Sorry (Victoria to Whistler)

And so my long-suffering reader the day has arrived. The day when I have to put aside my fears, remember that left means the hand with the ring on it, righty-tighty and lefty-loosie and resist my natural bent to drive more to the left side of the lane. Yes. Today I drive.

Before: The Bride to Downton

After: The Bridge to Downtown

 We had breakfast in the Club Lounge on the patio that has a lovely view of the harbour and downtown. Today is probably the clearest it has been, although it is still hazy. We had attempted the Lounge before but it is the smallest I have seen and if you don’t get in early you are relegated to the patio. This morning this was fine, but the other evening it was very cold in the wind, so we relented and were lured back to the hotel restaurant (aptly named Lure) for another over-priced, average meal.

Bags packed and check-out completed, we walked to the car park to tackle the white beast. Keys in the ignition. Slam the door – hey, it doesn’t shut otherwise. Up comes the GPS. Program in the ferry terminal. Slowly negotiate my way out of the parkade – I assume that is a peculiarly Canadian expression as I’ve not heard it elsewhere. Look to the GPS. Silence. Speculate on the direction to go. Incorrect. Damn! Drive for a while and suddenly she sparks into life. I’d be forever muscling my way into traffic if I relied entirely on her. The directions are a little late. Out onto the highway - so far so good.

The real challenge for the day is to arrive at the ferry terminal at the right time. The ticket says to get there between 60 and 30 minutes before sailing. It also warns if you are late you fill forfeit your booking and the same applies if you are early. I am early for everything, tardiness is not a feature of my world. If I am late, it is deliberate.

I drove within the speed limit and we arrived 20 minutes before 11am. Worried, I pulled over to the side of the road. It was that or join one of the queues. You see, dear reader, the highway terminates at the ferry terminal. There is nowhere else to go. We sat on the roadside and watched the queue get longer until we wouldn’t be able to join it. Jayne decided to go and speak to one of the traffic wardens who then took pity on the stupid Australians and called us forward into the queue.

Ticket paid for, lane allocated, we drove forward to be the second in line and subsequently the second on the ferry. And that is where I sat as I began to write this. The view was quite pleasant, however, a car alarm was now going off, destroying the peace. Then the announcement: Would the owner of a white BMW please return to your car, the motor is running. What the actual? Who leaves their car running while it is parked for a 90 minute journey?

The view from the fery

There are lots of little islands

The journey was uneventful and I dozed as we crossed back to the mainland. Onto land and once again the GPS was in control. It directed us to the heart of Van. Surely there was a quicker way? I later discussed this with Dan and he and Danaka assured us that was the only way to go. It probably added 30 minutes to the trip because we crawled through Downtown Van to get to the other side and Highway 99.

Once on the open road, I began to feel more comfortable with the car. Despite the remnant smoke haze, the view is quite spectacular and the road is carved into the mountain side with views across to numerous small islands scattered along the river and the townships clinging onto the mountain side.

Near Squamish, we passed through a police radar check. I have remained within the speed limit since getting behind the wheel and here is my song reference for this post, Tracy Chapman's Sorry from her self-titled debut album in 1988. Every other car on the road was ignoring the speed limit and I'm sure I inconvenienced a few of them by obeying the sign posted speed. Therefore, I am sorry.

The big news on the local Sea to Sky Corridor radio station was a warning about a dead Bambi, the young one, not the King of the Forest size, on the Northbound lanes between Squamish and Whistler.  Crews were on the way to remove the hazard.  We had actually commented on the deer when we had driven by - it was off to the side of the road and no problem to get around.  It had prompted us to wonder why we have not seen venison on any menus so far. Road kill here is nothing compared to Australia: all we have seen is a couple of birds, one hedgehog and this deer.  We have yet to see a bear but reckon they could caused a sizeable dent in the car.

We finally made Whistler after more than 6 hours in the car. Did a quick bag drop and drove over to Dan and Danaka's to see the house and then return to Whistler Village for dinner. We declined the offer to party on and retired to our suite to recover form the day's transit.

Saturday dawned grey and wet. It is the first rain we have seen since we arrived in Canada and it is most welcome. It will certainly help to take some of the smoke from the air even if it is not heavy enough to extinguish the fires. Given the weather, we decided today would be a lay-day - doing the  washing and just hanging around the Village.

Not so summery in Whistler today.

(Listen to the) flower people (Vancouver Island)

Today is our last full day in Victoria. Tomorrow is a transit day as we drive to Whistler a day earlier than planned. There will be no blog tomorrow and while today was a full day, this will be a short report.

The title? Spinal Tap. Enough said. I'm sorry my learned reader, you've not heard of Spinal Tap. may I suggest a date with Dr Google and Youtube or Netflix or some other streaming service.

As good as Paris

The day began with a planned drive back to the car rental company to get the GPS fixed. Planned drive. I climbed into the Jeep and turned on the ignition and up came the GPS, working beautifully. WTF? I don't know and don't care to know, it's working. Back to our room to get ready for the day.

A Taste of Victoria walking tour was the first order of the day, well, after the GPS debacle. We met at a local market only 15 minutes walk for the hotel.  We can highly recommend this if you get to Victoria. Not only is Andy a great local guide, the places we went to were well worth a second visit. Great gourmet food from breads to olive oils to macarons to craft beer. An excellent tour supplemented with local knowledge and the history of the area.

The tour concluded at the waterfront near The Empress and the Legislature building. The Empress is sinking at the rate of 1 inch every 10 years. It was built on land reclaimed from the sea and now the sea is claiming The Empress. I love nature. It wins every time.

The Empress - is sinking into the reclaimed foreshore

Directly across the road form The Empress guarding the water views they so desired ( and will become a part of one day) is a statue of Captain James Cook. No. No photo. I live in Redfern, be sensitive dear reader. Mind you, Cook is very popular over here ... with the pigeons and seagulls.

Tour over and with a few more hours to burn before dinner we caught the bus to the Butchart Gardens. Warning: arty, flowery photos following and today's concluding statement.

The Legislature

The view from the Legislature to our hotel

A pretty flower

The sunken garden: amazing

Another flower

The Italian garden

More sunken garden. It used to be a quarry.

With the day over we sought out an Italian restaurant to avoid eating over-priced, over-rated meals at the hotel. What a winner. Fiamo in Yates Street. Great food and service and, unusually, not overly noisy. I'm not sure why everyone in North America needs to talk with such a LOUD voice.

Until next time.

The whale song (Victoria, Vancouver Island)

First things first my interested reader -  the title of today's post. Yes, you are correct, it is from a children's animated series: Dot. This episode is with a whale. The song goes like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYPlvPVCMIo go on, have a listen, you know you want to.

In more mundane matters, the day dawned as those before it - to a sun shrouded by smoke haze. If anything, it was thicker out here on the island. We woke to the alarm this morning, not a pleasant experience after another late night. We are going whale watching today so breakfast is important. Otherwise, motion sickness, you understand.

Hotels are not our usual accommodation when we travel. Air BnB or an equivalent is our go to, largely because we tend to stay for 5 nights or more in the one place and use it as base to explore. This trip we have three weeks, but the real reason we are here is to see Dan, not Canada, so the holiday/tourist side is a bonus. Subsequently, hotels and no more than four nights anywhere, which, when you factor in transit days doesn't really leave a lot of time. While hotels obviously serve a purpose and can provide you with great local information, the add-ons are expensive. Breakfast for instance. If we had rented a unit we would have breakfast at home or at a local cafe. In our hotel, when pushed for time, the in-house offerings win. We paid $43 Canadian for two bowls of granola and fruit and two coffees, including taxes and tip.

We are living in castle

That is the another hidden expense in North America. Taxes and tips are not included in the initial price, so the budget conscious need to be wary. To be honest, I'm not into tipping people for doing their jobs because their employers don't/won't pay them enough. Capitalism: a winner for the bosses and it sucks for the workers. Let's go for a basic wage and health care and every one lives a life.

Since I'm having a socialist whinge, I have been shocked by the number of homeless people. Not just in Van, but also here in Victoria. I have seen homeless people in many major cities across the world, and maybe it's a sign of the times, but there are more homeless people here than in Sydney - not that it is a competition, although if it was, I'd be happy to lose. What are we doing a a community to address this?

Anyway to the whale watch tour. We got on a boat. It had a cabin = good. They supplied us with warm stuff: jackets, gloves and beanies = even better. We motored into the smoke the haze and saw humpback whales, orcas, seals and eagles (see the pictures below) = awesome. That is it, I'm done. Pictures with captions. Maybe.

Fisherman's Wharf houses

First humpback sighting

Um, like goodbye

Glad my boat had a roof

Pfft. What?

Can you see my calf?

I am the boss.

Ok, not quite done. We went to pick up the car this afternoon, a day late. Well it's difficult to organise things from the other side of the world when you are not sure what to expect, or what your timeline might be. Things change.

While I have driven on the "wrong side" of the road before, it's been a while and I wasn't particularly confident then. How happy was I to find we'd been upgraded from our sedate little Corolla to a masculine, ball-breaking Jeep? Rah! So thrilled. Not. You got the sarcasm, yeah? I want to be as innocuous as possible on the road, this will help, for sure. Despite it's testonerific size, I managed to drive it back to the hotel, with Jayne's help. The mystery as we head for slumber this evening is how the GPS works. We can't find the main navigation page. But hey, I drive a Jeep, I'll bite the crotch out of a low flying Canadian goose and read the entrails  - I'm sure that will give me the answer.

One day I will publish a post without re-reading it. Not today.

Smoke on the water (Vancouver - Victoria)

A flashback to my childhood and Deep Purple, although every budding guitarist knows the riff. And after a late night we had a slow commencement to the most dreaded day of all ... a transit day. We are leaving Van today for Victoria on Vancouver Island, a cool, relaxing 3 hour catamaran trip away.

The smoke haze (as we would say in Sydney) is low and heavy again today, hence today's title. When we arrived at the wharf the most obvious sight was the number of seaplanes tethered to the dock. The haze is so thick that there is little point doing a flyover of the area because there would be nothing to see. It must be having a major impact on tourist activities.

OK, it's yellow, but I've never seen anything like this ... since yesterday.

We checked our bags and had an hour to kill. A dawdle down the pier discovered a nice place to rest in the filtered sun. After almost an hour there, I was glad the sun was filtered otherwise I would have melted onto the pavement. It would be seriously hot here if the smoke haze disappeared. We settled in for an early lunch, which was cool because we didn't eat breakfast. Some calamari and chicken tenders and a bottle of a Pinot Grigio from the Okanagan area. Very pleasant. Really, this is what holidays are about. We ate, we people watched, we whiled away time. Then it was time to board.

The sea today is very calm, but we are travelling between the island and the open sea. I know it isn't always this way. The heavy smoke from the wild fires is shrouding the land and water and visibility is very poor. It is not dissimilar to a bad back-burn day in Sydney, or most days in Shijiazhuang. While I can appreciate the vista, it is disappointing, as the smoke has blurred what would have been stunning as we moved down the harbour.

Is that the Marie Celeste?

I was told to keep my eyes open on the trip out to the island because I could see whales. From nowhere in the grey gloom a fin rises out of the water and disappears quickly before I could alert Jayne. We were past the spot before it resurfaced. If it existed at all. I kept waiting for a sighting of the Marie Celeste.

A random thought, although I'm sure I've speculated on this before dear reader. No matter how wealthy you are, you can't buy youth or hair. There is a man on our ferry who is clearly in uniform, trophy wife, a navy jacket, particular shoes and a pretty average toupee. Ditch the trophy wife, hang with people your own age and spend your left over cash on a decent hair piece. It's all about priorities people and Peter Pan is a Disney story.

The awesome view from our room. The other side has harbour views.

Anyway, where was I? The trip across would be quite beautiful on an average day. We just happened to be travelling on a well below average day weather-wise. Still, with some photoshop work the pictures look OK.

Victoria was a surprise after the relative calm of Vancouver. To continue the analogy my dedicated reader, Victoria is the new kid in town. Everything about them is interesting. We thought we'd walk (with luggage) to our hotel. Despite dragging the bags behind us it was an interesting walk through a really cool, vibey area. Suddenly it was, who is Vancouver? How cool is Victoria?  Well, we will see.

Until next time