Vancouver Island is the perfect nature destination when visiting Vancouver area. It is one of the best examples for what the citizens in the British Columbia state have renamed their state to: Beautiful British Columbia, which is what the car plates in this state read. It has everything you need for holidays: beaches, good weather, nature, water activities, nice food… but not a lot of hotels. It is home of second residences for some rich people who live in Vancouver as it is easily reachable by ferry or airtaxi.
In this part of the trip I already met some of my Toastmasters colleagues, so they were more animated days to discover this treasure in British Columbia. As we only had a couple of days, we decided to stay in the Southern part of the Island, leaving the North for future visits. We also left any water activity aside, and after reading some reviews, we decided not to go for the whale watching for a future time, as summer is the lowest season as whales go out in the Ocean for colder waters.
We started our visit in the capital of the island, Victoria, which is also the biggest city there. It is a cozy medium-sized town, with a few impressive buildings, like the Government or the hotel Astoria. Life takes place around the harbour, with whale watching tours, and water air taxis, and plenty of restaurants with terraces under the sun.
After the city, on our way back to Sooke, our base in the island, we stopped at the Sooke Potholes. The river had created some formations where the water seemed not to move, and some sort of beaches had appeared. The water was not as freezing as one would expect in a river in Canada, and the ones used to swim in lakes and oceans (I am a Mediterranean guy) even dared to take a bath in a summer-like day. We ended the day, not far from there, following the recommendation of one of our AirBnB hosts in a wonderful restaurant (for Canadian standards) next to the ocean, seeing some people playing a sort of waterpolo, but with kayaks.
We devoted our second day to the roadtrip. There is a circular route that took us the whole day, and brought us to diverse landscapes of the island in just a single day. We left Sooke, and drove clockwise around the Southern part of the island. It was a foggy and rainy morning, which gave a special feeling to the beaches we stopped at: empty ones, with huge logs, near the forests, dark sand,… After leaving the coast, and having a traditional Canadian lunch in a movie-like coffee place, the sky opened, and the sun started shining. Our next stop, totally impromptu after checking the map, was Skutz Falls, where we enjoyed some relaxing time hearing the noise of the water.
After the short rest, we continued the tour, and arrived to Duncan, which had a wise idea to promote people spending time in their town: a totem exhibition which could be followed in a walking tour going through the commercial area. Totems are sacred for the First Nations, the people who already lived in this area before the Europeans arrived. Canada has acknowledged the importance of this heritage, and has filed a number of laws to protect them, and preserve their culture. The totems exhibition, with the different explanations, was time well spent, and the city town expectations (some shopping) was met by our group.
The next stop was something called Niagara Falls, but they were completely dry. This confirmed what we had been told: the draught was starting to affect the island. So we continued our way back to Sooke, but stopped in Sooke East to see the sunset from there. In our way there, we could see many deers, and stopped in the Anderson Cove, which seemed to me a paradisiac place to anchor. Fog seemed to be our travel companion that day, as the sunset was not “clean” due to its presence, but again, had a different taste. The good part is that it was shorter, as we were freezing.
The last day in Vancouver Island, we took it very easy. We visited one of the nearby beaches to enjoy the sunny day. The day was so clear, that we could see some mountains at the Washington state in the US at the other side of the channel, before we took the ferry back to Vancouver.
The ferry left Vancouver Island, and sailed among several islands which appeared to have no inhabitant, and almost no building in them. In a way, the area reminded me to the archipelago in Stockholm, although with less amount of islands. After 90 minutes, we arrived to the mainland, and one hour later we were in the centre of Vancouver, ready for a week of conference, and with some spare time to discover this city.
