Whistler, Victoria, Salt Spring Island

Well I have now officially left Canada. I am sitting in the departure lounge on the US side of immigration, waiting for another 2 hours for my flight to San Francisco. As there is not much else to do, I Figured this would be a good opportunity to update everyone on the last week.

On Sunday night Dad and Mum arrived after spending a week or so in Toronto where Zach (my nephew) was having surgery. On Monday we drove up to Whistler where we stayed at the Delta hotel. The weather on Monday was not great so we didn't really do much other than have lunch, walk around the village a bit and have dinner. Tuesday however was much nicer, so we hired some bikes and rode around the valley for a few hours, looking at a couple of lakes and various other spots where views of the mountains could be found.

Wednesday started with a rather early morning. It was a bit of a shock for me having to be up and ready to go by 7:30. Uncle Ted and aunty Alison were picking us up so that we could catch the the 9 o'clock ferry to Victoria. The weather while on the ferry was a bit overcast so photos didn't really look all that great, so sorry you will have to take the trip yourself, or maybe do a search on the interweb, someone else is sure to have taken some photos at some stage. The main activity planned for the day was a trip to the world famous Buchard gardens. As far as gardens go they were pretty good, the best I have seen, and I have seen a few in my time. I well recall the seemingly endless days of being dragged through the Hamilton botanical gardens or the botanical gardens somewhere in South Auckland. Boy did those trips drag on. But what a difference having a camera can make. I was well entertained taking photos of the flowers and trying to get a good shot of a bee on a flower. There were plenty of bees around but they just wouldn't sit still. Very frustrating.

I had been given the heavy responsibility of organising the accommodation for our trip and had booked us in to a bed and breakfast for a couple of nights in Victoria. The house was very old, and had that awful old house smell about it, especially in the foyer. The bedrooms were decorated in true B&B style, with floral wallpaper and floral bedspreads and floral artwork. Not exactly my kind of decorating style. The breakfast they provided was not bad. The first day I had their health mix cereal, it definitely tasted healthy. This was followed by bacon and eggs and 3 small mushrooms. I happened to be sitting next to uncle Ted, who doesn't eat mushrooms so I scored an extra 3. The second day I switched the cereal for a bowl of fresh fruit, it too was healthy but tasted somewhat nicer.

Thursday was an action packed day, starting with a 3 1/2 hour whale watching trip on a very fast zodiac boat. We got up to speeds of 92 km, that feels very fast on a little open boat. Our guide assured us that we were very lucky to see so many whales, he said there were about 60. I would have felt a lot luckier if the whales were doing a little more. They were in resting mode, where they just bob up and down for hours. Due to the tight restrictions placed on the tour operators, we were not allowed to get too close to the whales, or to get in their path. As a result even with my telephoto lens I couldn't get a good close up of the whales. We did get reasonably close to the seals though so I got a few shots of them.
After whale watching and a spot of lunch, we went to the ZipLine tour place. This involved wearing a harness and getting clipped on to a wire high up in the trees and zooming from tree to tree. I was surprised to see that Mum actually participated and didn't even look too terrified doing it. The last 2 wires that we went down were a lot faster than the other ones, and when you curl yourself up in to a ball you can get quite a bit of speed up. The poor tour guide almost wore a hole in his glove when he stopped me at the end of the wire. I think he thought I was going to bowl him over. Great fun.

On Friday we had a coffee at Dolce Vita, not too bad but nothing to write home about. Then we drove to the ferry that took us to Salt Spring Island. Salt Spring Island is full of very arty people, or hippies as Dad and uncle Ted called them. There are about 30 studios dotted around the island that you can drive to and check out their work. We went to a cheese shop and a bread shop. I had been looking forward to visiting the cheese shop, as I have bought some of the cheese the shop sells at Granville Island market, and it is highly recommended by John Bishop from Bishop's restaurant. There were lots of goats cheeses and a variety of olives that we sampled before buying a few tasty goats cheeses to nibble on over the next few days.

The accommodation we stayed in on Salt Spring was a lovely log cabin by a lake. It was a really nice spot. There were kayaks and canoes that were free to use so we went for a big canoe ride to the other end of the lake. The weather was really nice with barely a cloud in the sky.

Oh how quickly the weather can change, by the next morning it was raining again. Each Saturday there is a public market where most of the studios on the island come to the town of Ganges and sell there wares. There was a lot of arty stuff there. I wasn't really in the market for fancy vases or jewelery though so didn't buy anything.

There was not much else to report about that trip so I will leave it there. My plane is about to start boarding I think so I had better start packing up my computer. I will try and find time to edit so photos and add them to this post later on. We have 7 hours in San Francisco, so hopefully they have wireless internet there too.