First roadtrip through western B.C.

Good morning Folks,

how´s it going? I hope everyone is fine and in a good mood to read my newest thread :-)
I have to tell you about my last "longer weekend".
On monday evening we decided to go to Vancouver and Vancouver Island and started our search. The plannings for our trip were quiet short-termed. The result was that we didn´t get the cheapest accomadations for our trip and had to spent plenty of money more than we thaught. But otherwise we had no problems with them and real good sleeping conditions every night. More information will follow down the text.
So back to the plannings. Before we could start our trip we had to rent a car and this was more difficult then we thaught. The others had have some experience with hiring a car and so we reserved a full-sized car (for 5 persons) at a station called enterprise rentals. First problem in Canada is, if you are under 25 years old you have to pay a daily extra amount of money for the hiring because of your little driving experience. The reason for this is that the kids don´t have to go to a driving teacher and do their test. Their parents are allowed to teach them driving with 16 years and they only have to pass a short 30 minutes lasting test. It´s costing 100 $, disgusting!
Okay nevertheless Steffen was 25 and we had only to pay the regular renting price.
This problem was easyly solved. On thursday afternoon Steffen and I headed downtown to fetch the car. When we arrived the girl behind the counter refused our reservation because we had to have an international driving license. I think it was only an excuse due to the not having of our reserved car. The frustating thing was that we could not negotiate with her and so we had to take a taxi which took us to the airport where the other car rentals were located.
Fortunately Avis had a full sized car which had been delivered 10 minutes before we arrived. We took it immidiately and hey wondering no problem to rent it with our normal license!
After these little problems we drove up to the UCH and loaded our baggage into the car and finally started our roadtrip to the Pacific Ocean at 7 pm.
On board of our new Chevy Impala were Steffen the driver, Pippo the navigator, Micha the beer annihilator and me the photographer.
On the way to our first overnight stay in Vancouver we drunk some Canadians and listened to the satelite radio with its beautiful channel Top 20 of 20! Every hour the same 20 songs :D
It was stimulating the mood of our crew ^^
When we arrived at the Holiday Inn it was around midnight and after the check-in we went to a really nice bar next to the hotel. Ordered a good night pitcher of beer and talked with the bar owner about Vancouver´s attractions and where we could go shopping tomorrow.
At the next morning we plundered the buffet and checked out with a fullfilled stomach :)
On our way downtown the passed Chinatown which was really shabby and dirty. It is a enormous contrast to the shiny flair of the city centre with its skyscrapers and clean malls.
Beside the malls, Vancouver has also a shopping runway and at a friday noon it was not crowded at all. We spent at least 6 hours with shopping and experiencing the wonderful city centre.
After our more or less succesful shopping trip we continued our way up to the Horeshoe Bay.
It is located 30km in the north of Vancouver and the starting point of the ferry which should bring us to Nanaimo on Vancouver Island.
When we arrived at the entrance counter we faced a huge line up and it was obvious that we won´t been able to take the next ferry. We were forced to wait for approximately 3 hours until we could go on board. During this time we played some poker and went down to the small town and spent our time in searching for some food.
The ride with the ferry seemed to be very short because we weren´t able to feel the speed with which we were driving due to the complete darkness outside and a little bit tiredness.
After our arrival in Nanaimo we had to drive around 150km to reach our hostel in Port Alberni.
We had to wake up the women at the nightcounter (it was around 1 am) to get our keys for the room and I think she hadn´t seen such exhausted looking germans in her whole life before.
Fortunately the beds were very comfortable and it took me only a few seconds to doze off :)
Next morning we had no breakfast because it was not included and we continued our trip west searching for some possibility to eat immediatley. After a hour of ride on a beautiful highway we arrived at the Pacific Rim National Park tourist office where we got our parking license and also some information about the next gas station and a restaurant. These information led us to the small town Uclulet at the southern end of the peninsula on which the Pacific Rim National Park is located. It was a gorgeous little fishing town with a tiny harbour and an observatorium on a peak.
We found a nice diner and bought some muffins and sandwiches. On our way to the gasoline station I had the idea to eat at the beach and shortly after our tanking stop we tried to find a free entrance to the beach. This wasn´t easy at all because most of the land was in private property so that it last around 30 minutes and several u-turns until we found a possibility to touch the pacific ocean. It was a wonderful partly foggy beach and the atmosphere was a little bit mystical.
From one minute to another the fog reach the beach and than dissapeard.
It was a really nice start into the day and in fact the real start of our adventure trip. Unfortunately we couldn´t spent much time at this beach due to the fact that our trip was planned and we had lots of topics on our agenda for this day.
So we headed northwards and our stops in the Pacific Rim National Park revealed many different scenes and atmospheres from foggy dark and wet rainforests to sunny beaches with nice waves. I cannot describe them in detail please look at the photos which I uploaded at Picasa and try to make your own desicion but the only thing I had to say that it was at least amazing in most cases awesome. For some moments I felt as free as I felt in Sibiria with the difference that it was a complete different atmosphere due to the not comparable landscape.
Now back to the narration. We have been spending the whole morning in exploring the interior reainforest with it´s old and tallest trees I´ve ever seen, some bogs and foggy beaches.
In the afternoon we decided to spent some hours of recreation at the Long Beach.
It´s British Columbia´s surfer paradise with up to 3 meter high waves in September. As we arrived the beach was seemed by about 100 people on a lenght of 3km. It was really quiet and you were able to hear the waves crushing at the beach.
Only a few minutes after we arriving our desire to jump into the Pacific was so high that all the stress and tiredness of the days before were forgotten. I took my camera with me and filmed Pippo and Micha when they rushed into the waves. I joined them a few seconds later and the only feeling which was able to perceive was pain. The water was so cold that my thies felt like they were burning. I don´t want to talk about the feeling of other parts of my body ... ;-)
The ocean was very salty and I was only able to stay 6 to 8 minutes in it.
But all in all it worth it!
At around 4 o´clock we left the beach and headed further on to a little fisher town called Tofino.
We stayed in a luxury Best Western Hotel with an awesome view from our balcony on the sea.
In the evening we decided to have a real diner at a restaurant and at the reception they recommend us a small one at the harbour. The restaurant was really good attended so we had to wait about 20 minutes to get a place on the terrace. I had Linguine noodles with salmon in a orange cherry sauce. It was very very tasteful and the best salmon I ever had but it also had its price. 28 $ plus taxes for the meal and again 5 $ for the coke. 36 $ not bad for a dinner :D
When we paid everyone of us gave the normal (german) amount of tip and they looked at us like something was not right. They explained us that it is common to pay 15-20 % tip in Canada when the meal was okay and more when it was very good.
In my case that would have meant that I have had to pay 45 Dollars! In fact we didn´t pay more than we gave and left the restaurant with the certainty again that living in Canada is very expansive!
When we came back to the hotel we went down to the beach to have a fire. On our way down we saw some fires and we decided to ask one group next to us if we can spent some time togehter at their fire. We were very lucky because the group was on the way up to their room and they wanted to extinct the fire and so we finally had our own fire. We enjoyed the night sitting at the fire talking, drinking and kidding!
On Sunday morning the we woke up early to get some breakfast and we had to discover that there was no real breakfast for us due to the big marriage which was going on the whole weekend.
So I was forced to organize a box and put in everything I could take from the buffet and took it with me :D
The next point on our program was whale watching in Tofino. It started at 10:30 in the morning and begun with a short and very senseless dvd introduction about fish and animals in B.C.
Than we headed to the dinghy and started our trip out to the ocean! The dinghy had much power and it the ride was lots of fun. The weather was fine and after 10 minutes on boat Todd the skipper got a message that others had watched whales in our area.
So we headed to the spot and in fact there were two greywhales grasing. Unforunately the water was not deep enough so that the whales would have to dive steeply and were forced to show their tails. Otherwise we saw many different types of birds, seelions etc.
The ride took about 3 hours and at the end I had the feeling of sawing something very special.
Afterwards the started our way back. It was about 1 o´clock in the afternoon and Kamloops was about 650km away from us!
The way back last us until half past 11 in the evening.
We were very glad that we reach it until midnight because Anthony had birthday and we wanted to gratulate him personally.
So our weekend ended with another bottle beer and some new guys :)

I hope you all hung up until here. Sry for the long text but otherwise it would have been not adequate!

So guys have a lots of fun with finding some errors in my english!
I wish you a nice weekend stay tuned!