Tofino-tastic!

Well it’s been a pretty quiet week. I’m not going to lie, I’ve definitely been feeling the effects of winter lately. Specifically the darkness. I can deal with the rain, the dark is another story. Right now the sun is rising at around 8 and setting at 4. That’s 8 hours of sun. It’s also the 8 hours I’m at work during the week and can’t enjoy the sun. It also snowed yesterday too. One funny thing about Vancouver is how incredibly unprepared the city is for even the slightest snow fall. You see some of the weirdest car accidents because they don’t salt the roads. Icy roads + hilly streets = moving trucks slipping down the street into parked cars. I actually saw that happen last year.

With all that being said I thought I’d do a recap of a trip me and Christy did in October to Tofino. For people who don’t know, Tofino is a small fishing town on the west side of Vancouver Island. Lately it’s become more of a tourist town due to the amazing nature and surfing.

To get out to Tofino from Vancouver, you have to take a ferry from Tsawwasen or Horseshoe bay then drive from Nanaimo. The ferry over is cool in itself, but we got up super early so I was trying to sleep more than enjoy all the little islands you see on the way.

Once we got into Nanaimo we decided that since we hadn’t been to the island we’d take our time on the drive and check stuff out.

Our first stop was Englishman river. A river right near the city of Nanaimo. We walked around a bit, checked out the river and the giant trees and Christy’s paranoia over a grizzly bear attack first appeared. This paranoia of hers would continue to rear its head through our trip, but more on that later.

The next stop was an awesome market called Goats On The Roof. This place was a bit of a blast from the past. When we first drove up to it a bunch of memories flooded. I had visited it a long time ago when I came out to the island on a family trip but I had forgotten about it. The market itself was amazing. On top of fantastic produce, local cheeses and meats they were all at waaaaaay lower prices than you’d ever see in Vancouver. I wish I took photos of it but I still remember a big old bushel of fresh chanterelle mushrooms. A real specialty of the island due to all the rain.

After that we started our trip across the island in earnest. Half the fun about going to Tofino is the drive. Before you get to the halfway point of the island you’ve already passed amazing lakes, giant trees, wicked waterfalls and awesome mountains. But the second half of the drive is just straight up insane.

After Port Alberni (the halfway point of the drive) we stopped at a salmon fishery. Since it’s spawning season we could just sit there and take photos of all the salmon jumping around. Awesome!

After that the road goes beside a whole bunch of other rivers, lakes and mountains. The rivers are the craziest. crystal clear water and you can see trout swimming around everywhere. The only problem was that during one of our riverside stops a beautiful silver rainbow trout jumped, which Christy in her hyper paranoid state somehow mistook to be a grizzly bear. I’m pretty sure, judging by Christy’s form while sprinting away from the river that she hadn’t done much running in her lifetime. She was running like a girl right down to the flailing arms and whiney shriek. After 10 minutes of hyperventilating and an explanation regarding the differences between land mammals and freshwater fish we were back on our way.

Tofino itself is a little quieter than I expected considering everyone in Vancouver has mentioned they’ve been there at some point or another. But we got a sweet deal on a hotel right near the marina.

The next day we checked out the town but there wasn’t much to check out. Grabbed food at a place that had a wicked oyster dish. Then went off to check out the seaside. One of me and Christy’s favorite things to do is basically stare at nature stuff. There were tons of tidal pools with all sorts of awesome nature stuff in them. Especially star fish. The biggest star fish I’ve ever seen. I even saw a few star-of-david-fish. Like full on 6 tentacles. Also we managed to see a black bear on the beach (it’s the fuzzy black dot on the beach). Grizzlies, or even fish impersonating Grizzlies scare Christy down to the bone, but with a black bear she was trying to move closer for a better shot. This goes for everyone out west too. People treat black bears out here like I treat raccoons. There’s no fear of them and more than anything, people are unfazed when they see them. I don’t get it. It’s a BEAR!

We also checked out some of the rain forest. A great place to take black metal photos. Blah blah blah more big trees. It’s terrible to say but eventually you get desensitized to it. Like when you’re in Europe and by the third old church you’re kind of over it. Though it was nice finding out a little more information about a fungus I suffer from.

Part of our accommodations included a free trip to go whale watching. Given it was a chilly mid-fall day they bundle you up in some of the wickedest attire ever. Give it 5 years and Japanese people will be dressing like this all the time. They take you out in a small metal zodiac, we had about 12 people on ours. It wasn’t long after we got out there that we saw our first whale. Our guide got a bit ambitious and decided we should get a closer look. At this point I was pretty psyched, we saw a whale, success! It seemed the whale we found was a real curious one. And decided to COME UP TO THE BOAT. The whale came right up to the boat and was probably about twice as long as it. At first it took a look at us, then decided to swim under the boat and actually bump it. At one point it stuck it’s head out of the water and our guide scratched its chin with a brush. It was one of the coolest things ever. Wild animals are awesome. It was only after the living submarine swam away that our guide said “Yeah if he really wanted to he could’ve slapped his tail and destroyed this boat”. Oh yeah and we saw an island of sea lions, but seriously after seeing a whale like that I probably didn’t appreciate it the way I should.

All in all the trip was amazing and left me itching to go out there again sometime soon. Next time though I’m bringing my fishing rod. Also, I tried to include photos in here but seriously they do no justice to how beautiful the island is.

Oh yeah, and after doing a bit of research I found out that Grizzly bears aren’t native to Vancouver Island. Maybe Christy got confused because the rainbow trout was wearing a bear mask.