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Published: July 13th 2019
The Vancouver Rental Car
The really quite tasty Ford Fusion. After a great trip, our cruise is over and what is the very next thing we're gonna do........yep, get on board another ship.........this time a ferry going to Vancouver Island. But first things first, we had to get off the Celebrity Millennium and as walk off passengers taking our own luggage, we were asked to meet in one of the lounges by 8.00 am. We were ready by 7.30 and as we were about to think about going to the lounge, there was a tannoy announcement saying that we could go ahead and disembark already and so......off we went. We had to complete a Canadian Customs Declaration and hand this over as we left the ship and entered the Cruise Terminal, but that was it....no Immigration and we were back into Canada and standing by our Alamo Car Rental desk by 7.45!
Unfortunately however, the desk didn't open until eight, so we had to wait a few minutes to pick up our rental car, a very nice Ford Fusion hybrid, a well equipped full size, saloon car, with GPS included and......although we had planned to return the car on the 9th when we get back to the City, we were
Driving to Ukee -1
The lake deep in Cathedral Grove. told that we could take an extra day for no extra charge! Must be a catch somewhere, but I guess we'll find out on the 10th! Paperwork completed, we were on the road by 8.15 and heading to the Ferry Terminal at Horseshoe Bay in northern Vancouver.
Trailfinders had originally booked us on the 10.00 am ferry, but as we needed to check in by 9.00 am, we were a bit concerned that we might struggle to get there in time and so we had got them to change our ferry to the 11.05 am sailing, before we left home. As it happens, we arrived at the Horseshoe Bay terminal just before 9 and were pleased to learn that we should be able get on the earlier ferry, which indeed we did. This particular ferry travels from Horseshoe Bay to Departure Bay, Nanaimo, about a third of the way up the east coast of Vancouver Island and we had chosen this port, because our first stop on the Island was the small town of Ucluelet (pronounced U-clue-let) on the west coast and Nanaimo is the nearest ferry location. We are spending four nights on VI and we had split
Driving to Ukee -2
Two of the giant Red Cedars at Cathedral Grove. this with two nights on the remote west coast and the other two further south, nearer to the capital Victoria.
The ferry arrived at 11.45 am and we were soon back on the road for our 180 km drive to Ukee, as it is affectionately known, mainly because it is far easier to say than Ucluelet!! One thing I should have mentioned is that now we have left the Forbes, the weather has changed and it was raining pretty hard in Vancouver and for our ferry crossing, a fact that pleased Mandy no end! However, the rain had largely stopped when we arrived on VI, but it was still very cloudy and grey for our drive.
There were a few potential stops on the way, but most of these would have been a bit of a non event in the weather. We also wanted to get to Ukee as quickly as possible to maximise our time there. However, we did stop for a couple of photo opportunities and also for a stroll around a boardwalk weaving its way through Cathedral Grove, a pretty amazing forest of Red Cedar, Douglas Fir trees, many of which were over a thousand
The Drive to Ukee 3
A lovely spot on a bend, with no real official stopping place - just looked good! years old - incredible trees, the massive size of which was virtually impossible to capture on camera. The aroma from the trees was also amazing, with Mandy describing it as smelling like we were in a sauna.
The journey is pretty easy, with a decent road and relatively few cars and also not many road junctions; simply drive about 85 km to Port Alberbi, then take a right to Uckee and Tofino, drive another 87 km to a T Junction, take a left and drive another 8 km to Ucluelet. The only slightly awkward bit was the road over Mount Kennedy, about 25 km from the T Junction and that is because the road is being rebuilt (not just resurfaced!) and with all the roadworks, there is only one lane of traffic allowed at a time, over a stretch covering quite a few km! We were lucky and sailed straight through on the way in, but when we reached the end of the roadworks, there was a huge queue of traffic waiting to go the other way, the direction we would be going in a couple of days!
The journey to Ukee was scheduled to take just under
Driving to Ukee -4
And looking the other way up the river. three hours according to the GPS, but with stops, we inevitably took longer, arriving at the Blackrock Ocean Resort at about four o'clock. The coastline here is very rugged (reminding us both of North Cornwall) and the hotel was perched on a cliff top, overlooking a rocky bay. Our room here was huge, with a lounge, dining area and full service kitchenette, in addition to the bedroom and massive bathroom, plus a balcony looking out over the bay. Good choice Trailfinders! Our room wasn't quite ready when we arrived, so we grabbed a quick snack in the bar (delicious Clam Chowder), before settling in to our room and having a rest.
Once showered and changed, it had turned into a lovely evening (not because we were now clean and smartened up of course - it's just a weather thing you understand!) and we went down a track to the bay and had a lovely stroll along the beach, which whilst not sandy, had lots of rock pools, strewn timber and lovely views, with a beautiful sunset. Whilst neither of us were especially hungry, we needed a snack and a glass of wine, so went back to the bar and
Driving to Ukee -5
And we have arrived in Ukee. shared fish and chips which, actually, really hit the spot. We have another early start tomorrow to go on our last organised excursion of the holiday (a search for bears in the coastal areas off of Tofino) and so an early night was called for.
Tofino is about 40 km from Ukee and we were told the drive could take about an hour, so we left the hotel at eight, aiming to arrive at Jamie's Whaling Station in Tofino for nine, in good time for our 9.30 tour. The staff at the Blackrock seem to have a very laid back attitude to life and everything moves a little slower here (and why not, I say) and this was emphasised when we were trying to grab a coffee and pastry to go, before we left for Tofino. The coffee shop opened at seven, but when we got there just before eight, the lady running the shop was away 'apparently running an errand' and when she did get back a few minutes later and a bit of a queue had formed, she wasn't at all flustered and simply took her time. In addition, there was nothing to eat in the cabinets,
but she just explained that all the pastries had arrived for the seven o'clock opening, but she hadn't had chance to put them on display yet! Definitely a more relaxed version of 'fast food'!
Whenever I arrive for tours like this one, it never ceases to amaze me that other people have made the same decision as us, to do exactly the same trip and it was no different here. Jamie's Whaling Station is really in the back of beyond, with an office in a shack like building and yet we had a full tour today of nearly 40 people. But don't get me wrong, everything was slickly organised and once we had 'signed our lives away' on a liability waiver form, we wandered down to the jetty to board the Stellar Sea, our vessel for the two and a half hour trip. Our skipper was Geoff and our tour guide, a young lady called Sidney who firstly gave us a safety briefing and then told us how they intend the tour to operate.
The coastal area around Tofino is basically a whole series of inlets, providing relatively narrow channels of water with the surrounding land covered in
trees, but with a rocky beach area that is exposed at low tide and where the black bears like to scavenge for food such as seaweed and crabs. There would be no guarantee that we would see bears, but Sidney was confident we would and sure enough, we weren't more than a few minutes into the trip, when we saw our first bear and at what is apparently, a very uncommon place to do so.
The locals consider their bears to be national treasures and they treat them with huge respect, ensuring that the boats and visitors never intrude on the natural environment of the bear by staying at least 50 metres away and keeping noise to a minimum. To be fair, the bears simply seem to ignore the boats and as a matter of interest, the skippers of the rival tour boats talk to each other to let them know where wildlife has been spotted, but we never saw more than three tour boats on the water while we were out, again keeping any intrusion to a minimum.
After spotting the first bear, we moved on and for quite a while we thought that that was going
The Blackrock Oceanfront Resort -3
The bathroom, with a big shower behind. Loads of room for your ablutions!! to be the extent of our luck, but then we came across a stretch of coastline with three bears (no, not those three bears!!) dotted along it. Our boat focused on one male bear and we spent a good half an hour watching him in action, turning over huge boulders with his paws to get at the goodies underneath. This was absolutely brilliant and even though we were still fifty metres or more away, we managed to get some good snaps And even closer views through the binoculars.
Sidney was extremely knowledgeable and provided some terrific information on the life of the bears, including the fact that because of their diet, they are the biggest black bears in the whole of Canada. They live for about 25 years and usually die off because their teeth rot and it becomes very difficult for them to eat, a fact that we'd heard before in relation to elephants who tend to die of starvation as opposed to any particular disease, due to their teeth rotting or being worn away.
On a happier note, the icing on the cake as far as the diet of the bears is concerned, is Alaskan Salmon
The Ukee Beach - 1
View across the beach as the sun starts to set....... during spawning season, but we were surprised to learn that the bears are only interested in eating the brain and internal organs of the fish, leaving the rest of the flesh and carcass to rot on the forest floor. In itself, this is an important part of the local ecology, in that the rotting salmon produces nitrogen, which is critical for growth of the trees; those trees that looked to be dead at the top, is due to a lack of nitrogen, forcing the tree to shut down the top and focus all nutrients to the lower half of the tree. The locals are able to tell how populace the salmon are in a particular year, simply by the health of the trees.
One more fact we learned, concerned the problem of bears getting 'easy food' from towns, domestic houses and garbage. This can be a real problem, because the bears then become predatory on the local population and as a result have to be relocated, with a 'three strike and they're out' policy (i.e. if the bear returns three times after being relocated, they have to be destroyed). Fortunately, this rarely happens, but the sense of smell of
The Ukee Beach - 2
.....driftwood on the beach.... the bears is so strong, they can track back over 100 miles or more to a source of food and consequently relocation can sometimes be a very long way away.
After moving on from the bears, Geoff took us over to a small island and a bundle of basking seals, all lying there very relaxed, but it turns out that the seals can actually be safer out of the water than in it, due to the presence in this area of their major predator, the Orca Whale. The problem is that, as soon as the seals sense trouble, their inclination is to get into their natural habitat, the water and this can be straight into the mouth of danger literally, namely the mouth of the Orca! Orcas had been spotted in the last few days, but not for us unfortunately, although on the way back to port, we were lucky enough to see a number of bald eagles. A great trip, that is well worth doing.
Back on shore, we had a nose around the pretty little town of Tofino, bought some snacks and drink to have back at our hotel later and then went in search of
The Ukee Beach - 3
.....another view.... somewhere to have a late lunch - the fact is though, we've eaten so much on this holiday that neither of us were particularly hungry. However, our thinking was that if we could have something now, once we get back to our hotel later, we could relax in our room/on the balcony and to be honest, just have some down time. We found a funky little place called The Shed, which was very busy and we thought had to be good. The menu was unusual and so were our choices, a tuna, noodle and 'stuff' salad for Mandy and Soto Ayam an Indonesian spicy chicken 'broth come ramen' for me, both of which were bigger than we expected, but absolutely delicious.
Once back in Ukee, we decided to have a look around the town here as well, which didn't take long at all because it is tiny (quite a lot of residences, but no real town centre to speak, or at least, not that we found), with the main area of activity being the harbour, which is very pretty. As you would expect, there are lots of hiking trails in this part of VI from the modest to really
The Ukee Beach - 4
Some mermaid person staring wistfully out to sea! serious treks into the wilderness, but we had heard that if we only had time for one walk while here, we should do the 2.5 km Lighthouse Loop on the edge of town and that's where we headed next.
As the name suggests, the walk starts at the lighthouse and when we pulled up in the car, it was very grey and overcast (as it had been for most of the day) and it was trying to rain. We weren't going to bother with the walk, but then we heard that someone had spotted whales, so off we trotted. The route follows the cliff tops for a kilometre or so, before cutting inland, then rejoining the clifftops on the other side of the lighthouse for the last kilometre. We joined a few people looking for the whales and whilst we did see one, it was so far out, it was barely visible, but it encouraged us to keep walking and looking out to sea, where the views were terrific, including a bald eagle nesting in a tree. Before we knew it, we had completed the loop, not all that far I know, but definitely worth doing. After another long
The Ukee Beach - 5
Sunset number one..... day, we did exactly as planned and chilled out in our room that evening and very welcome it was too!
Day 3 on the Island and today we move on, 250 km south towards Victoria and a hotel called the Villa Eyrie in a place called Malahat about 30 minutes from Victoria itself. The drive was expected to take four hours, assuming no stops or delays, but first we had get through the Mount Kennedy roadworks and as we approached the start of the works, our luck was in and we sailed through again. As we passed through, we saw a number of workers abseiling down the cliff side, looking as though they were checking for and removing loose areas of rock that would be hanging over the road - quite a job on a Sunday morning! Today's drive also had limited possibility of stopping for sights, because it lashed down with rain pretty much the whole way, with the only respite being for a brief stop at a little place called Duncan.
Duncan is a First Nations town, with a few nice architectural features and a quaint railway station, but its main attraction is a collection of
The Ukee Beach - 6
Sunset number two. totem poles. I'm not sure how many there are but it must be fifty or more dotted around the town and to ensure you get to see them all, yellow footsteps have been painted on the pavements to mark the route that you need to follow, which they called the 'Totem Tour'. We actually only spotted the route by chance, but it was definitely worth spending 45 minutes to break the journey.
I had found the Villa Eyrie Resort on Booking.Com and was really looking forward to this place as, by reputation, it is a beautiful small hotel perched on top of the summit of Mount Malahat at about 1900 feet above sea level, with an excellent restaurant and based upon the pictures on the website, a stunning view over surrounding mountains and a stretch of water. As we pulled up at the hotel mid afternoon, it was still raining hard and I thought that even if the website wasn't telling porkies and the view really was that good, we probably wouldn't be able see much anyway.
But I needn't have worried! We had a lovely room, with a balcony looking out at the exact view on the
The Tofino Bear Search - 1
Arriving at Jamie’s wharf. website and even in this weather, that view was terrific. We decided to crash in our room for the rest of the afternoon and booked a table in the restaurant that evening and finally the weather started to improve as did the view, with each break in the clouds.
Dinner was excellent and we had a window table looking straight down the view, although most of the tables are, as you would expect, positioned for it. We are, in fact, looking south with the stretch of water being the Finlayson Arm (an inlet from the ocean) and beyond the mountains towards the left, on the phot's, is Victoria. In the far distance (difficult to catch on camera, but easier to see with the naked eye) are the snow capped mountains of the Olympus range in Washington State, USA and immediately to our left, the mountains surrounding Vancouver, back on the Canadian mainland.
After a cracking dinner, we got talking to a couple of 'forty something' Brits who work for BMW and were on the Island as a venue to train dealers from across British Columbia in new BMW product. And, here's the amusing thing, one of the guys
The Tofino Bear Search - 2
Our boat for the Bear Search, the Stellar Sea. lives in Dunstable in the UK, making us practically neighbours back home! What's more, the other guy lives near Bath and if the Forbes had still been with us, that would have been another co-incidence, with Steve being a Bristol boy! It is definitely a small world.
Day four and we woke up to beautiful weather (yes!!), giving us an even better sight from the balcony. Breakfast was included in the rate and was fabulous, but big enough to last us most of the day - I'm dreading getting back on the scales at home!! Our plan today was to visit the world famous Butchart Gardens first and then move on to Victoria to have a decent look around the harbour and old town area. Butchart Gardens was an easy 45 minute drive away and we arrived about 10.30, with the car park already pretty busy. It cost us each about $40 with tax, to get in but it is well worth the money.
We had been told by a number of people that the gardens are spectacular, but we were a little concerned that the reality wouldn't live up to the hype, but it did. I think
I can safely say that these are probably the most stunning gardens we have ever seen, full of colour and every display 'picture perfect' and what's more, the scent was intoxicating! The layout is beautifully arranged and once past the crowds at the start of the route, it didn't seem busy at all.
Jennie Butchart began shaping the gardens in 1904, with the sunken garden being a former limestone quarry and another part being a former cement works! Successive members of the Butchart family have maintained and enhanced the layout to what it is today, a must place to visit on Vancouver Island! However, try to avoid doing what Mandy did by treating a bridge in the Japanese garden as parallel bars and whilst I managed to catch the action shot of her swinging, I missed the subsequent money shot when she fell flat on her Butchart!!
After an excellent couple of hours or so at Butchart we drove about 40 minutes to Victoria and after a bit of a struggle, managed to find parking a few blocks from the waterfront - inevitably, as we walked down to the waterfront, we found plenty of available parking closer to
the action, but hey........the walk did us good after that huge breakfast! We had previously been to Victoria for a day about 20 years ago and it's fair to say that neither of us really remembered it, although we didn't actually leave the harbour area last time. This time, we strolled alongside the harbour passed loads of sea planes ready for action, with others landing in the bay all the time; around the quirky streets of old town and Chinatown and past some attractive art dotted around the city. It is a very pretty place with lots to do, especially out in the water and after spending the afternoon wandering around, we had a meal at a restaurant called Earls and then headed back to the Villa Eyrie, for a bit of relaxation on the balcony, watching the view in the evening sun.
We have really enjoyed Vancouver Island, from the rugged wilderness of Ukee and Tofino to the beauty of the Malahat Mountain range and the more well known attractions of Butchart and Victoria. Tomorrow, we leave the island to head back to Vancouver for the final leg of this adventure. It feels as though we have been
away for a very long time and I don't mind admitting that we are starting to feel the pace a touch, but we're going back to a city that we loved last time we were here and that thought will drive us on!
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