the rental process was simple enough, we're now driving a ford focus. it's no civic hybrid, but what is.
we drove an hour or two to the ferry port, and got on the ferry to Vancouver Island. it was a nice ride, weaving through beautiful forested mini-islands. when we got to the island we had to go through customs, which would have been a snap if we hadn't chosen lane 3. apparently lanes 1, 2, and 4 contained all the non-terrorists, and ours had all the crazy gun-toting weirdos that canada needed to chat with extensively. but we got through it, and got to our hotel.
This morning we got up and headed out to breakfast at John's Place, a breakfast spot jeff had read about. my belgian waffle was probably the best i've ever had. and then, it was on to whale watching.
they suited us up in these super-thick flotation suits, which were burning hot until we got going on our zodiac boats. the boats are open-air and the wind whips by pretty fast. our guide took us first to see a pair of bald eagles, which were amazing. then we started seeing orcas. first they were pretty far off, but still exciting. we started moving towards the pod, and our guide knew how to get kind of in front of them and predict where they would be moving to next. each sighting seemed more and more up-close, they kept surfacing and swimming slowly, it was beautiful. finally, we went around for one more pass, and thank goodness we did because the orcas ended up basically swimming right towards our boat, basically under us, and continuing on. they were so close that we could see their white patches while they were underwater. the guide had a cool water-microphone and we could hear them calling to each other as they went by. it was amazing.
we got back to shore and then had afternoon tea at the Bleathering Place. cool british tea and little snacks, and lots of cute old ladies. now we're chilling doing some laundry, planning for some fish and chips for dinner.
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