Vancouver, Take Two

19/06/15

They say all good things come to an end and with heavy hearts we packed up and left The Artists Point. It was a great B&B with friendly hosts, a reasonable price and a location that couldn’t be beaten. Before we left town we stopped for some gas, asked the cashier how the whole filling up fuel malarkey works in Canada (you pre-pay and then if you’re under they give you change and it seems they all use gasoline, which may or may not be petrol) and then we drove back to the Nanaimo ferry terminal.

We were running pretty early so to my delight we stopped off at Walmart. Yes it’s a horrible chain store that’s slowly destroying the world and yes, it was full of questionable people but I can’t lie, I love the place. It has everything you could ever need and it’s just so ridiculously cheap. Memories of being 16 and thinking there was no greater shopping experience on earth all came flooding back as I filled my basket with cinnamon toothpaste, Teddy Grahams, Hershey’s Kisses and pretty much every other nicey you can think of!

After all that excitement we grabbed a quick pizza, headed to the ferry and began the journey back to Vancouver. I was dreading the drive back to the hotel (we’re staying in the same place) but the traffic was so bad that it meant we couldn’t ever gain any speed which gave me plenty of time to figure out where I was going! Unfortunately the hotel didn’t have any car parking spaces so we ended up in a dodgy underground carpark that overcharged us. This drove Rory up the wall but I was much calmer, mainly because my mind was preoccupied with other, more important things – dinner. 

We headed to the closest possible place, a Mexican not far from the hotel and had what was a pretty decent meal.The rest of the evening was pretty uneventful – I wrote a few blogs and Rory fell asleep beside me. Rock and Roll. 

Third Time Lucky

18/06/15

The past few days have been pretty busy so we decided to have a lazy morning. After a late breakfast and some general lazing around we headed back to Telegraph Cove to go whale watching. We were a bit early so decided to check out the Whale Interpretive Centre which is a fairly basic but really interesting museum. There are lots of skeletons, some of which have very interesting origins; a huge humpback whale skeleton has arrived at the centre after being killed by a cruise ship and they even have the jaws of a blue whale that was killed by whalers.

Thankfully it wasn’t all doom and gloom and when we’d had enough of looking at dead animals, we joined the Stubbs Island Whale Watching tour and set off to find something alive. It wasn’t long before we caught our first glimpse of some wildlife - this little rascal was quite happy hopping along the boardwalk and picking up the fisherman’s scraps! I know we already have a pet seagull but what are the chances Esther would say yes to an eagle? 

Once we were out on the open water we started seeing lots of wildlife – we came across a large group of dolphins and according to the captain it’s quite rare to see that many, especially as they were playing and not hunting. We also saw an eagle feeding frenzy. There must have been over 30 eagles, all swooping down to the water and grabbing handfuls (clawfuls? talonfuls?) of fish.

As we were on a whale watching tour I was quite pleased when we saw not one but two humpback whales. They got really close to the boat and even did a few dives which showed off their tails nicely. Unfortunatly we didn’t see a killer whale – it’s still really early in the season for them but as we saw some yesterday I wasn’t too bothered – there’s only so much luck to go around and I was just happy to see them once!

After a really interesting and quite upsetting talk from the environmentalist on the damage we are doing to our sea life, we headed back to Telegraph Cove, got some burgers and fries and then drove back to our B&B. On the way back I saw a black bear – Rory didn’t so it’s a bit of a sore spot! We spent the evening relaxing and watching the sun set one last time. We even had a little friend show up. She was quite happy grazing a few feet away while we sat on the patio and she stayed just outside the window for most of the night. We’ll be really sad to leave but maybe one day I’ll come back!