On ya bike!

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Tuesday 15/05/12 – This morning we took the bus to Granville Island, which contains a public food market as well as many arts and crafts shops. There were several interesting shops to browse through and I found a lovely set of polar bears carved out of white marble, but unfortunately they would probably be too heavy to cart around, so I had to put off buying them.

When we got back to the hostel, we found out that the bikes had been cleared by customs, hurrah! We went to the customs office and collected the paperwork to take to the warehouse in the morning. The afternoon was then taken up by packing all our stuff into logical pannier bags that will slot into the panniers. Unfortunately, some bastard at the hostel stole our milk out of the communal fridge, so when we went to make our packet pasta for dinner, it was a bit gross because we only had water to make it with.



Wednesday 16/05/12 – We got up bright and early to catch a train, bus and then walk to the warehouse where the bikes were. I was seriously regretting my bright idea of taking the metal top boxes with us to the warehouse, they ended up so heavy as we were walking along! We made it to the warehouse and they bought the crates around the front for us to assemble on the pavement. We set to ripping the crates open and putting the bikes back together. They needed their front wheels, windscreens and mirrors put back on, then their batteries reconnected and to be fuelled up (as they were completely empty). This may sound easy, but it took at least an hour to break the crates down and get the bikes onto their centrestands, so the wheels could be put back on, then another hour or so work on each bike to make sure everything was working. Then I had to walk 2km to the petrol station across a busy highway to get fuel to put in the bikes. Weirdly, there was a pedestrian crossing on one of the highway slip lanes where the car stopped to let me cross. On a highway. Pedestrians definitely have right of way in Canada! Anyway, it was then D-day to start the bikes. It took about 10 tries before Adam’s bike started. We both were experiencing sinking stomachs that neither of us wanted to discuss, but eventually it started. Then we got mine started eventually too. It was time to hit the road!

One of the more noticeable things is that Canadians drive on the right hand side. Which is actually more challenging to remember if there is no traffic around to follow, because you sometimes end up turning into the wrong side of the street. Adam realised that the turns were ‘lefty loosey, right tighty’, so all we have to remember is to take the furthest lane when turning left and we should be ok! Also, my speedo wasn’t working so I couldn’t tell how fast I was going, so Adam was in the lead. We used McDonalds free wifi to look up the route back into the city and packed up all our belongings onto the bikes (yes you naysayers, it all fitted! Eventually….), left the bag and box we took on the plane for the homeless, and turned south again to try and make the ferry at 7pm. We made it just in time, with only minutes to spare. Thankfully the ferry was also running late, otherwise we would’ve had to take the later one. The 7pm ferry meant it was still light when we got to Vancouver Island and we headed for the nearest caravan park according to our research whilst on the ferry (yes, there was free wifi on the ferry – free wifi is everywhere here!). It was called Oceanside RV park and although we had to pitch the tent in the dark, it all seemed ok.



Thursday 17/05/12 – This morning we managed to hack the caravan park’s wifi by guessing the password so I was sending emails from the tent! We then tried to fix my speedometer. Turns out that the ‘speedometer drive unit’ fell out during shipping! So we need to find a Kawasaki shop to replace it. Thankfully there is a shop on Vancouver Island, and we were headed to it to get our side stands re-welded. Because of the weight in the pannier boxes, the side stand won’t hold the bike stable enough. So we have to keep putting the bike onto its centrestand, which takes a fair bit of effort and only Adam can do it by himself, I have no hope. We were heading to a motorbike shop in Sooke which was recommended by one of the employees at the caravan park that owns a KLR, and turned out it is the dealership too! Lucky!

We left the caravan park and headed to Victoria, which was only a short ride away. We found a park and then set about finding some accommodation for the weekend. This weekend is a long weekend, with Monday being the public holiday, Victoria Day. A lot of businesses in Canada open for the tourist season on the May long weekend, so the city is set to be busy. We booked a hostel in town for the Monday night, so we can be in the city to watch the parade. We also had a look around the city and the harbour.

We then rode up the Trans-Canada Hwy 1 to get to the Goldstream Provincial Park which is where we stayed the night. Just a short walk away from our campsite was the Goldstream Falls, which was only small in width but was falling into the stream extremely powerfully.



Friday 18/05/12 – After a fairly cold night at Goldstream, we got up early and took off to Sooke to find the motorbike man. We had to take a detour as the highway was having roadworks done, which actually turned out much nicer and took us by a large lake and through the forest. The city of Sooke was quite small, but had a large supermarket and a McDonalds (more free wifi). We went to the visitors centre first and lucky we did, as the lady told us to go directly to the Sooke Potholes campsite to get a spot, otherwise we would miss out with all the city folk coming to camp for the long weekend. After what felt like an hour waiting in line at the park gates, we secured a fairly good spot just a short walk from the river. About 20 minutes later, the man across from us told us he got the last spot! We then went to find the motorbike man. Although he was open, he was so busy with servicing all the local bikes for summer that he couldn’t do the welding for another fortnight! But he told us that tightening up the back suspension would help the bike to lean. It seems to have worked okay, the bikes are no longer in danger of falling over when parked on the flat. On the way up and down the Sooke River Rd, Adam managed to scare two deer off the road and into the forest, and also get hit by a falling twig that he claims nearly took his head off. I managed to get dive bombed by a bird with a deathwish, but we both survived.

We then set out to find some more accommodation for Saturday and Sunday night as the country seems to go mad around the May long weekend. So far, we haven’t been able to get any campsites booked, but a few don’t take reservations, so we are hopeful we will get a site when we turn up tomorrow. On the way back to the campsite, we stopped off to have a look at the ‘potholes’ in the Sooke river, which are used as swimming holes in summer and had a walk up the river.



Saturday 19/05/12 – We woke up early after a VERY cold night at Sooke River and set off to find a campsite for the next few nights. After taking a wrong turn, we ended up outside a Walmart, which turned out to be a perfect place to buy a big blanket for night-time! We got a bargain minke blanket for $20. We then missed the next turnoff and ended up at the 2^nd campsite on our list. Unfortunately, the first view of the place was a big turnoff, it looked like a place where RVs went to die. And the owners were like characters out of the Hill Have Eyes movie. But we decided to chance it and the actual campsite was up the back and quite nice, it was right next to a nature reserve. We set up the tent and rode the bikes to the Victoria Butterfly Gardens. They were a large greenhouse with thousands of tropical butterflies flying around, as well as geckos climbing the walls, 2 flamingos and some turtles in the pond. It was lovely. Outside, we got talking to a retired fellow called Dan who had travelled through Central and South America on a motorbike, what a coincidence! He gave us some tips and we swapped email addresses to keep in contact during our journey. In the afternoon, we went to the Victoria Bug Zoo, which had a huge colony of leafcutter ants much to Adam’s delight. We also learnt about tarantulas and got to hold a stick insect.



Sunday 20/05/12 – Today we left our tent set up at Thetis Lake and rode into Victoria. First up was Thunderbird Park, which is right next to the Museum and features about 10 large totem poles. Then we went into the Royal BC Museum which has permanent exhibits of First Nation artefacts, as well as a temporary exhibit of dinosaurs at the moment. We got to meet a full replica of T. Rex, a huge skull from a Triceratops, and a fully recreated Woolly Mammoth. The First Nation exhibit was told in two parts: before white man and after. It was incredibly sad to see all of the customs they gave up because the Spanish and English settlers thought they were inappropriate and made them illegal so the natives could no longer practice them. Today, some of the customs, like potlaches (huge ceremonies held for marriages, deaths, change in the leader etc.) that were outlawed in the early 1900s but are now legal, are continued, but are nothing like the previous ones. Some of the hunting and fishing tools were incredibly advanced before whiteman came along, so the natives would have continued to do just fine without intervention!

In the afternoon, we went to the Celtic Festival which was being held in Topaz Park this weekend. We saw a haggis hurling competition, disappointingly not conducted with a real bag of haggis, and some of the World Strongman competition, where these big fat blokes were throwing around massive hammers, cabers (basically telegraph poles) and kegs. It was quite amusing.



Monday 21/05/12 – Today we woke up and discovered it had rained all night. Our towels which had been drying on Adam’s miracle ‘clothesline made of bike tie-downs’ were soaked, as were the bikes and outside of the tent. We flicked as much water off as we could and packed up for a wet ride into Victoria. On the way in, the waterproof cover for my tank bag blew off on the highway, the very first time I used the cover! Extremely poor design whoever designed that one. I guess it’s a plastic bag to cover it next time it rains! We parked in Victoria and walked around to see the seals in the harbour. I guess it was a bit early for them, we only spotted one lazy one eyeing us off to see if we had food. We walked back into the city and watched the Victoria Day parade, just like any other parade with firetrucks and loud cars, but the high school marching bands were very good! And some had various cheerleading and baton twirling going on, it was quite entertaining. In the afternoon, we went to the Maritime Museum and learnt all about the squabbles over coastal rights to the Canadian coast since it was discovered in the 1600s. Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, British, American – they all ‘owned’ this area at some stage.

Due to all the rain, it was a very timely booking we had in the hostel that night. After parking in a free carpark across the road and lugging all our stuff up three flights of stairs (none of the hostels seem to have lifts here….), we hung up all our wet stuff around the tiny double room. At night, we went out for dinner, a relief after cooking for ourselves on the camp stove for the last four nights, and then went on a ghost tour in the city. Whooooooooo….. We learnt about a few of the local ghosts that are regularly seen in the buildings built in the early 1900s and other interesting stories about several of the hotels on the harbour which were built on sites previously used as Native burial grounds.

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Comments

[pete]

so it begins
hey guys, great to see you are writing a travel blog. i get an email when you make an entry so I will keep up with your blog. nice to read you are on your way. In the less civilised parts of the world that drive on the right side of the road, the advantage of riding a bike and not driving a car is that in the car the gear lever is also on the wrong side.. that takes a little to get used to. pete