Day 11-13 - Bear necessities of life

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The next day found myself on the greyhound again, this was luxury compared to some of the buses I have been on but 8 hours on a bus is 8 hours on a bus and can be boring at times!! My destination was telegraph cove where I was to go grizzly bear watching. I arrived at Port McNeill not far drom the northernmost part of Vancover Island from there I had to call yet anither taxi to get a life to the beautiful port that was Telegraph Cove, it was a former fishing port which now was one its main draws as it was unspoilt. I can certainly recommend the campsite here, it was surrounded by dense woodland, and 5 mins away from a hiking trail and a bubbling brook wound its way past the tents, which is where I pitched up for the next two nights.

The attendant warned me about the bears and the cougars, I told him it should be the cougars who should be worried about me:-) I was hoping to get a close encounter with a bear so I immediately set off to where the bear had been spotted to see if he was still there but unfortunately he wasn't.

After the habitual few beers I had an early night as I had to be up at 06:00 to get ready for the tour which met at 06:45, it was to last all day returning later at 16:00 and wasn't cheap!! We were took by boat over the Johnstone strait to Knight Inlet (on the mainland) from where we transferred to a shallow draft boat to navigate our way up the narrow channels from where numerous Grizzly bears could be sighted. All told we saw 7 cubs, 2 mothers and a male (which is quite rare here).

That night I wandered round to the cove to see if I could see a black bear close up again (there are no Grizzlies on Vancouver Island) and this time I was to get my wish. As I wandered down to the cove I was joined my two dogs with their owner a few paces behind me. As I left the woods and strode on the beach at the start of the cove I bumped into a big black bear (well it was 10 feet away) at the sight of me and the two dogs it scarpered before I had chance to take a pic. However to my good fortune it ran straight up a tree which enabled mee to take loads of pics with no worry of being eaten, which was nice.

I met a couple from England later that night and joined them for a few beers, they offered me a lift to my next destination which was very kind of them and saved me another bus journey,

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