Sunday 6th October 2013, day 87 - Vancouver to Tofino for the second time

I was due to catch the 12:50 ferry from Horseshoe Bay in West Vancouver, so before I left the house I made a frittata to use up eggs and vegetables in the fridge and to take for lunch. The clear sunshine meant that, on the ferry, the glaciated cone of Mount Baker - an active volcano 121 miles south-east in Washington State - rose up behind Vancouver like a ghost. On days of exceptional clarity, the even more distant Mount Rainier can be seen from Victoria. Perhaps it was, there were more snow-topped mountains in the distance.

(The water wasn't that dark. I reduced the brightness and increased the contrast to make the mountain more clearly visible - of course the camera couldn't capture it as clearly as I saw it.)

I boarded the Tofino Express at Departure Bay in Nanaimo, Maxi got on five minutes later at the bus depot and we spent the next hour and a half travelling west towards Port Alberni. It was the same route the Moose bus had taken, but looked much different in the sunshine - that is, everything was visible, not swathed in clouds and rain. We passed Coombs Old Country Market, Campbell Lake, Sproat Lake, Little Qualicum Falls, Wally Creek and MacMillan Provincial Park. Cathedral Grove had looked like something out of a Tolkien story enough in the drizzle that accompanied my first visit there, but this time - with the low sun, the occasional maple providing a splash of gold, and the silvery ferns - it was utterly enchanting. This was just from the road, too, not in among the towering trees themselves.

During the forty-five minute break at Port Alberni, storm clouds were visible in the direction we were headed, and after reboarding the bus we soon hit rain and everything was as I remembered it. We arrived in Tofino at 7pm - the driver kindly dropped us off at the hostel door - and after putting our bags in our room we hurried to the supermarket before it closed at 8, to buy some pasta and a jar of sauce for a quick and simple (but tasty) dinner.

Our two dorm-roommates were from - of all places - Southampton.