A long drive back to Victoria today, but first a drive to Ucluelet, next nearest town to Tofino, for breakfast. After checking out of the hotel in Tofino, and on the way to Ucluelet, we quickly stopped at Long Beach for a look as the previous time we’d tried the car park was full, but early morning is obviously the right time as it was empty. We had a short walk on the beach, saw a newlywed couple being photographed (I assume the wedding was yesterday as it was 8:30am – either that or it was later today and he’s seen the dress).
Ucluelet was just another “surfer dude” town, and the café was full of young, blonde, tanned beach bums like ourselves. Breakfast was of course excellent with reasonable coffee – still nowhere near as good as the place in Vancouver.
Then the drive – in total about 5 hours plus stops. It rained for the first couple of hours, but as we neared our old friend Duncan (the town with the farm shop) it cleared up. We decided to stop for lunch at a fast food place, and A&W were chosen from the usual suspects (McDonalds, McDonalds, Kentucky Fried Chicken and a Pizza Hut) because it wasn’t usual for us. Weird menu – every meal was called after a relative – Papa, Mama, Teen, they were all there. Perhaps Duncan has six fingers and three toes and spends too much time with his cousin.
Each burger came in a little paper envelope, actually quite a clever idea, and the fizzy drinks in huge, heavy glass mugs. I chose a strawberry milkshake, which I doubted had ever seen cow juice. As you moved it in the plastic cup it seemed to move in a most peculiar, even alien, way.
Back in the car, we made a quick stop at Niagara Falls – not the famous one, this was apparently just as tall but it was clearly not as impressive.
Once back in the car we were just 30 minutes from Victoria, and after a slow drive through the city blocks we found the hotel in the harbour area. Quite nice.
We then needed a quick walk so headed to drop the hire car off in downtown Victoria (weird experience as the Avis office was (permanently) closed so it needed to be taken into an underground car park and the keys deposited in a safe on the wall by a car cleaning area! Let’s hope that’s right. We then wandered over to the whale watching dock as we’d had a message to say the morning boat was broken (sunk?) and so we’d be going tomorrow afternoon instead.
Then showers and dinner. Jo found Block, which served Japanese-styled tapas dishes, and it was probably the best food in Canada yet – even if their Okonomiyaki didn’t have quite enough cabbage! On the way back we stopped for ice cream – rolled for Mila, and a Split of Death for Jo and I.
A walk back to the hotel with illuminated harbour and museum finished the day off.
