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I studied at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg from January to April 2001.

Canada: Vancouver Island (part IX)

FlyingDutchman
2006-03-15 18:12:55

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On tuesday April 24 at 7 am Dwane picked me up at the hostel, together with Eric from Québec and Yuni (that was her English nickname) from South-Korea. Before getting to the ferry, we picked Karen from Austria (but working as a stewardess at British Airways) and Wayne from England up as well. We took the ferry from Tsawwassen to Swartz Bay on Vancouver Island. The view was amazing because the ferry had to go around some of the Gulf Islands.
On Vancouver Island Yuni and I went to Butchart Gardens, really beautiful gardens, but really commercial as well, and we had the bad luck in the beginning that we got off the ferry the same time as a couple of buses with Asian tourists. But those left before us, so we had some time to quietly look at the gardens. Then we took a a bus to Victoria, the capital of British Columbia. We checked in at the hostel and enjoyed the sun around downtown and the harbour. In the evening we went to the Irish Pub in the Strathcona Hotel for a couple of beers.

On wednesday April 25 the others of the tour went whale watching (unfortunately they didn't see any whales), and I went to the Royal British Columbia Museum. There were a lot of displays about the First Nation people (native Canadians), about the wildlife in BC, and about life in the beginning of the century, pretty much like in the Manitoba Museum of Man and Nature. Then I walked down to the coast through the Beacon Hill Park. The city parks in BC are really good, the perfect place to relax in the sun. From the coast I could see the mountains in the state of Washington. Victoria seemed much more relaxed than Vancouver, but it could have been the good weather as well.
We left Victoria at 2 pm to drive north to Nanaimo. Along the way we stopped at Chemainus first, where they had large murals painted on almost every wall. We made a second stop at Bungy Zone, the only legal bungy jump bridge in North-America, where Wayne did a swing (swinging down from the bridge), but ...

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