Vancouver Island - West Coast

We visit Wallmart and buy a tent, a mattress and a tarpaulin for a short camping trip. We are heading out of Victoria so that I can see something of the more remote west coast of Vancouver Island. Once we have left the city I am struck by the similarities with parts of New Zealand: rain forest, single lane bridges, lakes, native place names that are hard to pronounce, plantations of pine forest and logging. We pass through a valley where I can see the logging industry in many phases: newly cut and freshly planted hillsides, mature trees rafts and a logging yard by an inlet, where logs are tied together in booms waiting to be towed out to sea. Gordie explains that very little of the land in British Columbia is usable for anything other than logging, due to the steepness of the terrain.

We drive along the coast, passing through small settlements and stop at a little place called Port Renfrew, where we take a short walk along a trail through rainforest and out to the coast. The beaches here are remote and wild and although the sea is calm today it can be pretty rough here as we are just past the protection of the opposite coast of Washington and there is now nothing to stop the full force of the Pacific Ocean crashing on this coast.

Logs on  a West Coast Beach

At low tide a flat platform of limestone rock is exposed, out of which large, deep bowls have been carved. The water level is absolutely to the brim of each pool; still and mirror-like and I watch where I am walking to make sure I don’t accidently plunge right in. The pools are full of marine life: anemones, star fish, mussels etc, which are familiar from the rock pools at home, but the chitons are new to me.

Tide Pools

Purple Starfish and Chitons

 

We then head for the Pacific Rim National Park, which is further north and west along the coast, but due to the geography of a long sea inlet that is in the way and the scarcity of roads in the area we have to cross the island back to the east coast, crossing north of the 49^th parallel (the line of the rest of the Canadian/US boarder) before heading out west again. Along the way the road passes through a section of enormous Douglas Fir trees. This is Cathedral Grove and we stop and take a short walk to see the biggest tree here, which is over 800 years old, 76 metres tall (which is 20m taller than the Leaning Tower of Pisa )and 9 metres around.

Big Tree

We set up our camp for the night in a provincial camp ground close to Sproat Lake. The lake is home to 2 huge seaplanes which are used to fight forest fires. They fly low over the lake to suck up water and then drop their load on a fire. The campsite in the trees comes with a metal fire pit and Gordie strings lines from trees to rig up the tarpaulin to cover the picnic bench and the tent. We are in a rainforest here, which has over 3 metres of rain per year, so a tarpaulin is a usual and practical way of setting up camp. The helpful tourist map we picked up describes the local visitor attractions and for hints as for what to do on the many rainy days here it suggests putting on rain gear and just doing the same stuff in the rain!

Campsites here are ‘bear aware’ and there are also other creatures, such as racoons, that will be happy to pilfer and make a meal of anything left lying around, so we have to make sure that all food is put away in the vehicle overnight and rubbish goes into the bear-proof trash cans.

!st Camp

The next day we continue to the coast and camp again just behind and in the middle of Long Beach, with the sound of the ocean reaching us from beyond the fir trees.

2nd Camp



This is the longest beach on the island’s west coast and is a beautiful arc of hard-packed white sand, which stretches for about 15km. It is a popular surf spot, but there are no significant waves here today.

Long Beach

We drive into Tofino, which is at the end of the road. There is a pleasant holiday atmosphere here and you can book a boat trip to see whales, bears or hot springs; hire surf boards and buy ice cream – which we do. Since being in Canada I have discovered the taste combination of peanut butter and chocolate, which goes particularly well in ice cream. 

Tofino

The next morning we pack up the camp and take a short walk around the peninsular at the opposite end of the park to see the small lighthouse which protects the rocky coastline of the inlet here.

Ucluelet Inlet

Lighthouse

We then drive back across the width of the island and take another ferry back to the mainland, with views of the mountains behind the coast and Vancouver in the distance.

View of the Mainland from the Ferry

We are coming to the end of our time together. It has been great to have had a local tour guide for my first couple of weeks in Canada and we have had good fun together. Back in Vancouver we celebrate our last evening with a meal in a sushi restaurant and a visit to a casino - which is another new experience for me.







Vancouver Island - Victoria

We pack up our stuff from Gordie's trailer and head off in his truck back on the ferry to Vancouver and then south of the city to catch a second ferry over to Vancouver Island, which lies just off the west coast of British Columbia. The ferry trip from the mainland to the island takes an hour and a half and on the way passes close to several of the Gulf Islands. As we are passing between islands we pass another ferry coming the other way. Interestingly the Canadian/US border diverts from its usual dead straight line to incorporate the whole of Vancouver Island within Canada.

Ferry to Vancouver Island

Victoria is the main city on the island and the capital of British Columbia. It is located on the south east tip of the island, just a short drive from the ferry port. My guidebook says that Victoria pre-dates Vancouver and it was the focus of the earliest white settlement in the area. It was established in 1843 as a fort for the Hudson Bay Company. It is a small Anglophile city (with double-decker buses) and it has many grand old buildings. Gordie says that possibly all the grand old buildings in the whole of British Columbia are here. On this warm and sunny afternoon, we wander around the downtown area and the pretty inner harbour and soak up the laid-back vibe.  

Victoria Harbour and the Parliament Building

City Hall

Work of a Pavement Artist

China Town

Along the promenade by the harbour local aboriginal artists sell their handicrafts. Man carve wooden masks with knives and women thread beads, or knit garments in the local Cowichan pattern.

Artists by the Harbour

One of the main and most impressive buildings is the Empress Hotel, which sits in formal gardens just behind the waterfront. We take a look inside at the people taking afternoon tea in the ornate tea  rooms.

Afternoon Tea at the Empress Hotel

Sitting in front of the Empress Hotel is a statue of Emily Carr, who is Canada's most celebrated painter. She was born in 1871. My guide book says, 'She led an almost caricatured artistic life - one that was eccentric, thwarted, ridiculed, bohemian and impoverished by turn, but also one that was ultimately successful and triumphant.'

Statue of Emily Carr and the Empress Hotel

The house where she was born is close by in a street that has many such beautiful historic houses.

Emily Carr’s House

In the grounds of the museum there is an old house. The right hand portion was built in 1852 and is one of the oldest surviving buildings in British Columbia.

Helmcken House

In the park nearby there are several totem poles. A small boy walks around the base of one, gently touching the carvings.

Totem Poles

Boy and Totem Pole

There is lots going on on the water in the harbour. Little bath tub ferries zig zag from bank to bank, seaplanes taxi in and out and people paddle canoes back and forth.

Sea Planes in the Harbour

Harbour Ferry

The next day we take a walk up nearby Mount Douglas to get a view back to Victoria, inland over the island and across the strait to the US, which is very close.

Me and Gordie on Mount Douglas

Sunshine Coast

We head out of Vancouver by driving through Stanley Park, before crossing the Lions Gate Bridge to the North Shore and along to Horseshoe Bay to catch a vehicle ferry to the Sunshine Coast.

Horseshoe Bay

Ferry Crossing to the Sunshine Coast

The ferry goes between various islands and takes 40 minutes to reach the other side of the strait. Gordie is currently staying here in his trailer near the small town of Gibsons. The little town is famous as the setting for a TV series ‘Beachcomber’, which ran in the 1970s and 80s. The show became the most success Canadian TV show ever and was sold to 60 countries worldwide, including England.

Gibsons Landing

Climbing to the top of a nearby hill gives us a good view back down to Gibsons and across the strait to nearby islands, with Vancouver Island just visible on the horizon.

View across the Strait

We take a day trip up the coast, with views out to Vancouver Island and pass through small towns with peaceful marinas. I think I am going to be taking several photos of marinas, as there are a whole lot of them here.

Madeira Park Marina

We visit a place at the top of the peninsular where the tidal rapids are perhaps the fastest in the world. The tides are forced through a narrow channel and because this restricts the tidal flow, the difference in height between 1 side of the rapids and the other can be over 2 metres. The water roars, swirls around in whirlpools, creates standing waves and boils up from below the surface. It is an amazing sight and I find it is hard to remember that this is sea water behaving like this, rather than a river.

Skookumchuck Rapids

On a warm sunny Sunday afternoon we sit in the park at Gibsons Landing and enjoy the final concert of the annual jazz festival.

Jazz Festival

Initial Impressions of Vancouver

My flight from Fiji to Los Angeles is 10 hours, I then have a hideous 8 hour wait there followed by a short 2 and a half hour flight to Vancouver. Having crossed the International Date Line, I arrive in Vancouver 2 hours after I left Fiji - having had Sunday twice. I am now back in the northern hemisphere for the first time in nine months.

Gordie meets me at the airport and after some time to catch up and to accommodate the jet lag and a tummy bug, we do some sightseeing in Vancouver. We visit Queen Elizabeth Park, for a view across the city to the mountains beyond, which fortuately are visible and have scattering of snow on the tops. The day is overcast, but the view is clear for now. In the park the rhododendrons and azaleas are beautiful and an army of gardeners is planting summer bedding plants in the newly-cleared beds.

Vancouver from Queen Elizabeth Park

Gordie and Fountains in Queen Elizabeth Park

We then mooch around Granville Island, which is an atmospheric area of the city where old industrial units now house quirky little boutiques, galleries and cafes. We wander into one shop where a girl is hand-making brooms and another which sells hammocks. This is a great place to come to look for presents, or just hang around enjoying the street art, people-watching and soaking up the atmosphere. In amongst this there are also working places where boat repairs are happening, carpenters work and shellfish are landed and sold. There is a large busy indoor food market which sells great-looking produce, artisan bread, cheeses and all-manner of world-wide fayre.

Granville Island Market

Here the waterway of False Creek is busy with all sorts of craft. A tug comes up and then returns towing a huge barge from the cement works. Small water buses buzz back and forth; recreational kayakers paddle gently and sail and motor boats are moored in the marina.

False Creek

We then drive through leafy suburbs to the shore where the sandy beaches are deserted today. Container vessels are parked in the waterway and the view back to Vancouver and across to the North Shore is disappearing into the lowering mist.

Spanish Banks

Fiji continued

After 3 lovely days on Waya Leilei Island I take the local boat back to the mainland. The small open boat is loaded with various things - my bags, a petrol engine, boxes of produce for the market and various other bags and boxes. They are all stored beneath a tarpaulin sheet. 11 men, women and children villagers are the passengers with me and we make ourselves comfortable in the bottom of the boat for the 1 hour crossing to Lautoka.

Onboard the Boat to the Mainland 

As we near the harbour, several other small boats pass us on the way out and waves of greeting are exchanged.

Lautoka Harbour

Lautoka is a busy port city and I spend the afternoon wandering around and through the market and keeping to the shady side of the busy streets. I also make my plan for how to spend my last few days on Fiji and arrange to go and stay in a small village which has an ecotourism programme, inland from Lautoka in the Koroyanitu National Park. An Indian driver, Riaz, picks me up from my hotel and drives me the 30 minutes or so to the village in his 4-wheel drive truck. The track is rough and steep and we have to ford a couple of streams. Along the way he flirts shamelessly with me.

Transport with Riaz

There is a story about how the village got its name. The village was originally called Nagaga, but in 1931 the whole village was destroyed by a landslide and all but 3 people died. These 3 people went in search of a new site for the village and as they were looking they came across the letters ABC written on a rock. In the Fijian language the letters represented A = Beginning; B = Eternal Life; C = Miracle Work; and so the new village was named ABACA (which is actually pronounced Ambartha).   

There are 84 people in this simple village and I am welcomed and taken to the house of the Methodist lay preacher, Nico, where I will be staying. I realise I have made a gaff by not having a sula or sarong to wear around the village and Nico lends me one. His house is made with a wooden frame, a tin roof and walls of woven palm leaf panels. Inside there are mats on the floor and sheets of polythene line the walls for insulation. In one corner there is a bed with a mosquito net above. Next to the door is a small kitchen area with a primus stove and some kitchen equipment in a sideboard; but Nico is usually cooked for by the women from the village. In another corner is a bookcase and a bamboo pole above where his jacket and tie hang. The rest of the space is empty. I will sleep in the bed and Nico will make a bed on the floor. Riaz, Nico and I sit on the floor and a woman serves us black tea, home-made bread and cake and bananas. The tea tastes smokey from the water being boiled on an open fire.  

Nico and his House 

Inside Nico's House

Riaz takes me to wander around the village and while he flirts with the young women and they giggle with him, I meet some of the villagers – mainly women, as the men are working in the plantations. Everyone is very friendly and welcoming and their ready smiles show that anyone over the age of about 30 has teeth missing. They all call me, ‘Miss Helen.’ The only children here are under 5 years old. The older ones stay in Lautoka, so they can attend school there as it is too expensive for the transport each day up and down from the village and they come back to the village during school holidays. Some stay with relatives and some families get together to provide a house in the city and they share the responsibility to stay and look after the children for a week at a time. Other village houses, or bures, range from simple tin shacks to those built of concrete blocks and wooden planks and the biggest building is the meeting house, cum church, which is in the centre of the village, with an open grassy area around.

Abaca Village

A neighbour of Nico’s prepares lunch for me, brings it to his house and lays the meal lout on a cloth on the floor. I have cassava and taro leaves cooked in coconut milk, with tinned fish.

Lunch

Later in the afternoon, once it has cooled down slightly I take a walk up the hill to see a nearby waterfall.  It is too hazy to get the views from here back to the coast. The landscape consists of dramatic cliffs and rocky outcrops formed from the remains of a volcano. At a river crossing I meet a young German couple who are the other two visitors to the village.

Walk to a Waterfall

In the evening Nico takes a short service and small bible study group in another village house and I go along. As we enter the family hastily clear away the meal they have been eating and 10 of us sit around in a circle by the light of Nico’s paraffin lamp. The whole thing is conducted in Fijian, other than a short welcome to me and the wish that the Holy Spirit will visit me and enable me to understand the service. There are some hymns, which I try and join in with, a bible reading and a sermon. Although the Holy Spirit doesn’t do his thing and I can’t understand the words, I do appreciate being involved and being part of it all.

After the service Nico takes me to a large house at the entrance to the village where there is to be a kava ceremony in honour of the Chief’s great- grandson’s 4^th birthday. Inside the block-built house there are about 20 people gathered sitting cross-legged on the floor, including the German couple. In the centre there are some plastic buckets and bowls and utensils for making the kava. A few official-sounding words are said with due deference and there is some ceremonial clapping and then the kava is made. Spoons of grey powder are put into a material bag and then water is scooped over the bag and the bag is squeezed and manipulated in the water, like washing socks and the mixture is scooped up and poured back into the large bowl. When it is ready there is some more ceremonial clapping and then a bowl of the grey liquid is passed first to the Chief, then the next to Nico, then to another man in the circle and then to me and the Germans and then to everyone else in the room. When it is my turn a small bowl is passed to me and I have to clap once before taking it, drink it down in one go and then clap 3 times, and they clap me too. The drink tastes slightly muddy, but does not have a particular flavour. More and more bowls of kava are made and then ceremony goes on and on. After 3 bowls I ask Nico if it is alright for me to decline and he says it is OK. I can’t feel any particular effects from it, other than my tongue seems slightly fuzzy. Everyone else in the room looks relaxed and they are chatting quietly and the women who are sitting together at the back laugh and giggle with each other. 

  

Kava Ceremony

Nico and the Chief

Today two wild pigs were killed and have been cooked on an open fire and then stewed. The Germans and I are invited to go into the back room, where some women are busy ladling pig soup into large bowls. Laying on mats and blankets on the floor watching the proceedings is the birthday boy and his mother. A meal of cassava, yams, taro and the wild pig stew is laid out on the floor for the 3 of us. I have already had dinner with Nico before the service, so I am not hungry, but I am keen to try the pork, which is tender and delicious.

Preparing Pig Soup

Someone asks me when I arrived in the village and at first I can’t remember – was it only today? By 11 o’clock, although no-one else is leaving, I say my goodbyes and make my way by moonlight back to Nico’s house, where he has left a paraffin lamp burning low. I sleep well until I hear him come in at 3.30am. At 4am he beats the village drum for prayers and soon after that the cocks start crowing.

Nico has only been in the village for 5 months and he will be here as the preacher for 5 years. He has been allocated some land at the side of the village and he has already cleared some of it and planted some cassava. I go with him to help clear another section where he wants to plant yams. He has already cut down most of the undergrowth and we drag the dry branches into a pile and have a huge bonfire. By the time we have finished the area looks twice as big and much more like somewhere where a crop can grow.

Clearing the Land

In the evening Nico has arranged a small kava ceremony in his house for my last night. We are joined at 9 o’clock by 3 men, a woman and her baby. We sit around in a circle and the kava is mixed and passed around as last night. They chat, mostly in Fijian and sometimes sing hymns in beautiful harmony. I try and teach them ‘Bella Mama’ a round, with some success. By 11 o’clock we have drunk the first bowl and I think that might be the end of the evening, but they mix a second. By 1 o’clock I am feeling very tired and make my excuses and retire to the bed in the corner and pull the curtain around while they continue. Although I can't say I can feel any particular effects from the kava, other than a slightly numb tongue, as soon as I lie down I am fast asleep. I do not hear the others continuing until half past 3, nor the drum at 4am, nor the cockerels crowing until I wake at 7.30. That must have been a kava-induced sleep. 

Kava Ceremony

I am almost at the end of my time on Fiji. When I arrived I had almost no idea about the place I was coming to. I have found it to be beautiful and varied and the people are probably the most friendly of all the peoples I have encountered on my travels.