Tofino & Ucluelet, BC
Similar and yet different, eh?
Before this adventure started last October, N. and I had bandied about the idea of driving the country until we reached the farthest edges of the Lower 48. We had toyed with the idea that we might even cross the border into our northern neighbor, if we didn’t give up the crazy notion of living in a van before then. And so, here we were: driving up to a security checkpoint at the Peace Arch Border Crossing, presenting our passports, and being waved in. We were now in the province (translation: state) of British Columbia, Canada.
“Capgras Syndrome” is the name of the disease in which patients believe that people and objects in their lives have been replaced by fraudulent substitutes. That was the feeling I got as soon as we crossed the border. Things from the highway seemed very much the same as they were on the American side: fast-driving cars on wide highways; signs in English with town names that would not be out of place back home (White Rock, Crescent Beach, Richmond); signs for rest areas, gas stations, fast food restaurants — all familiar.
But there were also subtle signs that we were indeed in a different place altogether: signs on the highway cautioned that the speed limit was “100 kmh”. Gas stations advertised gasoline for “$180.9” — a mystery solved only after complex arithmetic operations involving conversions from imperial to metric systems, and from Canadian to American dollars. (We had a quick lunch at the first place we found after having parked our van in town, and our meal of CAD $40 translated to a bill of US $30.) They even had a Canadian version of an REI — called MEC — with a suspiciously similar logo. We had popped in to purchase the Parks Canada Discovery Pass, which was the Canadian version of our National Park Service’s America the Beautiful Pass. Capgras Syndrome.
All this excitement about being in a new country was deflated by a horrid little vacation rental in North Vancouver. (We had to make it to an early ferry the next morning, and there were no campgrounds close to the terminal.) It was located in an fancy-looking neighborhood and the back of the house overlooked Burrard Inlet, but among many issues (such as trash strewn around the lawn), the basement apartment had stickers of the Number 5 on the bedroom and bathroom doors: one does not put a “Number 5” on a door unless there are Numbers 1 through 4. I prayed that I would wake up with both my kidneys.
***
We have new experiences every day but today was special: taking our van into a ship for a ferry ride across the Salish Sea to Vancouver Island. I had lots of questions: how big would a ship have to be to carry not only passengers but also cars? How would the ferry company go about loading the vehicles? Wouldn’t cars jostle back and forth in the cargo hold, like crackers inside a box?
We entered the ferry terminal and presented our ticket. I had paid an extra fee because our van was considered “oversized” because of its required height clearance of 10 feet. But if our van was “oversized”, what would a 16-wheeler or a bus or a full-sized trash truck be considered? Vancouver Island was, duh, an island, so everything had to be trucked in and out. We were directed to a specific numbered lane in the terminal and waited.
Soon, a gate opened and cars began to pour out of the hold of the gigantic ferry: sedans, SUVs, and vans; ambulances, RVs, campers; refrigerated food trucks, trucks with construction material, empty trucks. After all had disembarked, it was our turn: cars, SUVs, vans, ambulances, RVs, campers, and trucks. It was a let down of sorts: all we did was drive into a cargo hold as directed, stop, turn off the engine, pull the emergency brake, and leave our vehicles. No only was allowed to sit inside a vehicle during the trip just in case there was turbulence, and the cars and trucks did start to shake like maracas.
Some of the best views of Vancouver were from the ferry: the modern skyline, the waterfront, the mountains.
Upon arrival in Nanaimo, the same process in reverse: we got into our cars and the gates in the ferry belly magically opened and all we had to do was drive out of the ship; within a couple of minutes, we were merging into BC Hwy 19 in Vancouver Island. Keep calm and drive on.
From Nanaino, we drove four hours to the town of Tofino on the opposite coast. N. seemed unfazed by the drive and, yes, there were some beautiful snow-capped mountains and lakes and rivers on the way, but I objected strenuously to the steep inclines and declines that uncomfortably brought memories of Wawona Road.
We arrived safely in Tofino, into a campground that, like many others, billed itself an “RV Resort”; for once, it was accurately named. Our vanlife rules prohibited me from cooking on travel days, so we ended up at a seafood restaurant, eating at the bar and watching ice hockey between the Vegas Golden Knights and the Edmonton Oilers on the TV screen. Understandably the fans were one-sided.
Now, what could be more Canadian than that, eh?
***
Before leaving for the day’s adventures, I wanted to get a head start on a dinner recipe that called for a marinade of soy sauce, sugar, white pepper and chinese five spice powder. To that, I was adding chunks of boneless skinless chicken thighs (pro-tip: it’s easier to cut meat with kitchen shears instead of using a board and knife). Leaving my production at the picnic table, I had popped into the van to grab some paper towels and was heading out again when I caught sight of two large crows, sniffing around the table. I yelped in a panic —kids, you know why — and saw a crow hop from the table to a nearby tree branch… with a very large chunk of raw chicken in its beak!
Did you know that a group of crows is called a MURDER of crows?
***
After recovering — only slightly — from this bizarre aerial attack, we headed to the town of Ucluelet to hike the Lighthouse Loop Trail.
Gorgeous: the juxtaposition of mountains full of trees with the blue of the ocean, sprinkled with dark rocky islands and ribboned with white waves. It was a rugged beauty, raw and vaguely threatening — there was absolutely no question that Mother Nature was in control.
The trail itself was less than three miles, but it took us more than two hours to complete it. Every few yards or so, the path forked and another short path let to a lookout point with a bench that invited hikers to stop, rest and enjoy the views. So that was what we did.
We spent the rest of the afternoon being lazy at the Wickaninnish Beach within the Pacific Rim National Park Reserve.
At dinner, I kept looking up at the trees to see if the crows would come back for more chicken.
***
In the last 20 years, whale-watching tours: 3
Whales spotted in whale-watching tours: 0
So our expectations for this one were not very high. Secretly, though, we couldn’t help having them: the company that we chose pledged that their success rate for seeing whales was “95%”; for good measure, their website included a picture of a humpback whale jumping out of the water. Hope sprang eternal.
From our campground, we biked to the meeting point, donned big red suits — for warmth and as flotation devices — and hopped on a zodiac boat. The captain informed us that the front row was the bumpiest, so N. and I chose to sit on the back, claimed on the unspoken universal rule that the eldest in the group had dibs.
The boat tour outfits around Tofino seemed to have it easier than most: the surrounding inlets, coves, and islands made the whole area so beautiful that the boat ride alone seemed to be worth the price of the ride. The skipper glided the boat out of the marina and soon the only things we could see were the water dotted by views of islands full of greenery.
We saw a bald eagle, just sitting there on a pylon at the dock — it was just sitting there, immobile, so there was a minuscule possibility that it was a plastic figurine, glued to the post.
We ran into a few sea otters ‘playing’ in the water, in quotes because, according to the skipper, male otters had, through natural selection, become so violent in play that even the females only approached them during mating season. It seems that kindness was not a required element in the survival of the fittest.
Once we reached a spot beyond Vargas Island, our boat stopped and we waited. Soon enough, we saw the spray from a blowhole and, after a few minutes, we saw the barnacled hump of a gray whale. Unfortunately, the area was not deep enough for the whale to get a deep enough dive to flip her tail out of the water. A dorsal-fin-less hump would have to do.
It was only after we saw her coming up and down the surface several times that the skipper confessed this particular animal was Orange Crush, the resident whale who had been known to come to this bay for years. She should be getting a commission from all the whale tours companies.
In the last 20 years, whale-watching tours: 4
Whales spotted in whale-watching tours: 0.59 (estimated portion of whale seen)
Technically, we saw a whale, but for some reason, it didn’t feel as if we did.
***
We wanted to spend some time within the boundaries of the Pacific Rim National Park Reserve, so we headed south.
The Bog Trail was just a tiny 500 meters (we still have to get used to the metric system). According to the ranger we met at the visitor center the day we arrived in the area, the bog was a very good example of an ecosystem that was starved for nutrients, so he had made a big deal about seeing trees that looked very bonsai-ish.
He was right; we did see trees that had that bonsai-vibe, but my problem was that we saw all these very peculiar things and we had no understanding of anything because there were no informational plaques on the boardwalk through the bog. I enjoyed the walk a bit less because I had no idea of what I was walking through. It seemed like a very appropriate metaphor for the importance of education: if one does not have any context — cultural, artistic, scientific — how much can we really enjoy where we are or what we see?
At the parking lot, we met an older lady fully geared up on a bike — gloves, panniers, bike mirror. The only thing she seemed to be missing was a phone with a map because she approached us to ask whether we knew where Route 4 towards Tofino was (she had begun her ride in Ucluelet). I was happy to direct her, but still felt a bit puzzled as to why a person biking from one town to another did not have a map. She kept mentioning that she couldn’t figure out how she got turned around. Let me just mention that Ucluelet to the south and Tofino to the north are connected by the aforementioned Route 4. And… that’s it — there are no other roads connecting the two. (Like the Seattle Monorail!)
The Rainforest Trail A took us through a thick stand of cedar trees that were supportive of many other types of plants — ferns, fungi, moss — and had a few informational plaques. The most interesting thing I learned was that woodpeckers carve dead trunks in a rectangular shape for their little homes. Another interesting fact about parks in Canada is that they place little distance markers on the trail — at least on the boardwalks we have visited so far — every 100 meters. They were quite cute, but the problem was that after I first discovered them, I just kept looking for them on the ground instead of looking around me at nature.
We ran into the directionally challenged lady again. She was coming the wrong way on the one-way boardwalk. She seemed confused, so we tried to explain how the one-way trails worked here, but she just went along the wrong way. We could only wonder how long it would take her to reach Tofino.
***
It was lunch time and we needed to find a place to park. We wanted to find a spot along Long Beach because it was the one with a parking lot where, if lucky, one could park a van, throw open the back doors, and get an awesome view of the waves. Chances didn’t look good. When we arrived, the parking lot was packed and a couple of cars in front of us were driving very slowly, sniffing for any movement or reverse lights that would indicate that a car was leaving. We joined this vulturous crew. And just as we were making our way down the row of cars, what happens every time N. is trying to find a parking spot happened yet again: a car one spot down turned its engine and started to back up slowly. I have started to think of N.’s ability to find parking as a superpower.
We saw no reason to leave the spot for the rest of the day.
Our stay in that happy spot was marked by a group of young people in their early twenties who, inexplicably — given we were in a place called Long Beach — decided to park themselves not just next to us by their van, but also in front of us by our van. While we were lazing in our van, I was privy to tidbits of their conversations, which included gems such as:
“I started to read the list of ingredients on the self-tanning cream I was using and I stopped after the first ingredient because I really didn’t want to know. I thought to myself: it doesn’t matter; I’ll probably die because of skin cancer from the sun or from the tanning cream anyway!”
“I swear to God, I got sunburn on my butt cheeks, and it lasted a year!”
“Don’t you hate it when you get a “diaper bag”: I once was wearing a bottom that just collected water down there and then sand was coming in…”
At the end of the day, N. and I got to chatting with a woman who lived in Ucluelet and had come to Long Beach to surf. She gave us a few tips for some good hikes in the area, mentioned the rising cost of housing because of gentrification, and shared that she was originally from Brazil. So for the first time in a very long time, I got to have a conversation in Portuguese. Foi muito legal!
***
Having now been in Canada for a few days, one of the cultural different we have noticed was the fact that Canadians seem to have stronger boundaries in daily interactions with strangers. In the United States, we were used to strangers greeting us, commenting on our van, asking questions. Canadians made eye contact but even nodding seemed to be considered effusive. They commented on our van or hammock, but only among themselves, something that was strange, because we were right there, and we could hear they were talking about us, and they could see that we could hear them.
Some more observations about Canadian Facts of Life (CFL):
C$1 coins were called “Loonies”; C$2 coins, “Toonies”.
Milk in cartons and soft drinks in cans were charged extra “recycling fees” and “government fees”. When I asked a cashier in Ucluelet why that was, she mentioned that they might be charges for the disposal/recycling of those items at the back end. She didn’t seem too sure.
In most places, alcohol — even beer — was not available for sale in grocery stores; one had to go to government-run liquor stores.
There was no Diet Dr. Pepper in the Canadian universe. It broke my heart.
***
From the “Westerly News — Tofino-Ucluelet Edition”:
Stage 1 of Water Restrictions were launched in Tofino. Restrictions “mandate that residents with odd numbered civic addressed may only water their lawns, gardens and landscaped areas on Monday and Thursday from 6-9 am and 7-10 pm. Residents with even numbered civic addresses may water on Tuesday and Friday between 6-9 am and 7-10 pm.”
Flair Airlines lost a hockey stick that the Seattle Kraken player Daniel Sprong gave to a Ucluelet kid during a match against the Las Vegas Golden Knights. Headline in the front page was, “Hockey Stick Saga Continues”.
Many of the ads are from the newspaper itself with things such as “Question of the Week” Last week’s question: “Have you been following the NHL playoffs?” This week’s question, “Have you gotten into or on the ocean yet this year?” My question, “Who thinks of these questions?” The newspaper also issued invitations such as, “The Westerly News encourages feedback from its readers. Do you have something to say? Send a letter to the editor" with a listing of a physical address for mailed letters.
A sobering headline, “Over 100 gather to remember missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls and two-spirit people.” I had no context to understand this headline, let alone the story.
The newspaper reminded me of the college paper we used to put out back in the early 1990’s — and I say that with the greatest fondness.
***
Today’s hike on the Wild Pacific Trail in Ucluelet also offered views of the hills and rock outcroppings and water. They were gorgeous, but not new or different from those in the hike on Lighthouse Loop, which kind of spoiled us.
This one took us from Brown’s Beach to Rocky Bluffs. The trail meandered through trees that lined the rocky coast and opened from time to time to give us glimpses of the open seas. It was a picture-perfect day: blue skies, blue ocean, white waves, black rocks, green trees. Just as in the other loop, there were benches placed in each vista point that invited sitting, contemplating, enjoying.
The trail was steeper here, so it was more of a workout than N. and I had expected, but we had no complaints.
***
N. had to work all day, mostly on headache-y things that he spared me from.
We did manage to take a short hike from our campground in MacKenzie Beach, through Middle Beach, Third Beach, and finally to Tonquin Beach.
The most interesting thing I learned today was that for the native First Nations tribe of the area, “there is no concept of the word ‘wilderness’ in the Nuu-chah-nulth language; the closest translation is “walyuu,” meaning “home.”
That just blew my mind.
That was just a tiny but fundamental example of a different imagination, of a different relationship with nature, of a different way of understanding one’s place in the world. If one imagines that the wilderness is indeed home, there is no contrast between outside and inside, between what is mine and yours, between where I belong and where I do not (or for that matter, where you belong too). Everywhere is home. And if that is the case, the expectations and responsibilities for care, nurturing and stewardship of home become so much larger. (Given my former life, I could not help but contrast this type of understanding with biblical language that gave Adam “dominion” over the earth.)
In this light, our walyuu is everywhere we go.
***
We drove back to Nanaimo and took our van into the ferry — like a boss — for a ride back to Vancouver.