 06:40:15 Today is one of those days when I would really like it if the weather was clear.... the weather channel website said that there was a chance that it might be clear today, so as ever I am optimistic. Overnight the optimism was watered down by the sound of falling rain outside the open window. But then again, doesn't it always rain at night in this part of the world? And with all the trees everywhere it often continues to "rain" long after precipitation stops falling out of the sky. Stepping outside just at sunrise I am unsure whether the drops I hear falling all around are from the trees or the sky. Nothing is falling on me, so that is a good sign, but it's still too dark to tell for certain. Out on the beach as the light continues to grow it becomes obvious that it is not raining and that there are blue skies to be seen overhead. It is also still early, of course, and the sun has yet to burn off the clouds and mist that cling to the landscape.  06:47:49 Walking down the beach at sunrise reveals many strange and beautiful things, but I can honestly say that I have never seen an iPod wash up on the beach before. One can only wonder how THIS got out into the ocean.  06:48:47 Being on the Western coast of Vancouver Island the sunrise tends to occur out of sight behind mountains and trees.  06:52:40 I love the blue quality of light at this time of day... and the solitude and quiet.  06:54:12 This is absolute low tide. The rocks in the foreground-left are the so-called first rocky point at the South end of Chesterman Beach that we saw yesterday - the same rocky point that required wading through waves to get around yesterday. (At high tide you wouldn't be able to get around this point at all, I don't think. The water would be too high and the waves a bit dangerous.)  06:57:26 Everything just seems so alive all around us.  06:58:43 A view toward Frank Island. Notice the starfish on the rocks, so you can see how high up the water is at high tide.  07:02:47  07:03:02  07:08:07 A view back along Chesterman Beach toward Frank Island. Check out this weird starfish in the movie below. It's on its back somehow so you can see the suction cup things moving around.  07:09:58 One of the many tidal pools along the rocky shoreline.  07:13:51 I wonder if I took enough pictures of waves yesterday? Did I get a perfect wave picture? I will only know when I get the photos home to look at them, I guess.  07:14:05 This is the bench I mentioned yesterday on Sunset Point. I call it Sunset Bench.  07:17:07 This is the so-called second rocky point that I mentioned yesterday - the one with the narrow cave through it. So now we're on the side where we didn't get to yesterday. At the left you can see how far the water is out. Yesterday we couldn't get around the point because the water was too high.  07:20:07  07:22:53 I love the reflection of that single white cloud in the wet sand.  07:25:33 The early morning mist lends an air of mystery to the world.  07:26:52 Some more reflections in the sand.  07:29:43  07:34:36  07:37:53 Back at the Beach Break Lodge once again.  08:12:37 It is time for breakfast, as you can see.  After breakfast we're off to Ucluelet, which (as you can see) is a small town located a short drive to the South from Tofino. It is from Ucluelet that today's "Islands and Whales" tour shall depart. (See how this year's trip is subtly different? Last year we went whale watching and bear watching from Tofino.)  For those of you who think that this would be a good time to produce another satellite image... I am more than happy to oblige. The reason why I picked a trip that left from Ucluelet this year is because even though Tofino is beautiful, Ucluelet is a different kind of place. Both towns are sort of twin/sister cities in that they are both out on this peninsula of land and are very similar in many ways and are often referred to collectively. That said, however, the character of each town is different, as is the geography surrounding them. I cringe to say it but Tofino is the more "touristy" of the two whereas Ucluelet seems to retain more of its practical side. Both are fishing villages originally, of course, but somehow Tofino went more hippyish whereas Ucluelet remained more earnest and pure. Anyway, one of the main attractions for me for doing a whale watching tour from Ucluelet was the group of islands just to the South known as the Broken Island group. Today we can look forward to not only hopefully seeing some whales but also an extended tour of this wonderful little island group. Also of interest on this map are two things: 1) If you look closely just above the tip of the arrow pointing toward Tofino you can see a narrow island connected to the land by a sandy peninsula of land. That island is Frank Island where we saw the sunset last night and the beach it is connected to is Chesterman Beach where the Beach Break Lodge is located. (If you can't see it, don't worry because we'll come back to that later in this trip.) 2) I have marked the location of Port Alberni on the image not only so you can see where we drove out from yesterday after lunch at Dairy Queen but also to show that the waters of the Pacific Ocean extend all the way inland a hundred kilometres or so to Port Alberni. This is not only geographically interesting but is also interesting because occasionally whales are spotted all the way inland as far as Port Alberni, including some Humpback Whales in the past couple of weeks, in fact.  10:14:09 So now we're in Ucluelet and getting our environmental suits for the whale watching trip. For me any activity that requires special clothing and stuff is always a pain. I can only hope that they have big enough suits to fit me. (And it's not just the gut.... it's the shoulders too. I've had this problem my whole life.) "Give me the biggest suit that you have." I say and when they do I am fine with that without the effort of trying it on and then taking it all the way off again because, really.... what are they gonna do if it doesn't fit? Give me a smaller one? But no, they have to see me try it on. That annoys me. Like, listen to me chick. This isn't going to be big enough to be comfortable anyway, trust me, I've been wearing clothes almost my whole life. Oh yah... and there was a cat there too. But he didn't cause any trouble.  11:29:17 So now we're down on the boat and getting ready to go.  11:39:38 Something else that bugs me is that there are speed limits when you enter and exit harbours. And this always adds like an half an hour to an hour to any trip because you crawl along at 10 kilometres an hour for so long before cranking the boat into high speed mode. I guess it's kind of like how the speed limit in parking lots and access roads is sometimes 10 km/h. If anyone ever actually drove that slow they'd take like ten minutes to get out of the parking lot. But yes, I know that there are good reasons for the harbour speed limits. The waves caused by going faster disrupt all sorts of things. But it's still annoying. I mean, it's like how the Concorde used to have to slow down over land because the sonic booms caused environmental damage and what not. Like what's the point of building the super-fast plane if it has to fly slow so much of the time? Fortunately the route from New York to London only involved a very small space of time over land, but the route to Paris did not and it had to fly pretty slow for a fair portion of its trip. It's also like the high-speed ferry from Hoek van Holland to Harwich which has to slow down when it goes along the coast of England because they realised that the waves were causing problems, thus extending the trip by an hour from its original planned transit time. Oh... and how about the Eurostar train to London from Brussels? It's a TGV train that goes 350 km/h but it can only do that in France, not in Belgium or England. So you're in England in no time, it seems, and you get your hopes up that you'll be in London soon... but then it takes another hour and a half. I say that if you're going to build a high-speed anything then just let the thing go at high speed. Don't slow it down with all these dumb rules and stuff. The whole point of building a thing that goes fast is to reduce the time it takes to get places. LET the ferry go full speed the whole way! MAKE it possible for the Eurostar to go fast in England! LET the whale watching boats go full speed as soon as they leave the dock! Dammit!  11:50:07 See? I had all that time to think about how annoying it is to go slow! We're STILL not out of the slow zone yet!  11:54:38 Ok. Finally we're up to speed. (Not that you can tell from the pictures....)  11:55:28 How great is the weather today? That's one critical weather day down. A few more to go though.  11:55:58 On our way to the whales we pass by some harbour seals hanging out on the rocks.  11:56:18  11:56:55 Just a taste of things to come. Strange rocks and tree islands that are so characteristic of this part of the world.  11:57:15 More seals....  11:57:28  11:57:58  11:58:07  11:58:17 I am a bit sad that the sun flared so much on this photo. There's not much time to pick your shots when you're racing along around these islands.  12:01:54 The view back at the previously photographed island is better. Thank you digital camera for allowing me to take such a ridiculous number of photos. (All these islands kind of look like Riven, don't you think?) (What's Riven? You ask.) (Sigh. Forget it....)  12:02:42 I love how you can see the shadows of the clouds on the side of the mountain up ahead. I think we tend to view clouds as these distant things when so often they are much closer than we think. For example, the closest of those clouds mus be between us and the mountain to be casting a shadow on it, right?  12:08:01 And so we stop to take a look at some humpback whales. We are REALLY lucky today and not just because of the weather. We are lucky because whale watching in this part of the world almost exclusively means Grey Whales that come from California to live here in the summer to feed. The Grey Whales tend to hang around the same places and are therefore predictable not only on where to find them, but also in watching them because of the way they feed... specifically that they swim down to the bottom of shallow water and scoop up everything and filter out the food (small animals called Krill). Since their feeding is just basically in shallow waters they tend to return to those same feeding spots and when they do they also tend to come up to the surface, swimming in a straight line, curl over to make a deep dive to the bottom, and then continue more or less straight ahead to come up to the surface again. A experienced watcher can almost always predict where they will come up and how long they will stay down. Humpback Whales, by comparison, are not so predictable. They come up here to this part of the world from places like Hawaii and feed in a completely different way than Grey Whales do. Humpbacks don't suck up stuff off the bottom but rather they feed by taking big mouthfuls of water and fish and shrimp and stuff and then filtering the water out. Because they follow fish around for food it makes them far less predictable than Grey Whales and it is more difficult to predict where and when they will come to the surface. But on the bright side of that Humpback Whales also tend to be a lot more active than Grey Whales are. Grey Whales come to the surface, go back down, come back up, go back down whereas Humpback Whales will breach the surface, stick their heads out, etc, a lot more frequently. Their method of feeding also involves swimming up to the surface in "feeding lunges" where their heads come out of the water as they close their mouths. But anyway.... Although seeing Humpback Whales here is far from rare, it is still lucky for us that some Humpback Whales have been hanging around the area for the past week or so. And just in case you care I stole the following two articles from www.enchantedlearning.com so that anyone who is interested can read a bit more about these two species of whale. Click here for more Information on Humpback Whales Click here for more Information on Grey Whales  12:08:07 Ever wonder where the phrase "Thar she blows!" comes from? Well, it's because the easiest way to spot where whales are is by the spray of water that shoots three metres into the air when they come up to breathe. The reason for this is because Whales aren't stupid like humans are and because they don't want a nose full of water they blow OUT first before breathing in. This is roughly equivalent to how humans should blow out through their nose when going UNDER water or when a wave hits them or something.  12:08:13 I didn't quite get this one, did I?  12:08:25 Ok. That's a good one. You can see the dorsal fin of the Humpback Whale, which is distinctive of them. The Grey Whales don't have that fin and neither are they black, as you might have guessed. Just in case you were wondering how we know that this is a Humpback Whale, that's how.  12:09:41 There are actually a couple of Humpback Whales out there. A mother and her calf, both of them feeding. I narrowly miss seeing the calf jump out of the water.  12:09:59 As you can see, the spray of mist from their blow-hole lingers in the air for quite a while after they breathe.  12:10:20 Another burst of spray.  12:10:35 It's kind of like the Loch Ness Monster somehow, isn't it?  12:10:46  12:10:54 The dorsal fin visible again...  12:11:11  12:11:43 Oh! That's a good one. This is a feeding lunge that I mentioned earlier. The whale swims up toward the surface and gets a bunch of fish and stuff in its mouth taking a big gulp of water before closing its mouth upon reaching the surface. Humpback Whales also do something that really blows my mind in that they sometimes feed in packs where a group of them will gather while one blows a circle of bubbles around a school of fish. This creates a "net" of bubbles that the fish won't swim through, thus trapping them in a vertical "cylinder" of space through which the other humpbacks all swim up through with their mouths open, catching as many fish as they can. The sight of ten or twelve Humpback Whales breaching the surface like this feeding lunge all at once is incredible. (See the IMAX movie Whales for great footage of this...)  12:12:05 Again, at the right, you can see the lingering spray as it dissipates.  12:12:42 Didn't quite get this one centred..... but in my defence I am not sitting taking pictures through the viewfinder of the camera. Despite what it seems from all the pictures I take I don't want to live life or vacations through the lens of a camera. I take photos "from the hip" a lot, and I do so almost exclusively in situations like this. In actuality for taking these pictures I am just standing there with the camera in my hand at chest level, pointed in the direction that I am looking, and then when I see something I just point myself and camera in the right direction and click the shutter and hope for the best. I think I'm pretty good at this method, I must say, but even if not at least I am not missing seeing this stuff for real as it happens rather than constantly looking through a camera viewfinder.  12:13:53 Sometimes the camera is a bit slow and misses what I was looking at... but like I said, at least I myself saw it in real life.  12:17:15  12:18:36  12:18:54  12:21:58 I was really hoping that this picture would turn out because it was the only time that the calf AND the mother whale came to the surface at the same time. So just in case you doubted me now you have proof. Although, with all my photo-altering yesterday you might think that I just faked this picture, right?  12:22:11  12:22:31  12:22:48  12:23:04  12:23:42 You might be wondering why I took so many pictures that kind of all look the same? I figure that the more pictures you take in such circumstances, the more likely you are to get one that actually has a whale on it. Besides, just think that I already filtered out all the pictures that DIDN'T have anything in them and then think of how much of the whales we got to see in real life.  12:29:41 And look at the great weather we're having! I know that many of the photos show dreary clouds in the background, but just remember that we're looking inland in most of them and that when the damp ocean air hits those mountains it compresses the air into clouds. But where we are, out on the water, it's clear skies (as you can see).  12:31:55  12:32:12 To be honest, it's quite a bit TOO sunny out here. I didn't expect THIS much sun. We're gonna be sunburned by the end of this trip.  12:33:03  12:34:13  12:34:37  12:34:43 This picture is interesting because it shows (kind of) what is called a whale "footprint". The footprint of a whale is an area of disturbed water on the surface caused by the presence of the large mammal underneath. It's not something that you can really spot from a long way away, but when you're close enough, or at a higher angle than we are, it is quite clearly visible and from that you can tell where the whale is moving to. It's also worth noting that another way to go whale watching is to go up in a seaplane. From the air you get an entirely different perspective in that from the air the whales can often be seen in their entirety at the surface thanks to the fact that water is transparent, if you know what I mean. But whale watching by plane doesn't allow you to get as close to the whales as the Zodiac boats are able to get, of course.  12:36:25  12:37:18  12:37:32  12:37:44  12:37:53  12:46:03  12:46:10 Another whale watching boat approaches our position. I probably mentioned it last year, but all the whale watching companies work together when they spot whales and stuff, so when you go out whale watching the operators generally know where to the action is on any particular day and you aren't wandering around blindly for hours looking for whales.  12:48:59  12:49:44 The boat is full of Dutch people.... go figure. I can't get away from them even here in Canada.  12:51:06 We are really in luck today because in addition to the visiting Humpback Whales there is also a Grey Whale feeding nearby. Apparently the Grey Whales have been somewhat less frequently spotted ever since the Humpback Whales showed up, although it's not clear why that is since the two species aren't competitors for food. And just a couple hundred metres from the feeding Humpbacks a Grey Whale has come to feed as well.  12:58:28 There he is! His name is "The Admiral" and he is a consistently regular resident of these waters during the summer. (These waters being known as Barclay Sound, which I forgot to mention....)  12:58:42 As I mentioned before the feeding methods of the two species of whales is completely different and this Grey Whale should now be very predictable in its behaviour whereas before the two Humpback Whales were sort of randomly popping up all around us as they followed the schools of fish.  12:58:54 Not that that predictability has thus far resulted in any properly centred photographs though. Give me some time to get used to the stylistic change, I guess.  12:59:03 The Grey Whales are really so predictable... I wish I could convey how much so because it's really quite interesting somehow. They come up to the surface, breathe, go down a bit, come back up again, go down a bit again, moving along in a straight line, and then they come back up again and arch their back quite visibly as they dive down to the bottom to feed. When you see the arching back you know that if they are going to show their tail it will be right then as they dive deep. And then they stay down a few minutes and come up again and do the same thing all over again. This predictability is a bit boring, perhaps, but it also allows you to get closer to them (because you can predict where they will end up and therefore you can let them come to you) and also makes them easier to photograph because you can predict where and when they will come back up again. The Humpbacks, by comparison, just kind of pop up randomly (as I said earlier). You can see them arch their back and dive down for a feeding lunge to the surface and so you know that probably their heads will come out of the water shortly after you see that but you don't really know where exactly that will happen, or even if it will happen.  13:00:14 How lucky are we today?!?? On the opposite side of the boat as the Grey Whale there is one of the Humpbacks continuing to feed. There are whales all around us, it seems. You aren't even sure on which side to look because there are whales coming to the surface all around us. Sometimes all three whales come to the surface within a few seconds of each other.  13:01:07 The Admiral comes to the surface once again. He is easy to identify to the locals because on his back there are scars from the propeller of a boat that he must have run into sometime long ago. I am not sure if those scars showed up on any of these pictures, but if I see them I'll let you know.  13:01:27 One thing about the Admiral, our boat captain says, is that he absolutely never shows his tail. That's a bit disappointing for any of us who were hoping for a nice photo of the whale tail sticking out of the water... the classic whale photograph.  13:01:41 The Humpback continues to feed just off the other side of us. I notice that the boat captain guy also has his camera out to take some pictures. You know you're getting really lucky when the guy who does this three times a day for a living gets his camera out.  13:04:07  13:09:33 The Admiral has decided to give up on his repetitive straight feeding runs and do some feeding around these rocks instead. This should be interesting.  13:09:39 The seals watch us warily. Seals are really paranoid and will hit the water if you even slow down too much passing them by. And this seems somewhat counter-productive to their safety, if you ask me, because boats aren't going to do them any harm. What WILL do them harm are so-called "transient" Killer Whales that use them for food. We've all seen Animal Planet, right? The Killer Whales will come right out of the water and grab the seals off the rocks. So, if you ask me, diving into the water at the signs of danger is a dumb thing to do. They are happy on land and can climb pretty high up on the rocks. Climb HIGHER up, I say. The Killer Whales can't get you if you climb high enough. (As for the difference between "transient" Killer Whales and the other kind called "resident" we shall discuss that in a few days....)  13:09:50 Hmmmmmm. Where did the Admiral go?  13:09:51 Chill out seals. We're not going to come over and eat you.  13:10:33 Maybe that's it for the whales for today?  13:11:34 Maybe seals is all we get from now on?  13:11:42 See? If they'd just climb a bit higher up then how the hell is a Killer Whale supposed to get them?  13:12:05 What are those birds called? Cormorants? (Who cares about birds....? Where are the whales?)  13:12:13 Hey! There he is! He's back! I am not sure at this angle but it looks like he's arching his back to go down feeding.  13:16:49 While the Admiral is down feeding we have a couple minutes to appreciate the lovely scenery. Here we are looking up Barclay Sound in toward Vancouver Island. Just imagine when Captain Vancouver first sailed here and saw this lovely sight unfolding before him.  13:16:57 So now The Admiral is feeding in a different way around these rocks. Instead of diving down to the bottom and scooping sand and everything up he's doing something else instead, which I am not really sure what it is (ask a Marine Biologist) but which involves him turning on his side and exposing his flippers.  13:17:03 You can see where Grey Whales get their name from. Although not all Humpback Whales are completely black in colour, the ones we've seen today are REALLY black. The Grey Whales, by comparison, are distinctly grey in colour with white patches all over them.  13:17:05 See the Dutch guy at the left? He's living life through the lens of his camera. He's got a much better camera and surely got much better pictures than I did, of course. But maybe I saw more stuff in the moment than he did? I hope so, otherwise maybe I should get a big SLR camera too? Maybe I should get an SLR camera anyway... I think I take pretty good pictures with my crappy little camera.... maybe with a better camera I could take even BETTER pictures? That's how it all starts, isn't it? Next thing you know you are broke and own $10.000 worth of camera equipment and you're carrying around twenty kilos of stuff in one of those huge camera bags that are shaped to accommodate a camera with a huge telephoto lens attached. Which reminds me... I had this idea of making a book of my best travel pictures and somehow making the "hook" of the book that I didn't take all the photos using expensive big professional cameras, but rather with just my plain old deck-of-cards-sized camera. I always say that people can do great things with cheap stuff and crap with expensive stuff and photography is no different. But an SLR camera with a nice kind of multi-purpose wide/zoom lens does give one a few more options when taking pictures. Then again... I would never refer to my picture taking as "photography". It's taking pictures. No need to label it pretentiously. I leave the pretension to those types of people who look down their noses at my "picture taking" because I am just using a crappy pocket camera. Hey man! It's called a pocket camera for a reason! See? In a fraction of a second I just put it in my pocket... out of the way but still easily accessible. I am sick of wearing stuff around my neck and having sore shoulders. I don't need to throw a camera on there as well. (Do I sound bitter?)  13:17:09 I took this photo to illustrate exactly how close the whales are to us. But if I may go off on another tangent for a moment.... what's the deal with couples travelling together and BOTH of them bringing cameras? (And yes I know that the chick with the Dutch guy is using a video camera and he has his SLR camera, but that wasn't what I was referring to. It just reminded me of it because you see it all the time and the two OTHER couples in the both, if I remember correctly, BOTH had their own individual cameras.)  13:17:11 Remember what our boat captain said about The Admiral NEVER showing his tail? Well, guess what.... he did. Now we REALLY know that we're getting lucky today. First the weather, then the Humpbacks, then the Grey Whale and Humpbacks feeding in the same place, and to cap it all off The Admiral shows us his tail.  13:17:57 It's just around this rock on the right that The Admiral is feeding, so we just sit here in the boat and he keeps coming up right in front of us.  13:18:17 I wonder what he's doing down there. I expect that those rocks are pretty sharp. Then again, when you're a whale you probably don't mind so much when you rub against things. It probably knocks off some of the barnacles anyway.  13:18:26  13:18:39 Whatever it is that the Admiral is doing he is swimming around on his side a lot.  13:18:45  13:19:16  13:19:20 Is that the tail again? I can't really tell, but it just might be.  13:19:24 Ok, well that is DEFINITELY the tail.  13:19:39 Tail or flipper?  13:21:07 I don't know if I could go through life covered in barnacles....  13:21:38  13:27:19 Another shot of the great weather that we're having.  13:28:25 And another view inland up Barclay Sound.  13:34:08 And so we leave the whales behind us and speed off to continue along on our tour of the Broken Islands.  13:34:17  13:35:03  13:35:40  13:37:08 Another option that I considered for this trip was to be stranded out on an island for a day. Imagine being dropped off on this beach here for a day.  13:37:30  13:38:15 This reminds me of the Lost Boys hangout from the movie Hook. Anyone remember that?  13:38:58  13:39:08 Yah, definitely the Lost Boys hangout. Remember they had their houses up in the one big tree?  13:40:14  13:40:57 And now we come to the Sea Lions portion of our little tour. In this narrow strait between two islands the Sea Lions come to hang out in the summer.  13:41:05 As we enter the strait the noise of hundreds of Sea Lions barking reaches our ears.  13:41:12 One of the Sea Lions ducks under the water just in front of us.  13:41:25 Unlike seals, Sea Lions aren't as paranoid (probably because they are much larger) and don't dive into the water when you get close.  13:41:34 Everywhere you look there are Sea Lions!  13:41:47 Apparently there are a couple of thousand Sea Lions here sometimes. At the moment there must be more than a thousand, at least that many that are visible.  13:41:54  13:42:01 I wonder if I could get that comfortable on a rock?  13:42:15 A Sea Lion up ahead shows us his flipper.  13:42:20  13:42:21 Notice the number 86 on the Sea Lion at the right. Whenever the boat operators see a particular number they mark it down in a log book and at the end of the season they send the data to researchers so that they can track the Sea Lions and their migration patterns.  13:42:31 The same Sea Lion still showing off up ahead.  13:42:55  13:43:32  13:43:40  13:43:49  13:44:26  13:45:06  13:49:17 We slowly approach a small island populated with Sea Lions.  13:50:21  13:51:03  13:51:19 As you can see, most of the Sea Lions barely take notice of us as we pass by. If these were seals they would be long gone by this point.  13:51:27 Once again I took a photo to show how close we are to the animals.  13:51:31  13:51:59  13:52:40  13:52:50 There are even MORE Sea Lions over here on this side of the island! The noise is incredible! (Which reminds me... I had originally planned to take sound samples on this trip and embed them into the Travelogues, but I decided not to bother because it was just too much trouble. But now I wish that I had, somehow, because the noise is amazing. How about I take a movie of the Sea Lions instead? It won't be the best sound quality or in stereo (which would be great since the Sea Lions are surrounding us) but it will at least be something, right?  13:52:59  13:54:50 Another whale watching boat passes by us through the Sea Lion hangout.  13:57:36  13:58:28 See all those things floating in the water? All those are Sea Lions too.  13:59:26  13:59:45  14:00:13 A popular pastime here is sea kayaking. Here we see a kayak'er paddling through the Sea Lion hangout.  14:00:26  14:00:50 A bunch more Sea Lions hanging out in the water.  14:00:56  14:01:27 Leaving the Sea Lions behind us now we continue on our way.  14:02:04  14:03:17  14:03:37 It always seems strange to me that a really great place to see Bald Eagles is here in Canada.  14:03:43 You can see the Bald Eagle, right? Up on top of the rock?  14:04:06 A few stray Sea Lions...  14:06:32  14:08:08 It's amazing how even at this distance you can still tell that it's a Bald Eagle.  14:10:44  14:11:48  14:14:28  14:17:38  14:18:08 Our boat captain deftly manoeuvres the Zodiac into a little cove.  14:18:16  14:18:41  14:19:31  14:20:26  14:21:50 What an absolutely terrible photo..... why didn't I just delete that one?!??  14:22:00  14:23:53  14:24:17 If you look up in those trees up there you can see an Eagle's Nest.  14:25:30 Maybe that's a better view of the Eagle's Nest, actually.  14:26:48 That's pretty cool, huh?  14:27:14  14:27:28 I should have brought sunscreen and better sunglasses today. This sun is really relentless.  14:29:14  14:30:31 A pair of kayak'ers explore the Broken Islands. I bet that it would be much more peaceful for them if there weren't any loud motorboats and stuff driving around. Imagine just floating around out here in the nature in the peace and quiet.  14:32:47 After making our way South we are now making our way back to the North again. This is a view back along Barclay Sound with that great view of the mountains in the distance.  14:34:55  14:35:06  14:38:27 So, now it's lunchtime and we're going to land on this island up here to eat our sandwiches and stuff that the whale watching tour company has provided.  14:43:16 After climbing off the boat we have some time to eat lunch and explore the island.  14:43:27 Meanwhile the boat captain guy pulls out a little bit to eat his own lunch.  14:44:27 This is the lunch that I ordered several months ago over the phone when I booked the tour. Not the cookies and carrots, but the sandwiches and drinks. It was a little bit like ordering at Subway in that they asked me all these questions about what kind of sandwich and bread and what to put on it. The cookies, by the way, were totally awesome.  14:45:59  15:06:05 Just in case you thought that we were completely away from civilisation.... this island is called Turret Island and it is actually one of the Islands out here that are part of the Pacific Rim National park. And as such, despite the fact that it's an island, you can come out here and (provided you pay your park fees) go camping and stuff. And this lovely construction is Turret Island's bathroom. Not just any bathroom, mind you. It is a environmentally harmonised compost bathroom.  Perhaps it is time for another satellite orientation? Now, please bear in mind that this path I've sketched out is wildly speculative based on my memory of where we went and what direction we went and for how long. The start point (in Ucluelet) and end point (on Turret Island) are accurate, however. Everything in between is educated guessing, but I did want to show how little of the island group we will actually ultimately see on this tour. Really not even half of it, and we've been out here for three hours already. You can really spend a lifetime exploring out here.  15:06:34 A view back through the trees to our ride back to Ucluelet.  15:07:47 As you can see, there is at least one set of overnight campers set up here on Turret Island. Imagine kayak'ing out here and spending a few nights.  15:08:39  15:09:26  15:10:12 It's time to head back to home again and our boat comes in to pick us up.  15:10:45  15:15:24 A smarter person would delete these photos and not share them with the world. As for my haircut.... well, I must only bear it for another week or so. Once I get to Alberta, as planned, I will have my hairdresser (the guy who's cut my hair since I was five) fix this for us.  15:17:12  15:21:03 And so we're off again at high speed back to Ucluelet harbour.  15:22:17  15:22:21  15:22:39 Again I must stress that despite all the cloud cover at the high altitudes of the mountains there is nothing but clear skies out here where we are.  15:22:44  15:23:57 Rainbow in the spray.... I am quite fond of those photos, as some might have noticed.  15:24:49 The view backward as we cruise along.  15:25:50  15:27:00  15:27:53  15:28:26 It's not very obvious in this photo, but at the top of this mountain ahead, on the left side, is a radar dome used by the Canadian "coast guard" that can "see" a hundred miles out to sea. It sort of ruins the illusion that you're out in the middle of nowhere away from any human influence.  15:34:49  15:35:26  15:36:03  15:37:39  15:38:03  15:39:57 Which brings us back to the slow speed zone of Ucluelet harbour. The sign on the thing says maximum of 7 knots. It is now 15h40. How long does it take us to get back to the dock?  15:53:14 It is now 15h53 and we're just entering the marina. So, like it took us 15 minutes to travel what we could have travelled in like 2 minutes. Stupid rules.  18:04:10 And so, after another brief drive, we return to the Beach Break Lodge and Chesterman Beach.  18:04:19 The weather here continues to be great, as you can see.  18:18:27 Having stopped in again at the Co-Op we are ready to have a barbecue.  18:38:03 We eat dinner sitting on the deck of our room looking out toward the ocean. In addition to the steak we also have some bruschetta, potato salad and iceberg lettuce salad with Catalina dressing (one of my favourites!).  19:33:27 After dinner we take a short walk along the beach and I take the 2005 version of a photo I took last year called "Starfish on Chesterman Beach".  20:19:37 The hot tub at sunset is a good way to warm up after wading in the cold ocean in sandals.  20:37:03 And now for a classic childhood thing for me... Jiffy Pop.  20:46:38 It didn't work so well on the barbecue, however. Not hot enough, I guess. Should have closed the lid.  20:50:11 This picture is fuzzy, but hopefully you get the point that there's popcorn inside the foil dome.  20:50:51 Just before bed Maxi tries to clean out and dry off the iPod we found on the beach this morning. Maybe it will still work and we can track down its owner based on what music is on it? Like a detective story. And so, with that we reach the end of another day and who knows what tomorrow will bring? Today's Travel Information Subtidal Adventures www.subtidaladventures.com 1-877-444-1134 Islands and Whales Tour - $95/person (Lunch Included) Today was my first experience with the Subtidal Adventures company and I was very pleased with the experience. I chose them because they were the only company I could find that offered an extended (four hour) tour that included everything I wanted to do in Barclay Sound: whale watching, a tour of the Broken Islands, and a stop on an island for lunch. The name of this tour was Islands and Whales and I would definitely recommend it to anyone who wants to do something a little more than just simply whale watching. They also have a nice variety of other tour options available as well. 
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