Tofino - A great getaway

Tofino is in the Tsunami Hazard Zone, so they have evacuation routes on the on the road away from the danger zones..

That and lots of signs with warnings of cougar and wolf in the area... Didn´t see one single cougar or wolf...

Beautiful sunset Long Beach

After leaving the northern part of Vancouver Island I went to Tofino for a couple of days.

Tofino is a great little town on the westcoast of Vancouver Island.

Lots of surfers come to this place to catch the big waves, and non-surfers come here for the relaxed atmosphere, whale and bear watching, as long as it happens outside, Tofino can pretty much offer anything for everyone.

The architecture of the town is small wooden houses and cottages, all with different funky colours.

Since there is no land between the west coast and Japan to block the waves, this is a popular place for surfers, and when the wind is just right, you will also find kitesurfers from all over.

Kitesurfers

Long Beach and Chesterman Beach provide lots of space and lots of waves.

In the winter time, these same beaches attract storm watchers from all over the world

See more about winter storm watching on http://www.chestermanbeach.com/

Chesterman Beach

The noise from the roaring waves, the beautiful light sand that seems to be alive when the dry sand flies across the damp sand surface, the sand area is so wide that there is a good 150 meter walk across the sand until you hit the shallow water.

Surfers on Long Beach

I stayed at the Whalers on the point Guesthouse, a hostel right by the water, nice friendly people, and if you travel alone, Tofino is definately a place where you will meet new people - and fast! After only 3 days, I feel like I know half the people working, living and visiting Tofino.

Whalers on the point Guesthouse

I went on a few whalewatch tours with The Whale Centre. They were really helpful and had a great little museum in their office, with bones from whales, and other cool stuff from the old days in Tofino.

The Whale Centre office -real Tofino style

Unfortunately, the weather didn´t cooperate very much, the same reason the kitesurfers were in town...strong winds!

The waves were pretty wild, and it is open ocean, so my camera didn´t really get out of the bag other than a few of the grey whale called ´Saddle´.

And that was a resting whale, so this picture was what I got...

Grey whale surfacing for air

We saw a humpback, doing some tail slapping which was really cool, but I might be a little spoiled from being in the calm water in the inlets and passages up north. The water was usually really calm upthere, perfect conditions to take pictures...

I was really sad to hear that a couple of hours after I was outthere, they saw Transient killerwhales, make a kill! This time they killed a seal, and apparently it was grand!

I am sure that at one point I will be so lucky to witness the transient killerwhales in action.

A raven couple, you just gotta love the ravens

Leaving Tofino behind, I took the 3 hour drive through the mountains. A beautiful drive, large lakes surrounded by mountains, lots of green trees, mostly pine, and the occasional overhanging cliff over the road...eeek!

I stopped in Port Alberni for a little while. My grandparents, along with my mom and uncle lived here for a short while after world war 2. My grandfather worked a few different places in Canada and Port Alberni was one of those places. I stood there in the middle of town, trying to imagine was it could have been like when they were here so many years ago.

Just outside Port Alberni, I stopped in Cathedral Grove and took a walk on one of their trails. This large protected area has extremely large trees around 800 years old and some of the trees reach a circumference of nothing less than 9 meters!

Cathedral Grove

There are trails that you can follow and these trees gives you a strange feeling of being really really small in this world. The light is kind of eerie and scary and fascinating and the acoustic is stunning. Voices tend to drown in the leaves of the trees..

hey...look who this is...

Truly a special place!

Until next time..

Pacific Whiesided Dolphins






Humpback whale feeding on Krill






The open mouth of a humpback whale






A whole new world has been opened to me over the past couple of months, and for that, I am grateful!






The wonders of nature up here in the northern part of Vancouver Island are endless and the beauty is striking. When the fog comes rolling in over the water, and being burned off by the sunshine, the blue, dreamy light of September, the healing and calm effect of the water.


The constant search for wildlife on shore or in the water. This place is alive and it never takes too long before you can spot either dolphins, porpoises or whales surfacing.
Amazing!

Every day on the water is different, every morning is different than the afternoon.


Getting to know the different individuals of the orca, the fact that they are as diverse as the humans and is amazing.

It leaves me wanting to learn more.

I have found a cetacean boyfriend. Actually I found two, hehe, Everybody has a favorite so obviously I had to find my favorite as well.

G38

A39, a male orca of the A klan, and G38, who they believe have been hit by a boat. The dorsal fin is kind of broken on the tip but he is really beautiful.

These past few weeks have been really busy and we have been out from early morning to late night, so I haven´t had the time to sit down and give you guys an update on life in Port McNeill.



I have been on a sea otter expedition to the westcoast, going out from a place called Zeballos. Getting there is about 40 km on a really bad and bumpy dirt road.
We could feel the gravel in between our teeth, and had a feeling that our lungs were covered i a thick layer of dust!
Zeballos is a tiny town on the west coast of Vancouver Island with absolutely stunning scenery.
The calm inlet water surrounded by mountains on all sides.



I have had the pleasure of witnessing 4 pods of Orca come together into a group of app. 30 whales surface at the same time, right next to our boat. My heart was ponding and I had trouble concentrating on taking pictures.

A8, G17 and A12 surfacing next to our boat
I have seen dolphins and porpoises playing along side our boat, which was really cool!


Pacific Whitesided Dolphin

I would love to show you all the pictures from there and these past weeks, and hopefully I will be able to.


My harddrive, on which I have all my pictures from the past couple of months, decided to crash on me. It is now with specialists in Vancouver where they hopefully will work some magic on it.


I don´t have much hope, but keep your fingers crossed for me as it would be absolutely devastating for me to lose all my amazing pictures.


On friday I will say goodbye to this magical place and point the car toward Vancouver and the Okanagan, where old friends, wine country and hopefully some higher temperatures will be waiting.

This video is showing the pods that surfaced next to our boat. It is a luttle skaky at times because it was amazing to watch and very difficult to concentrate on doing the video...
Enjoy!

Back in Port McNeill

After spending a week in Vancouver, visiting friends, shopping, getting an expensive yet fantastic massage, and getting my city injection I am now back in Port McNeill.

Even though I consider myself as a naturalist and a nature lover, I must admit that the city has a certain feel to it that I really love.

Staying in both West Vancouver and Surrey - which by the way are as different as night and day, West Vancouver; the nice area with big houses and an amazing view over the water and Stanley Park and downtown Vancouver.
Surrey, the city with the highest number of crime in Canada.. Very suspicious types come out after dark.
Still don´t know which I like better...
I hadn´t been on the water for about a week so I felt a longing for the ocean and the whales that I have never felt before, so I went on a whale tour with Wild Whales Vancouver, who also were the first company I ever went out to watch whales with.
We were out all day and unfortunately the whales were quite a distance away, so the transportation took more than the actual sighting.
We did find the whales, K pod down in the states by San Juan Island.
They were quite the lively pod and they were breaching, jumping, tailslapping and doing every trick in the book, even coming right up to our boat to check out who we were.
Unfortunately we could only stay with the pod for a very short time because we had to head back..
Whale watching is very different in the south area of the islands compared to up here on the north side of Vancouver. In the south there are so many whalewatch companies and not so many whales, so it easily becomes very crowded around the small pods. We must have been cramped in there with around 25 other boats.
Up here in the northern part of Vancouver island there are about 6 whalewatch companies and many more whales and wildlife in general is so abundant here, almost like a hotspot for all the action.
Not to mention the scenery here is so stunning that I haven´t seen the likes of it anywhere.
My conclusion is that this is the place to be if wildlife and nature is what you want to see!
Today I had my first day on the water with Angela and the Sea Otter.
Aaah how I missed the Sea Otter!! (The Sea Otter is the name of the zodiac...)
And what a day to start up again! Today we saw so many different animals, that it will probably be easier to say what we didn´t see...
In absolute abundance, we saw: Minke whales, Humpback Whales, Eagles, Black Bears, Sealions, Seals, Orcas and today both Resident AND Transients (Residents eat salmon and are the most common in this area, and Transients eat large sea mammals, they can be more shy, aggresive, and not so common), Numerous seabirds, Jaegers (very very cool bird, will attack other seabirds for their food. We saw two of them attacking a seagull, a true pirate, yaarrrr), Red Snapper (Yes it was dead, but we still saw it!!)
I have so many pictures from today, but I have chosen a few of the best (If I can ever just choose a few....)
Enjoy...










Red Snapper -a pretty old one since it was really big, maybe 50 - 60 years



Minke Whale surprise, it surfaced right beside our boat





Stellar Sealion, checking us out


Stellar Sealions socializing





Seagull feather on the water, after a bateball feeding


A Minke whale surfacing right next to the three Auklets


Fork tailed petrel - very very cute little bird


Transient Killerwhales


A lone little cute Penguin... was my first thought, but no...
This is a Common Murre



Seagull in a bateball frenzy


Common Murres


Screaming, feeding, and funny seagulls


A diving Rhinoceros Auklet - they can swim up to 150 meters under water..


Seagull with a small fish



Humpback whale












This guy Angela and I named Lucky Strike.
We saw him roaming around the dumpsters, and in our backyard.
He got trapped and placed in the nature by the conservancy people...
If he keeps returning to trash areas they will end up having to shoot it.
This guy apparently is not returning to people area since we spotted him on the beaches in low tide, acting like a real wild bear, eating what he was meant to eat.
So he is either lucky or really smart. Either way we are happy to see him out there.
He is so cute with that white patch on his chest which makes him really easy to recognize.


A male orca chasing a salmon


A log with resting seagulls, and just to the left you can see a sealion. He pushed as couple of the birds off the log...
Playful little sealion..


Humpback fluke


Humpback dorsal fin