my travels in pixels

We hadn't planned on coming back to Vancouver Island until our friends Leen and Debbie bought a new house and asked us to come and stay. We still had a few weeks before they took possession and decided to go onto the island early as everywhere was getting quite warm. The RV park at Westbay is the most popular place to stay as it's the closest to the city and people make bookings a year in advance, so it wasn't surprising that we couldn't get in. We found a vacancy at the next closest one at Fort Victoria. As the weather was pretty warm we wanted to be hooked up so that we could use our air conditioning. After the initial warm spell, the weather settled down to the low twenties, which was  perfect for walking and sightseeing. Carole getting off the water taxi at Fisherman's Wharf We caught up with our friend Carole whom we had met on our first trip in 2012. She has decided to make Victoria her base  and I can understand why, the weather is perfect here in July....

We took the ferry across from Tswwassen to Swartz Bay on Vancouver Island and then the bus down to Victoria. We got to the ferry 25 minutes early and the tickets for our boat ran out 5 minutes later! The ferry takes 90 minutes, then 30 minutes waiting for the bus and over an hour to get to Victoria. We didn’t realise it would take that long and nearly missed the whale watching trip we had booked for 12:15. We just had enough time to grab an ice-cream on the wharf for lunch before joining the queue to board the jet boat. I don’t know what we quite expected from this trip but it wasn’t very exciting and we wouldn’t do it again. None of the whales breached, so it’s a bit like watching grass grow, although the boat ride was very enjoyable. The weather was just perfect for eating outdoors, so we found a nice restaurant with seating outside and had a lovely meal and a few drinks before embarking on the long-winded trip back home. whoever sits at the top of the rocks is the "boss...