Another day, another café breakfast, Vancouver’s excellent and 24 hour Breka again. Then a taxi to the seaplane terminal for our fight to Victoria on Vancouver Island.
Danny was particularly looking forward to the flight, so I’m sure the slow build-up and waiting for the pilot to saunter out to his charge helped. They stowed smaller bags without electronics in them in big plastic bags inside the dock-side float, then loaded the passengers. Our pilot was from Manchester, and the safety briefing was simple – he told me to turn the door handle clockwise and then push the hatch to open it; Danny got told the same about the one in the roof. Let’s hope we didn’t need to use them. Either way we had 2 seatbelts – the seat and the life-vest. Oh good.
As you’d expect the take-off on water was bumpy but once we achieved a plane on the water’s surface it became calmer. Since it was a light aircraft (10 passengers, 1 pilot) the 35 minute flight varied from bumpy to not, bumpier over coastline as the thermals worked. The landing was crazy – the angle he pointed the nose towards the water was reminiscent of Japanese kamikaze fighter pilots at Pearl Harbour. He avoided the massive ferry, and we had a longer than expected taxi back to the seaplane jetty.
We called an Uber once on the ground, as mysteriously our second hire car was not at the Avis office just 100m away…it was at the international airport 30km distant! Not great planning/forethought.
The 5 hour drive to Tofino should have been relatively uneventful with a few stops to look at interesting places. We paused to collect an in-car picnic from a farm shop near a town called Duncan, about an hour from our entrance to Vancouver Island at Victoria, then headed inland.
A couple of hours into the journey we began to see light smoke in the air, then there were warning signs, and police and park wardens were closing parking areas. We then came across a big wildfire at Cameron Lake, on Wesley Ridge. Helicopters were taking water out of the lake and dumping it on the hillside forest fire. We discovered the next day it was spreading fast, apparently caused by humans. Idiots, as there were signs everywhere saying NO FIRES because the risk was so high currently.
Unable to stop (not that we wanted to as the air was full of smoke, which you could smell immediately when opening a car window) we carried on to Cathedral Grove, where 800 year old Douglas Firs slowly grew. One tree had a 3m diameter.
A bit further on, with Jo doing some of the driving on this journey (her first time driving on the wrong side of the road), we stopped at Wally Creek and just after at the side of the road for a picturesque lake view.
We arrived at Tofino, a small fishing and tourist excursion town, in time for dinner (another burger for some). Lovely hotel with some really nice cafés and restaurants. Excellent, more food.
