So I don't really know how to start this one. The last 4 days have been crazy, starting with Thursday evening we rented a van and from 1 pm to 12 am. We were so tired afterward we passed out in there new house amidst the mountains of boxes. They next day was filled with errands to prepare for our big weekend. One of which included picking up booze for the trip which me made the mistake of doing first. There are a lot of homeless people in the Vancouver and when the doors of the BC liquor store open all of these homeless people are fighting to be first in line to return there cans and buy a 40 of the cheapest thing they can find. After a long day of errand we had to head to Horse Shoe Bay to catch the Ferry. Friday evening is madness at the ferry terminal. There are
sooo many cars all trying to get over to the island for the weekend. We just miss the sailing of the 5pm wait for the 7pm only to find out its full and then after hours of waiting make it on to the 9pm (it really wasn't bad though because Geoff and Crystals
VW is equipped with a fridge, bed, and electricity. So while everyone else was sweating in there cars waiting we were lounging in the
Westy drinking
Heineken and having burgers. The first thing I noticed about the 9pm ferry is that it was the ferry for all of the rowdy people who slacked off and waited till the last minute to take the ferry, or they were in line with us for 4 hours getting good and liquored up. There were a fair amount of drunks on the ferry by the time we set sail. The ferry was about an hour and a half and then we arrived in
Nanaimo and from there went to Port
Alberni for some rest. In the morning we took an awesome 3 hour drive through the mountains and at one point slammed on the brakes (good thing we replaced them last week) and pulled off the road to go see a bear. Seeing a bear in the wild is way scarier than seeing a bear on grouse mountain in captivity. We watched him nose around for some food and heading back on our way. We got into
Tofino around noon and went to 'inner
rhythm surf shop' to grab some gear. From the first few minutes there you can tell this is a surf town, there are so many dread locks and everyone is really tanned and has naturally blond hair from being in the sun. The owner of the shop tipped us off to a more secluded beach where we wont have to fight for
a lot of the waves. Now I didn't quite understand the need for the wetsuit until we got in the water. This was not southern
California surfing, the water was
sooo cold. It's really hard to describe surfing to someone, I will try my best though. When you start walking in the water the waves don't look that big, but once you are trying to fight your way away from the shore and you are getting rocked but these ice cold waves you have a different opinion of them. Before you know it
you've been out in the water 45 minutes and
haven't caught a single wave, you have just been getting the shit kicked out of you for and buckets of ice water thrown on you. So you sit on your board and try to keep balance and just watch the waves, they tend to come in sets so you want to watch for the first one and find out where it is going to break (start to curl over). After the first one, you pick your wave commit to it and start paddling and wait for it to pick you up and you pop up and hope for the best. Whether you get up
successfully or not you find yourself back close to shore and you hop on your board and paddle back out. I was so unbelievable sore by the end of it. The highlight of it all was when Crystal, Geoff and myself were sitting on our board waiting for the next set and not 10 feet
away from us a giant seal pops his head out of the water and I swear he was smiling at us and wanted to play. He
hung out for about 2 minute doing flips and showing off to us, he reminded me
a lot of a dog. After watching him for a bit I
briefly got scarred when the thought of a giant
orca coming up and devouring this little seal came to mind,
fortunately most of the
orca's have migrated past here all ready. We lost track of time and were 2 hours late with our rentals so we booked it out of there as fast as we could (it is
soo hard to take a wet suit of, it
almost becomes a part of you after a while) We found a place to park the van and went to a grocery store to get some food to cook. After being in salt water for a few hours you feel like you have been munching on a bag of salty salty popcorn and you are so dehydrated, we bought some steaks and actually realized that it was salted pork once we started eating it... bad idea. The next day we went back to the same beach and just explored at low tide. There is an entire civilization of
anemenies, crabs, starfish, and tadpoles that live on these rocks and during high tide are safe but when low tide comes need to hide from
seagulls, eagles, and other
predators (people). We
carefully walked along the rocks and got to see a ton of cool things that I never knew
existed. At one point Geoff was walking and got squirted in the leg, he looked at us puzzled as if one of us had squirted him. We found a field of these hold with squishy
anemenies in inch into them. When you reach down and poke them he squirt a stream of water out about 3 feet, needless to say we had a good time with them. We took the long winding road through the mountains back to
Nanaimo to catch the ferry back. Stopping a a grocery store to prepare for the long ferry line. This time we decided on fiesta night. We made a seven layer nacho dip and had beer with lime in it, and after played
Frisbee in the parking lot. I was burnt, had sand and salt water everywhere and was struggling to keep my eyes open. Best weekend ever!
