CANADA VI: VICTORIA ISLAND
- coupkovasvatava
- Jun 4, 2018
- 4 min read
...is beautiful and we should have spent far more time over there. We were having too much fun... and then suddenly we ran out of time. The week with Ernie and Desi, our two old rescue beagles, was cool but strange at the same time and sometimes also hard work. Not for me of course, but for mummy who had to deal with a few unexpected things like Ernie's seizure on our very first night and the fact he didn't care much where he did his “poo poo”. We also had to take him to the doctor's one day but it turned out that he only did too much cannabis oil. Ernie and Desi both loved to eat human food and they would sit by the table and wait for me to drop my dinner on the floor. Our small house didn't really have a backyard and we are used to being out a lot so it was not ideal either. Oh well, it will be better next time.
In the meantime we were exploring Cumberland and its surroundings. Mum thought that she was not too ambitious when she wanted to climb to the saddle of Mount Arrowsmith (1 819 m) at the end of May but it turned out that she was. First the track was overgrown and hard to find. Second it was very steep. And third there was a lot of soft and deep snow on it. We got maybe half way up and then turned around. Nice views though and I can imagine how breath-taking they would have been from the top. To get to the trailhead and back to the road meant following a very rough forest road for about 20 kilometres and I think it was exactly the place where a rock got into our tire. That we realized the next day when we went to explore Strathcona Provincial Park. It is a huge mountainous area in the middle of Vancouver Island and it is beautiful. Mum says that it is exactly what she imagined Canada would look like. We planned a day walk along 5 lakes and ended up finishing a tiny little wheelchair accessible loop. That was - with a meter of soft snow on it - far from wheelchair accessible at that moment. We had it for ourselves though and we even saw a bear footprint on it. The mossy landscape with little ponds and fallen trees looked amazing and it was ready for a huge moose to come out and eat some yummy lichens. Eventually it did not come but I got to see a lot of different birds and I loved it. So on the way from this cool area mum realized that driving our car felt a bit different than normal. It must have because one of our tires was flat. It was Friday 4.46 pm when we got to Mike's Garage and not earlier than Monday morning when we had the rock, that was stuck in the wheel, taken out and the tire fixed. On the weekend we could only go for short trips. It was all right though because I got my new kayak delivered and I wanted to give it a go. It was my first time kayaking and right away I did it in the Pacific Ocean. Well it was called Goose Bay and it was pretty calm and sheltered but technically it was the Pacific Ocean. I saw some fur seals and on the way back I found mum's paddling so relaxing that I couldn't but take a nap. The same thing happened to me two days later when we went kayaking on man-made Comox Lake. The weather was much nicer this time and we paddled across the lake to explore some bluffs. On the way back the wind picked up and suddenly mum was trying much harder but we were moving very slowly. It took us ages to get to our side of the lake which was annoying because it was the side with a playground. [endif]
And then we were ready to go. One day after lunch mum told me to say bye bye to Ernie and Desi and off we went. In the afternoon we made it to the Pacific Rim National Park on the west coast of Vancouver Island with its dense rain forest and dramatic beaches. I loved beachcoming on Combers Beach where there were two bald eagles feeding on dead fish. On the way from Ucluelet back to the east coast there is a beautiful old cedar grove with hundreds-of-years-old trees, some of them are dead and fallen, you can hide in their hollow trunks or among their roots. Lake Cowichan has a nice floating boardwalk and heaps of driftwood for a long fire on a cold night. From there it is not far to Port Renfrew back on the west coast. Mum's decision to go kayaking despite the weather was a good one for a change. Fairy Lake is pretty small so we could go all the way around it and there were cool trees on trees in the water. The drive from there to Victoria is amazing: the road is narrow and winding, cut in the forest and you don't want to go too fast because it looks like a bear or a cougar might come out any time. [endif]
While our car was getting new brake pads we went to explore Victoria's Chinatown. Victoria lies on the south coast of Vancouver Island and it is the capital of British Columbia. It is as well the prettiest city I have visited in Canada so far. It has pretty Victorian buildings, beautiful waterfront where I enjoyed my fish and chips with a view and huge Parliament Buildings with amazing park where I met my new girl-friend. The petting ZOO with tiny little goats that jumped on your back whenever you bent down was not bad either. Our Vancouver Island trip we finished with a little hike to Niagara Falls in Goldstream Provincial Park that are actually four-times higher than the famous falls of the same name.
Then the time came to jump on the ferry again and head to Vancouver. Mum says that tomorrow we are giving our “caa caa” away. I don´t know exactly which of our cars she means but just in case I am holding on my “caa caa” very tight.
Your Annie
