Today was a day exploring the area with our friends. After a wonderful breakfast we walked to Sidney along a path right next to the water. Lots of interesting houses and beach area to see.

We had a nice lunch at Seahorse Cafe in Rentwood Bay, right by the water.

No map today as we didn’t drive with out van.

After publishing our blog entry from yesterday we spent a wonderful evening driving down to Victoria along the coast seeing many magnificent and expensive houses along the way. A quick check online showed that some of them were in the $14.5 million dollar range. Their views of the ocean are beautiful and we enjoyed the evening sunshine.

In Victoria we specialized on the floating houses at the harbour. They are very colourful and often had amusing signs and details.

Of course there had to be an ice cream for all four of us.

The next day we walked into Sidney again, this time on our own. We stopped at one of the piers where we watched the seagulls and crab fishing. We enjoyed the area as much as we did on the first day.

While strolling through town we stopped in a couple of shops where Ruth found a very colourful sweater at a fair trade store. After all the shopping we needed some food and found the Taco Shell restaurant. The person serving us was super nice and multilingual having come from Egypt and speaking some German and French. The burritos were excellent!

No map for today.

After a Starbucks breakfast and stocking up on food at Walmart (where the security guard asked us how we had liked dinner last night – he had also been at the restaurant), we drove towards Tofino in the pouring rain. The visitor centre can only be described as non-helpful. Furthermore, the idea of having to pay up to $200 a night for a campsite made us ask ourselves if we shouldn’t just head back.

A fellow traveller we had met in the Walmart parking lot had suggested we stay at the Crystal Cove Beach Resort. It was only $95/night for the last site and is right on the ocean. The rain stopped and the sun came out and we walked along the beach in full sunshine, meeting lots of dogs, including an adorable dachshund named “Dash”.

The sandy beach is lovely and the water is suitable for surfers – in wet suits. Our attempt at swimming there ended at the knees because the water was very cold although a few hardier souls did take the plunge.

For a tourist town, Tofino seems a bit hostile to its tourists. It was very difficult for us to find a parking spot as RVs are not permitted to park in most areas and most of the town seems to be paid parking only. We finally found a spot on the edge of town, paid our $6.35 for 3 hours of parking and then walked into town.

Our first stop was to the Dockside Smoked Fish Store where we bought a 50g piece of smoked salmon to sample for $6. After devouring it, we bought 4 more pieces to take with us. Yummy!

The Pacific Terminus of the Trans-Canada Highway is here as well. We’ve likely reached our western-most point and will now slowly be heading east again.

The harbour businesses offered fishing tours and sightseeing flights.

We continued to walk through the town and visited several stores and galleries before we had lunch at the Rhino Coffee House consisting of Buffalo Chicken Caesar wraps and a free coffee for Ruth which made her day. We talked to the couple at the table next to us for quite some time. They had immigrated from Scotland in 1965.

On our way out of Tofino we stopped at Chocolate Tofino for some super delicious gelato which we enjoyed while sitting comfortably outside.

We stopped at the Pacific Rim National Park Reserve and walked along the beach. Lots of activity!

We debated going for a swim but decided the water probably hadn’t heated up much since yesterday.

Just down the road, there is the Rainforest Hiking Trail. This is a 1.5km boardwalk that takes you through the forest and has lots of information about how forests grow, how trees that die support the next generation, and the rest of the ecosystem. This hike is well worth doing!

Ucluelet is our home for the night and we’re staying at the Ucluelet Campground. The bathrooms must have recently been completely renovated and are super clean. The campground is adjacent to the marina with lots of boats.

We walked through the town of Ucluelet and saw a lot of new construction on our way to the Big Beach. Along the way there were some really neat sculptures.

The beach has surprisingly dark coloured rocks as well as an old ship wreck from the 1800s. It isn’t entirely clear which ship it was as there is only very little left.

Nearby is a section of a 900 year old tree with time markers that show what happened in history during the centuries it was living.