South West Vancouver Island

Today we ventured out from Victoria and completed a lap of the south west of Vancouver Island. We followed the coastal road to Port Renfrew then went inland to Cowichan Lake & back to Vancouver along Hwy 1 that runs along the east coast.
The drive along the south west coast is quite an interesting drive. The road winds though a lush old growth rain forest with huge cedar trees. It was really hard to take good photos of due to the lack of places to pull over and the lack of light because the forest is so dense. Many rave about Cathedral Grove to the north but it's only a very small little pocket of forest. The south west coastal forest runs for some 50kms. It's more or less devoid of tourists which is always a good thing. We did a short hike around the small peninsular at Port Renfrew called the Botanical Loop. Above is the first point of interest you come to. It's called Botany Bay. It doesn't look anything like the Botany Bay I know in Australia.

You may have noticed in the first photo, a solid coverage of low cloud. The western coast of Vancouver Island (and apparently the North American west coast) tends to be covered in fog most of the time before 11am. Today was no exception. Then all of a sudden, the fog lifted and the sun made an appearance. It's amazing what a difference it made in such a short amount of time. If you look close enough, you'll see the Washington State coast across that water. I was impressed by the shear cliff sculptured by abuse from the wind and waves. Its about 8m high. Nature still manages to cling on despite the weather conditions. The trees are clustered tight right up to the edge of the overhang of the cliff.

Port Renfrew is nothing more than a jetty and a hotel (well not quite, but close). We walked along the jetty being the nosey tourists we are and saw this shifty character up one of the trees. The inland part of the "Circle Route" as it's called, was interesting enough without being spectacular. Logging on the island is big business and most of the island is scarred with patches of tree stumps. Much of the rest of the journey was tree stump scenery. The lakes on the island are nowhere near as pretty as those in the Rockies. Cowichan Lake wasn't even worth taking a photo of.

Orcas & Butchart Gardens

Fisherman's Wharf

Fisherman's Wharf is just around the Inner Harbour from the main tourist part. There are a whole bunch of odd little house boats that actually look more like houses than boats. Be assured they all have a motor of some type or other, but I wouldn't think you would want to drive them around in anything too rough. Some of them are even shops of varying types from ice cream shops to art galleries.

Whale watching

This is the way to go whale watching. Take a scarab hull & bolt three 250hp 4-stroke outboards to the back & you've got a brilliant way of getting places in a real hurry!
Eagle Wing Tours only have two boats & ours was the smaller of the two. All the other whale watching operators have either big slow cruisers or Zodiacs which are fast but if the weather's even slightly wind, you get soaked! We made a good choice because we stayed dry, didn't get beaten up by the rough seas & smoked the Zodiacs on the way back.

I'd Like to introduce you to L74. He's a male orca of "L-Pod". L-Pod are one of the "Resident" families that live around Vancouver Island. L74 is about 22 years old. All the whales are studied & given a name (of sorts). They can be easily recognised by the experts by their dorsal fin & the markings on their backs. As you can see from the photo, the orcas are not given much peace. They are surrounded by tourist operators on a daily basis. It's a bit disturbing really.

This female orca is called L12. L12 was born in 1933. She's one of the oldest of her pod. There's a web site that has all the info for identifying the individuals including family trees. L12 & L74 were traveling together when we were there. There were a number of other members of L-Pod we saw that day, but they were a way off & hounded by other boats. Some of the other cruise operators aren't very good at obeying the rules about staying at least 100m from the animals.

Among about 70 photos I took today, about six were good. This one was the best of the lot. The whales were on a serious mission to get wherever they were going & were surfacing only briefly. At one point they were chasing a school of salmon, but otherwise weren't doing anything particularly interesting. L74 got all excited for just a little while & started breaching. He only did it about 4 times & I managed to catch him in the act once.

On the return journey from the whale watching, the captain took us to a favourite hang out for some of the local Harbour Seals. They are the same species as the ones we saw in Alaska & just as lazy! The difference here was the lack of rain.

Everywhere we went chasing the whales, Mt Barker seemed to be watching over us. It towers over the surrounding peaks that are substantial themselves.

Butchart Gardens

 A short drive north of Victoria is the Butchart Gardens. "Gardens" I hear you say. Why would you go there? Well believe it or not, if you get a chance to go to Vancouver Island, this is one of the must see attractions on the list.Above, the Sunken Garden, is one of the many theme gardens within the Butchart Gardens complex.

It is the middle of summer and the flowers in the garden are in full bloom much like their wild cousins we saw in the mountains last week.

This is Ross Fountain. It has a similar fancy water jet display to the Bellagio in Las Vegas.

More flowers.....

And more with the obsession with totem poles! I couldn't help but act the goose.

This is another of the theme gardens in Butchart Gardens. The Japanese garden is one of the better ones.

Like I said, a must see if you visit Victoria B.C.

Victoria Inner Harbour.

This evening we had dinner and wandered around the Inner Harbour enjoying the twilight and taking a few photos. I'll let the photos themselves speak for me.

It was a very rewarding day and it will to be a tough one to top.