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!