01 September 2005

I am feeling considerably less philosophical on this trip than is normal for me. It must be because I feel so unbelievably crap. But on the bright side that means that I will probably be less inclined to write thousands of words about nothing to accompany all these pictures.

Last night we just crashed. I didn't even go to 7-11 on my way back to the hotel to get a 2 litre slush!

This is, of course, the result of jet lag. And a further result of this jet lag is waking up too early - today at 04h30, for example. But maybe there's a positive side to that as well because being awake anyway we just hop into a taxi to the airport to pick up the rental car a bit earlier than planned. This allows us to head for the Island sooner than if we'd slept late and this is where the Nerd Schedule comes into play, because as you can see... the sun rise occurs today at 06h26. A further check of the Nerd Schedule under the "Schedules" sheet reveals that there is a ferry from Horseshoe Bay to Nanaimo at 06h20.... just in time for the sunrise, in other words.

All of this was planned months ago in the Nerd Schedule. So as you look through the following series of sunrise photos and marvel at the majestic beauty of mother nature... just remember that it's all thanks to the Schedule. All hail the Schedule!

05:59:03
Anyone who is familiar with the city of Vancouver knows that it is actually quite a way from the airport to Horseshoe Bay. But the streets are empty at six in the morning as we pass through Stanley Park and onto the Lion's Gate Bridge.

05:59:21
Will we make it to Horseshoe Bay on time? Or has the Schedule failed us?

06:13:14
Lots of time! The ferry doesn't leave for seven minutes! Never doubt the Schedule!

In fact, never before has an arrival to the BC Ferries been so perfectly timed. We reached the end of the line of cars just as the last car pulled onto the boat. I didn't even hit the brakes as we passed through the waiting lanes and drove straight onto the ferry.

06:23:58
Once aboard we make our way to the front of the vessel to watch the sun rise. Check out the following pictures as the sky changes colour and in your heart pay homage to the Nerd Schedule.

06:26:47

06:28:15

06:29:14

06:30:16

06:31:25

06:32:38
And so the mighty ferry pulls out of Horseshoe Bay and we're on our way to Vancouver Island!

Oh dammit! An announcement just came on saying that a Toyota with some license plate had left its lights on. My rental car is a Toyota!

I run downstairs to check. It wasn't mine. But on the way back up I slip on the stairs and carve two of the fingers on my left hand open. Ow! Nice.

Perhaps it's time for another satellite image orientation? Here we see the lower end of Canada's West Coast showing Vancouver Island (and a bit of the evil United States at the bottom of the photo).

Today's travels will take us from Vancouver to Tofino, as you might have guessed from the markings on the map.

Just in case the satellite photo didn't do it for you I also include a map which also shows the various ferry routes. The ferry we are currently on is the one that goes from Horseshoe Bay to Departure Bay in Nanaimo.

06:34:57
The sunrise continues behind us as we pull away from mainland Canada.

06:35:32
Ah yes.... for those who remember past Travelogues you might also remember Neil and his aunt and uncle who used to live in a really cool house from where you could see the BC Ferries pulling away from Horseshoe Bay. Sound familiar? Well, their old house is right over there in the distance.

PHOTO FROM AUGUST 2003
Just in case you DON'T remember the house, I include here a photo from TWO YEARS AGO when I visited and took a picture from their deck of a ferry pulling away from Horseshoe Bay. So, it all comes full circle and we now see the view from both sides, I guess.

06:36:26

06:36:41
This picture kind of reminds me of the Titanic movie somehow.... let's how that this voyage turns out better than that did.

06:38:24

06:39:50
The skyline of downtown Vancouver in the distance.

06:40:08

06:41:58
West Vancouver at the left, downtown at the right, with the Lion's Gate Bridge linking the two.

06:44:52
A less zoomed in version of the previous photo. I said I wasn't feeling very philosophical, but check out how man-made the skyline at the right looks and how natural the mountains at the left are. Man meets nature.... or something like that. Give me a break.... it's not even seven in the morning.

06:46:12
The ferry turns further out toward the open water and the mainland slowly recedes into the distance.

06:56:03
Oh oh.... see what boat this is? The Queen of Oak Bay! That was the one that crashed a couple months ago! Is it back in service?!?? I hope they fixed the problem.

FLASHBACK TO TWO MONTHS AGO

B.C. ferry that hit marina 'just kept coming'

Last Updated Fri, 01 Jul 2005 07:13:02 EDT

CBC News

Divers found no victims as they searched the water around a grounded B.C. ferry that missed the West Vancouver terminal and plowed through dozens of boats on Thursday.

The operator, BC Ferries, promised a full investigation to determine why the 7,000-tonne vessel smashed into the marina beside the Horseshoe Bay terminal at about 10:10 a.m. local time.

The 7,000-tonne ferry missed the Horseshoe Bay terminal and smashed through a marina.

Witnesses said the Queen of Oak Bay seemed to have lost power before it veered into Sewell's Marina. But David Hahn, the president of BC Ferries, said it was too early to say what caused the crash.

"It's very clear that something went wrong, probably on the mechanical side, but beyond that I can not speculate," Hahn told a news conference on Thursday afternoon.

Canadian Coast Guard divers searched the water around the ferry for two hours before wrapping up at about 1:30 p.m. without finding any victims.

They also checked the hull of the ferry to ensure it was safe to move to the dock, so that 544 passengers who had been stuck on board all day could disembark.

"I'm just extremely grateful there was no loss of life or no injuries," Hahn said.

'It kept coming and coming'

Witnesses said the ferry, which left Nanaimo for Horseshoe Bay at 8:30 a.m., was blowing its horn as it crashed into the marina.

'As I started to walk, you could see the employees of BC Ferries yelling and waving their hands and saying, "Run! Run! Run!" So I started running.'

"It kept coming and coming," Gus Tsogaf, who owns the Bay Moorings Restaurant, told CBC News. "A low speed, but it just kept coming. It just couldn't stop."

As the ferry approached, people who were in the boats or on the docks ran for shore.

Bruce Munroe, who manages the Boat Centre, said he was inside a customer's boat doing repairs and couldn't see the ferry when he heard its horn blow.

At first, he assumed it was a normal warning for a smaller vessel to get out of the way. But when he heard a second, longer blast, he began to move.

"I quickly got out of the boat and started walking away from the ferry toward the main dock," he told CBC News.

"And as I started to walk, you could see the employees of BC Ferries yelling and waving their hands and saying, 'Run! Run! Run!' So I started running."

Passengers warned before crash

The ferry's passengers said they were told to brace themselves shortly before the impact.

Reached by cellphone while he waited to disembark, passenger Chris Hulsen said he and his family followed the instructions on the loudspeaker.

They raced to their car and fastened their seatbelts, then waited tensely as alarms blared for about a minute before the collision occurred.

"The actual impact itself was really pretty uneventful," Hulsen told CBC News. "If we hadn't been told we were going to crash, we would have thought it was just a normal docking."

Extra ferry runs to be added for weekend

The accident forced BC Ferries to suspend service at the Horseshoe Bay terminal just as the long Canada Day weekend began.

However, at the afternoon news conference, Hahn said the company would be adding extra runs to handle the extra passengers.

The Queen of Oak Bay, which was first launched in 1981, recently underwent $35 million in upgrades and had only returned to service two weeks earlier.

BC Ferries was transformed from a provincially operated Crown corporation into an independent, commercial organization in April of 2003. It is now operated at arm's length from the government of British Columbia.

06:56:37
Hmmmmm. Another one of those Titanic moments, don't you think? And this is the ill-fated Queen of Oak Bay!

06:57:02
Ahead in the distance Vancouver Island appears in the mist.

07:08:43
Ok. Enough pictures of nature. Let's take some pictures of breakfast, shall we? I love them deep fried hashbrowns!

07:36:08
Back on deck again after breakfast I take a photo of.... ummmmm.... why did I take this picture??!???

07:41:01
No, seriously... what did I think was so interesting about this particular scene?

07:43:54
The sun comes out for a moment. I am worried about the upcoming days on "the Island" because according to the weather channel's website there's going to be rain for the entire time that we're in Tofino. After that we're supposed to have great weather for our time in Vancouver, but I would really rather have had good weather in Tofino instead. I even considered second-guessing the Nerd Schedule at the last moment and switching things around so as to get good Tofino weather. But it is bad karma to mess with the Schedule so I chose not to tempt fate and to just go with it as it stands.

07:44:59
The outside decks of the ferry are, of course, the only place one can smoke.

07:45:00
Up ahead the Island looms closer with dark clouds hanging ominously overhead.

07:46:03
Ugh. It really looks kind of nasty over there.

07:50:17
But, oh well... it is one of the rainiest places in the world, after all. A little wet won't ruin our fun.

07:52:05
Pulling into Departure Bay a seaplane passes overhead and Nanaimo comes into view.

07:52:13
A bad close-up of the seaplane. Where's Landon with his telephoto lens when you need him?

07:52:24
As you can see there are some wealthy people with really cool houses in this part of the world.

07:54:05
The man next to me is optimistic about the weather for the coming weekend. He's heading over to Tofino from his home in Vancouver for the Labour Day weekend and thinks that way out there on the other side of the mountains (which is where Tofino is...) might be better weather.

07:54:35
That's a cool little private beach, don't you think?

07:56:20
A cool little island passes by as we approach the ferry terminal.

07:56:44
Up ahead another ferry can be seen docked at the ferry terminal.

07:58:29
A view back toward the mainland (no longer really visible).

07:59:27
We'd better get down to the car deck pretty soon.

08:00:09

08:02:15
Back to the rental car.... a Toyota something-or-other. In light of rising gasoline prices ($116,9 / litre in Vancouver) I feel it prudent to use more practical vehicles this year. This is what North Americans call a "compact" car - the smallest possible vehicle available for rental.

08:03:30
The ferry docks and we all return to our vehicles.

08:09:49
I have to say that this has been a pretty great little adventure thus far. That sunrise was really great (thank you Nerd Schedule) and because we're underway so early we should be in Tofino by afternoon, thus leaving us plenty of time to walk around the beach and in the ocean.

08:51:43
Just North of Nanaimo is a crappy little town called Parksville which I am convinced is cursed because every single time I go there something bad happens. Cars theft, bad motels, killer wasps, whatever.

On this trip I vow NOT to go to Parksville and plan to just drive right around it and onward to Tofino. But as we draw near the Nerd Schedule reminds us that this time of day is low tide and at Parksville's Rathtrevor Beach that means that prime clamming conditions because the beach is very long and flat and when the tide is out it leaves a large flat area full of buried clams.

08:54:32
Maxi has never been clamming before, so we decide to risk the curse of Parksville so she can see what it's all about.

We're already a bit late, but there are still plenty of clams around. You can tell them because of the breathing holes in the sand that mark where they are lying beneath the surface. You can see many small such holes in this photo as Maxi digs a hole.

08:55:07
Not much of a clam, is it? But you get the idea.

08:55:38
If one were to do this for actual purposes of eating the clams it would obviously be better to show up at the right time and with a shovel. I prefer to get my clams from a store, personally.

08:57:15
In the distance we can see the mainland across the Georgia strait.

08:57:44
Funny how even a little rock can be home to so many plants and animals.

08:59:12
It is beautiful here, but the curse of Parksville lingers in my mind. I am keen to get back to the car before someone breaks into it.

09:00:20
Yah, we'd better get out of here. I am really nervous being here in crappy Parksville.

09:46:09
Surprisingly we escape Parksville without incident and continue on toward Port Alberni. I attribute this to the fact that we didn't actually ENTER the town itself. There is a green bridge just at the Southern edge of town that we did not have to cross on our way to Rathtrevor beach. Had we crossed that bridge I am convinced that we would have had something bad happen.

09:51:11
Which brings us to Cathedral Grove. We passed by here last year but didn't have the time to make the stop. This year we have a bit more time at each location and that should allow me to keep this adventure from being an exact repeat of last year. Perhaps we'll be able to illustrate why it's okay to make almost the exact same trip two years in a row because there are always plenty of new things to see and experience.

Anyway.... this is Cathedral Grove, which I think the sign explains better than I can so I'll just shut up and allow us to enjoy the tranquillity of the ancient forest.

09:54:59

09:57:28

09:59:34
In the background you can see the largest tree in the grove - more than 800 years old.

09:59:42

10:01:35

10:02:57
Hey! A Loser in a tree!

10:03:40

10:05:21

10:10:29

10:14:50

10:15:48
Here two trees grow from the same base.

10:24:34
And with that we leave Cathedral Grove behind us and continue on to Port Alberni.

But for those who might care... I mentioned this last year when I took a picture of protesters hanging from trees....

Cathedral Grove is the centre of an on-going controversy regarding British Columbia's new practise of charging people money to park their cars at provincial parks. The government wants to get rid of the current free parking that lines the highway and has served visitors for more than 50 years and replace it with a giant parking lot three kilometres away from the grove that they will create by cutting down a bunch of trees and ruining a local wildlife habitat. I am personally rather pissed off about the entire practise of Pay for Parking at all these places that I used to visit as a kid for absolutely free, but the Cathedral Grove plan is one that particularly annoys me. In addition to the environmental damage (which some could dismiss as a bunch of Birkenstock-wearing Tree-huggers making a big deal out of nothing) I agree with the three main practical objections listed on the www.cathedralgrove.com website:

1) That forcing people to pay to park will just result in many people NOT stopping to enjoy the park. As it stands right now you drive along the main road, you just pull off to the side if the mood strikes you, and you take a short walk through the trees.

2) That putting the parking lot three kilometres away (and forcing people to pay to use it) will further discourage people from bothering to stop. I know that personally there are lots of things I'd LIKE to go see when I see a sign on the road, but as soon as I see that they are a few kilometres out of my way I just don't bother. Not to mention.... as it stands right now, you pull off the main road and you're right there in the grove. Under the new plan you have to walk for half an hour or more to get to it from the parking lot.

And now for the final and most important reason...

3) Putting the parking lot so far away, thus forcing people to be away from their cars for more than an hour or two, and also making them put a slip of paper on the dash of their car saying exactly how long they plan to be away from their car, AND discouraging people from stopping at all, thus resulting in a more deserted parking lot away from traffic... all of this just encourages thieves to break into cars.

Ask me what kind of parking lot it was, only 12 kilometres from Cathedral Grove, where my own car got broke into just a few years ago.... that's right.... a deserted off the road parking lot where thieves knew exactly how long I was going to be away and where there was no traffic or other visitors to discourage them.

Make no mistake... this part of the world is full of a bunch of thieving bastards!

Ok... it's not full of them.... but after that one incident my innocent belief that my native Canada was a nation of decent honest people was completely shattered and nowadays I get nervous being away from my car for extended periods of time whenever I visit parks.

So.... fuck you British Columbia Government Pay-to-Park!

11:55:56
Which brings us to Port Alberni.... city of broken payphones. I desperately need to call Landon and tell him that we already left and that we don't need a ride to the airport from him anymore, but I can't find a damm telephone that works!

11:19:21
No... seriously.... why are all the phones broken?!???

11:30:10
After finding a telephone that works and calling Landon it's time for lunch at Dairy Queen.

Mmmmmmm..... Brownie Earthquake......

11:57:27
On the way out of town heading West a pair of Native Indian greeting figures stand at a T-intersection. These are either poorly placed for greeting visitors to Port Alberni or they signal a welcome to the Pacific Rim region of Vancouver Island. Being the eternal optimist I choose the latter.

12:11:20
And now begins one of those drives that looks really short on a map but takes forever because you are constantly curving around on mountain roads, slowing down, speeding up slightly, slowing down again, and in general just weaving your way through the obstacles that nature has provided to keep too many people from coming to ruin the best spots. The hippies do the rest and keep retail stores like Wal-Mart and Starbucks from moving in. (Port Alberni has a Wal-Mart though.... so they're getting closer.... oh oh!)

12:56:36
Which brings us to Iain's secret spot.... not so secret anymore, I learned last year when ten other cars were pulled off the road at this point to climb all over the rocks.

12:57:37
Not that it was ever like my own personal secret or anything... it was just not one of those marked places to pull off the road, just a thin stretch of gravel that allowed one to get their car off the road and go exploring. Nowadays that thin stretch of gravel is a somewhat enlarged paved strip but at least there's not an ice cream vendor set up here or something like that.

13:00:04

13:00:17

13:01:43

13:02:05
I love the contrast of colour in this picture. The rocks and trees seem hyper-real somehow.

13:03:11

13:03:34

13:04:33
Something I love about this spot is how you can climb all over the rocks and explore the different views of the river carving its way through the rock. In an attempt to get some different pictures from last year I climbed way out on the edge to get this shot of the water falling into the small canyon below.

13:05:09
There's always some new view to be found if one is persistent enough. Some day I might like to just spend a couple hours here and actually figure out how to cross over to the opposite side of the chasm. (Maybe some day...... but since coming to this place involves going to or leaving Tofino there always something "even better!" just down the road that pulls at your heartstrings.)

13:05:32

13:06:07
Ok.... this is definitely a view from last year. But... notice that it is not raining. It's overcast for sure, but no rain. And by this point we're almost over the mountain range that runs down the middle of Vancouver Island separating the mainland side from the Pacific ocean side.

13:08:12
Another thing I love about this place is how when you're climbing all over the rocks you can hear and sense that the river is somehow running through some canyon below you, but you can't quite see it. But if you climb far enough (which actually really isn't that far, you just have to be clever about it) you suddenly arrive at this spot where the rapids are revealed to you.

13:08:43

13:09:01

13:11:24
This photo unfortunately fails to fully capture the rusty colour of the water.

13:11:57

13:12:53

13:14:20
This photo illustrates to me that I am still not used to my new camera, despite having had it for a year and a half now (and several trips). The idea is to have the flower in the foreground in sharp focus and the background slightly out of focus... but I keep habitually treating my NEW camera like it's my old one (which worked subtly differently) and am constantly failing to get the shot that I want. I will try to remember to do this properly in the future.

13:14:46
It would be interesting to see this place during the spring run-off when the snows at higher altitudes are melting and there is lots of water coming down. Even now, with the extra rains in recent weeks, there are little waterfalls and streams that I've not seen before.

13:15:22

13:15:47

13:17:18
I am a big fan of these low perspective photos, taken just centimetres off the surface of the water.

13:19:28
Last year when we visited here with the other people climbing all over the place I was very cleverly able to frame my shots so as to not have any people in them (another thing I am very keen on doing in my picture-taking.... thus providing a sense that there is absolutely no one else around, somehow, which isn't always true...). I specifically remember taking a very similar picture to this last year and finding the exact perfect spot where six different groups of people were out of sight behind rocks and out of the shot and otherwise not visible. Of course I could just edit them out later, but somehow I like the challenge of setting the photo up so that they are just naturally out of sight.

This year, however, I don't have that challenge since we're the only ones here today. That is surprising since Labour Day weekend is coming up, but I guess we're a day ahead of the "crowds".

13:22:51
Along the road to Tofino there are a few other little spots off the side of the road that I've always wanted to check out. Today, thanks to the extra time on this trip, I am able to do so.

13:33:56
Here's another one of those low perspective shots... but check out how two-dimensional the rocks and water at the bottom appear as a result.

13:34:36
This spot isn't as good as my "secret spot", but it was still worth the stop.

13:36:42

13:36:51
This photo was meant to capture the hyper-green colour of the water.

13:38:01
The green is better visible in this picture, actually.

13:38:38

13:39:47
Here we see a tree growing from the stump of an older tree that must have blown down or something. The newer tree is itself several decades old so it is amazing to think of how long it has been standing here and how long ago it was when it first started to grow. Check out how the roots of the younger tree envelope the stump underneath and reach like fingers down to the soil below.

14:05:52
I don't do it very often, but there was some power lines in this shot that bothered me so I took them out digitally. Sorry to mess with your reality.

14:43:14
And so we wind our way down from the mountains and up the coast to Tofino where we arrive at our home for the next three days... the Beach Break Lodge.

15:01:35
This postcard-esque aerial view of Tofino is a fitting welcome, don't you think? It also shows why this part of the world is one of my favourite places to visit.

15:01:35
This particular photo also is good for a bit of aerial orientation as well since it includes the location of the Beach Break Lodge as well as two of the three main beaches that we shall explore over the next few days.

Which reminds me.... has anyone ever noticed that I try to pick a specific "look" for each of my travelogues? For example, this year, in addition to certain colour sets and what-not I have chosen a specific font which represents this particular trip. Last year the font was "Prime Minister of Canada" and the colour was predominantly red (pure red, in fact.... RGB 255-0-0). This year it is "Black Boys On Mopeds" (a Sinead O'Connor song, ironically enough) and the colour is a subtle slightly pale / slightly dark blue (RGB 0-153-255) or yellow, depending on the context.

No? No one ever noticed that? Didn't think I put that much thought into it?

15:01:35
But anyway.... I can't wait to get out onto Chesterman Beach and have a look around.

15:01:41

15:02:07
There are so many surfers around Tofino these days. It never used to be like this....

15:02:22

15:03:06

15:03:48
Last year I took this one picture at a different beach which showed a wave just about to break. It was one of those low perspective ones I was just talking about, in fact. Anyway, I thought it was an all right shot but lots of people thought it was a really spectacular photo so my quest this year is to see if I can take another such photo here in Tofino.

15:03:58
The only problem is that I am not quite sure what made the original photo so striking to so many people, so I won't actually be sure if I am successful or not.

This is the photo I took last year at China Beach near Victoria. Remember this image because this is the photo by which this year's wave photos must be judged!

15:04:40
It is still a bit overcast, as you can see, and we did get a few drops of rain on the drive down from the mountains but nothing major. So, even though it's a bit grey and dreary we're still not getting soaking wet outside. Actually, there are certain days on this trip when clear weather is desirable - days such as tomorrow, for example, when we're out on a boat and it would be nice to be able to not get wet and be able to see the mountains and stuff. But on other days it is not so important - such as the day after tomorrow when I might be surfing and getting wet anyway (rain doesn't bother me when I am floating around in the ocean in a wetsuit).

15:12:43
So many surfers.....

15:14:29

15:14:56

15:15:01
One great thing about this trip, as I've mentioned already, is that even though it very much replicates last year's trip we do have more time at each location. Last year, for example, we only stayed two nights in Tofino and during our time here we did several different things and never really got the chance to explore up and down the beach just in front of our bed and breakfast properly. This year we have time to walk out and around these rocky points to explore the caves and tidal pools.

15:15:10
More surfers....

15:15:19
This is a good photo of the surfers paddling into the wave.

15:15:23
And four seconds later (check the times below each photo) all three are on their feet... a skill I have never been able to master. Hopefully a actual surfing lesson will help instead of me just trying to do it on my own (as was my previous method).

15:20:19
Having walked this far down the beach to the rocks I am surprised, somehow, that we never walked this far last year. It's not THAT far, after all. I guess it just shows that you need to come back to some places several times to really get to know them. We'll have to come back later when the tide is lower so we can walk around the point to the other side.

15:20:43
For those who remember the aerial photo.... we are looking out toward Cox Bay here. That rocky point in front of us (with the bench on it) is called Sunset Point (because it is a great place to watch the sunset) and on the other side of that is the beach at Cox Bay.

15:21:08
I was about two seconds too late on this photo.... The dog you see swimming out there was riding the surfboard a few seconds ago, believe it or not.

15:21:43
And now he's running back in to the shore....

15:21:43
Looking across Chesterman Beach to Frank Island in the distance.

15:26:11
Another couple views across Chesterman Beach back toward Cox Bay.

15:30:23

15:31:40
The same view from the steps of the Beach Break Lodge.

15:31:51
Turning to the left we have the view of Frank Island as seen from the steps of the Beach Break Lodge.

15:46:19
Ok. Enough exploring. If we don't get to the grocery store we won't have anything to eat. The sun has come out a bit by the time we reach "downtown" Tofino.

15:48:13
The mountains are still shrouded in cloud, however.

15:48:38
I still haven't decided whether or not to take a seaplane flight this year. I'll have to think about that one.

15:49:22

16:08:34
I love the fact that Tofino's main grocery store is a Co-Op. Western Canadians will know that Co-Op is where people in small towns shop because they don't have any Safeways or IGAs or SuperStores. It is reassuring to know that Tofino still has it's Co-Op store. (Not that they don't exist in larger cities... it's just that I don't really know anyone under the age of 60 who shops at them when they have the option of going to a better supermarket.

Anyway, here we see a true Canadian invention.... Ginger Ale. Specifically Canada Dry Ginger Ale. Forget that Schweppes stuff. This is the good stuff.

Also notice how big the bottles look. These are two litre bottles, which were perfectly normal to me when I still lived in Canada but look weird now that I am used to Europe where everything (cars, food, bottles) is 75% of the size of what it is in North America.

16:32:29
After a successful shopping trip it's back to the Beach Break Lodge and back out on the beach again without even unpacking.

16:56:56
Ok. I am going to try and get that perfect wave photo now, if I can. Wandering around waist deep out in the water with camera in hand I will now take a whole bunch of pictures.

16:57:12

16:57:25

16:57:36

16:58:04

16:58:30

16:59:36

17:00:19
I try different kinds of things in pursuit of that perfect wave photo. And I actually like different things about each of these pictures, such as this one where there's a glint of sun off the water as the small wave begins to crest.

17:00:23

17:00:30
I like this one.... but is it "perfect"?

What I should have done is brought a serious waterproof camera on this trip so I could get out into the waves as they curl. As it is right now I have to quickly yank the camera out of harm's way right after each picture as the wave hits me.

17:01:45

17:01:57
These are all kind of cool though, aren't they?

17:02:03
Oh! I like this one. I wish I'd got it from further out.

17:02:13
Surfers are very committed people.

17:03:05
All these thin clouds should make for a good sunset, I think.

17:05:26

17:06:53

17:06:56

17:12:52
The tide is further out now (check the Nerd Schedule) and we're able to wade through the waves around the first rocky point at the Southern end of Chesterman Beach. On the rocks are plenty of colourful starfish and mussels.

17:14:26
Maybe I can get that perfect wave photo from this angle?

17:14:42

17:15:07
This was my attempt to capture two waves at once.

17:15:26

17:15:52
Waves crash on the rocks - Sunset Point is just ahead.

17:16:32

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17:19:27
Some more very colourful starfish on the rocks. In the background you see a very expensive house which is curiously all closed up at the moment.

Time for another aerial photo orientation, don't you think? Here you can see that walking down Chesterman Beach eventually leads you to three rocky points, the third of which is Sunset Point. We've already waded around the first point, but the tide is still too high to circumnavigate the second one without getting really wet.

But have no fear because... lo and behold... there is a cave that leads right through it!

17:22:16
Voila! Now we're on the other side of the second rocky point.

(Seconds later I fall down because my sandals are soaking wet and not done up properly. My camera takes a few nasty scratches on its casing and a few LCD things are knocked out of commission.)

17:24:05
A view back through the narrow cave.

17:24:20
The rocks are a bit slippery (and so are my sandals) so we leave exploring the area beyond the second point for another time when the tide is lower and head back toward home.

17:24:54
Here's a view of the mouth of the cave that leads through the second rocky point.

17:26:23
This whole area is full of caves. Here we see a cave that has a walkway from that expensive house we just saw built over top of it.

17:26:54
Why built over top? (You ask) Because there is a hole in the ceiling of the cave. Looking up you can see the walkway above.

17:27:22
The view back out toward the beach. All of this must be under water when the tide is higher than it currently is, and particularly in the winter when there are storms and larger waves coming in from the open sea.

17:28:04
Some more caves for exploring.

17:28:21
A view out toward Frank Island.

17:28:50
Every picture is a postcard, somehow. You just want to remember every view you come across.

17:29:05
A view from this cave out toward Cox Bay.

17:30:27
The surfers are still out there, as you can see.

17:40:11
And with that we return to the Beach Break Lodge.

17:46:26
Time to relax a bit in the hot tub. (Yah, I know... I took this picture last year.... but it is an effective one, don't you think?)

19:23:38
After a bit of a snack it's back out on the beach again to watch the sunset.

19:28:51
Maybe I can take a perfect wave photo at sunset?!?

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