a restaurant. However, they hadn’t managed to get the permits, so in fact it was a food truck attached to what was classed as a gazebo. In fact it was a lovely wooden and glass building with a great view over the local marina and the bay. The food was excellent as well and as it was open mic night, there were various musicians including a tenor sax player. He played for a few minutes, but then food and beer appeared and he got distracted – classic sax players!
