Timmy Travels

We left for Tofino from Vancouver taking a scenic 1.5 hour journey across the Georgia Straight to Nanaimo. There we fantastic views of the bay to be had from the deck of the ferry. After this on the way up to Tofino we visted Little Qualicum Falls taking in a short Hike to these waterfalls in a Provincial Park. Next stop was Sproat Lake where there was an opportunity to see some Petroglyph's carved into the rocks lining the Lake however to see these you have to walk out onto some floating platforms unfortunately I don't think they were designed to hold 18 people and promptly began to sink! The last stop of the day before hitting Tofino was Long Beach at the Pacific Rim National Park Reserve, this is a beautiful part of the coast line.

Upon arrival in Tofino we book our activities for the following day and then checked into one of the nicest hostels in the world, Whalers on the Point which overlooked the bay. Tofino is a pretty fishing village at the tip of Esowista Peninsula near the entrance to Clayoquot Sound on the west coast of Vancouver Island.

After 3 huge slices of Pizza and a few beers we all headed down to the beach for a fire and chat. There were about 18 of us sat round chatting and some beach dudes with guitars and a violin joined us to provide entertainment. It turned out to not just musical entertainment though as later on a police officer came over to check if anyone was drinking and targeted this one remaining guy (his mates had gone by this point) he was told by the cop that if he drank the beer he had in his hand he'd be arrested and fine $150 but before he could responded the cop ripped his beer from him and tipped it out most of it on the guys head. This didn't help the guys mood and he promptly began abusing the cop at this point Nolan, our Moose driver, stood up and announced that we weren't with this guy. It became a bit of a comedy act now as the guy then started demanding juice and a sandwich if he was being arrested he was adamant that he was getting his juice and sandwich and just kept repeating it over and over and sat of the floor in protest so the cop just maced the guy and dragged him over the log he was previously sat on at the same time saying "Lets go Juice and a sandwich". The cops seem to have the same approach as the Yanks when it comes to dealing with things, they don't mess around, as he was leaving dragging the guy behind him he turned and said, "be sure to clean up after yourselves now" and everyone was like yes Sir Officer Sir!

The following day 6 of us, Me, Ian, Mark, Matt, Gill and Debbie went Sea Kayaking which was cool as I've never done it before. We spent about 30 minutes being briefed on the safety and operation on the kayaks, they were two man ones and had rudders at the back controlled by the person in the rear using foot pedals. I teamed up with Mark and I didn't fancy doing the whole steering and paddling thing so let him go in the back. It was a really good day, we kayaked around the small islands sticking close to the coasts. The guides we had were really good and they showed us star fish and little crabs that live in the huge sea weed plants, these plants were massive and have really thick stems with tennis ball size bulbs which had the sea weed part growing out of it and this is where the crabs lived. You can eat this sea weed straight out of the water it's apparently packed with iron. Matt tried to pick up some sea weed to eat it and ended up grabbing a crab which didn't take kindly to being grabbed and nipped him. After a long day out in the Kayaks some of us headed off to the Sauna we had in our hostel which was very relaxing. Nolan cooked everyone spag bol which was delicious and after a free massage of Debbie I was done for the day as soon as my head hit the pillow I was asleep!