Canada : Saturday 18th August 2007 - Vancouver Island : Ucluelet

Once again, we woke to...rain. Regardless, we decided to visit the "surfer town" of Tofino and then walk a trail that had been recommended to us. So off we set along the highway to travel the 40km to Tofino.

On the way we stopped at Long Beach. It was still raining a bit but we strolled on the beach, threw the frisbee, took some photos and watched the small number of surfers.

By the time we reached Tofino, the rain had stopped :-) We walked through the town and visited the harbour with its sea planes. Eventually we went into a cafe that had wireless internet access and had lunch there. Martin's tuna melt was *awesome* and was accompanied by the strange but successful combination of onion, spinach and.... strawberry! We checked emails, MySpace messages etc and then left.

On the way back to Ucluelet, we stopped at another beach. This one was quite busy and there were lots of surfers. Marina and Martin both thought the surfing looked really lame though! They seemed to spend 90% of their time stationary in the water, waiting for a wave, 5% falling off within a second and the remaining 5% travelling reaaallllly slooooowly.

Back at Ucluelet, we parked up and walked a loop trail that largely followed the coast. It was really very nice indeed, one of the nicest walks we'd done. We saw deer, various birds and... an eagle, right at the top of a tree. The coast is rocky and very beautiful.

After our walk we bought food (pizza and ice cream.... we didn't have to buy food we can prepare on the Trangia!) and headed back to our cabin. Martin and Jack went trying to photograph the sea lions when we got back. After that, we settled down for the remainder of our last day under a proper roof. Tomorrow we head back towards Victoria and two more nights under canvas.

Early in the evening, we saw a black bear on the far side of the inlet again.... presumably the same one we saw yesterday. It looks like a small black dot in the photos, even with the "big" zoom lense, but we got a pretty good look with Martin's binoculars.

Cute birdies on the veranda.

A rainy and atmospheric Long Beach. They know how to do driftwood in a big way in this part of the world!

The weather wasn't bad enough to stop Jack from having fun :-)

.... or these hardy surfers.

One of my favourite photos.

In Tofino where sea-planes are popular.

A surfer at the beach we stopped at on the way back from Tofino.

On our coastal walk as we passed through the rain forest to the coast.

The Pacific ocean :-)

A family of deer having a day at the seaside :-)

An eagle!

Marina, back at the cabin.

Looking up the inlet, inland.

Our friendly neighbourhood sea-lions.

That black dot is a bear! We saw this bear both evenings in Ucluelet. Oh for a more powerfulzoom lens (and tripod!). Very exciting, whatever the photo.

Culinary talking point of the trip. To Bekky's complete *disgust*, Martin and Marina accidently bought *pea* butter rather than *peanut* butter! You can see that it is cunningly disguised as peanut butter and could fool anyone. Until you taste it that is..... ;-)