Westward Ho!

Our travels have now taken us as far as Tofino on the western side of Vancouver Island (see map in right margin). It's here that our forward progress stops and we start retracing our steps back to Seattle for Christmas. We reached Tofino via a scenic 3+ hour bus journey through majestic forests and past serene lakes. Along the route we were told to be on the lookout for bears who may still be awake. Unfortunately we didn't see any bears, although we did spot a few bald eagles on the look out for a spot of lunch (in the rivers rather than on buses thankfully).


We were told that Tofino was a good place to watch great Pacific storms roll in - and it is: our hostel is situated right on the shore with big windows looking out to sea - but unfortunately, this means that these same storms usually pass overhead, dumping rain on Tofino by the bucket load. It is these storms that have washed away any hopes we had of doing any hiking, taking a water taxi to nearby islands or pretty much anything else that involves going outdoors apart from nipping across the road to the supermarket.

Nevertheless, we are enjoying our time here. We've wound up spending today relaxing, reading, posting to he blog, email and the like - mainly due to more free wireless internet (yay!). The hostel itself has the feel of a getaway resort and is pretty quiet which all adds to the feeling of relaxation - and we need a spot of relaxation after our stay at the Pacific Shore resort.

While we were staying in the hostel in Victoria, Trace happened upon an advert for a timeshare company offering cheap stays in a Parksville resort. We got the special low rate as long as we attended a 90 minute "presentation". We checked in and were given a luxurious room with a whirlpool tub, flat screen TV, mini fridge and various other mod-cons. The main problem was that this room was half of a duplex (it could be combined with the suite next door to form a mega-suite) and that we could hear everything going on in the next door room: from the woman on her phone to the bloke watching TV. There seemed to be no soundproofing at all. This meant that our relaxing resort stay left us feeling more tired than when we arrived. The resort said they'd never had that problem before and chose to ignore the problem. Needless to say we declined their offer to buy into the timeshare property. We don't really have $25,000 to spare anyway.

So if you're ever here, don't stay at the Pacific Shore resort in Parksville. That'll show 'em.

Our Pacific Shore stay was very much in contrast to the accommodation we got in Nanaimo the night before. Nanaimo is usually ignored by tourists for its more famous (and slightly smaller) opposite number, Victoria. We found the HI hostel there to be warm, spacious ad stylish and despite costing the same as our specially discounted rate at Pacific Shore, blessedly quiet.

Tomorrow, we leave the west coast and wind our weary way all the way back to Victoria. Although we've been here for about a week, it seems that we've not really been able to do very much apart from travel. The weather has played its part, but it looks like we'd need to get some form of personal transportation (like a hire car or somesuch) in order to catch all of the "out of the way" places that we'd like to visit. Part of the attraction of this part of the world is its 'laid back' attitude which we have enjoyed, but we can be lazy anywhere (I have personally made this a life's work) and sometimes we do want to get out and do some things. Maybe we'll get to take a day trip from Victoria - there are a few places that we'd still like to see, so we're keeping our fingers crossed.