Are we there yet?

What 36 hours in transit looks like.
After a rather quiet Christmas, Lee and I went to Vancouver Island for some R&R (like we needed it...). We arrived well past one in morning at the Tofino Botanical Gardens & Clayoquot Field Station, and actually woke up a lady who was in the room we were supposed to be in! Ooops! So we quickly left that room and found ourselves another room, this time empty, and settled in for the night. The next morning, we were blessed with sunshine and calm weather, which is unusual for the season, so we wasted no time in checking out the small town of Tofino. This was followed with a long walk on Long Beach (aptly named), where we were lucky enough to get a good look at a Bald Eagle. We had a late lunch (salami sandwiches in the parking lot behind the car), before heading to Ucluelet, south of Tofino, where we did a little more hiking and enjoyed a very windy sunset. After all that walking, we had worked up quite an appetite, and made reservations in what is likely one of the finest restaurants on the island, The Pointe Restaurant. Although it was a bit pricey, the food (the duck breast was to die for) and the service were outstanding. They also had a full panoramic view of the Pacific Ocean, but we'll have to save that for next time as we were there after dark. The next morning we got up early so we could do a few short walks before leaving for the ferry, but, alas, the weather gods had turned against us and it was pouring rain. We did manage to do a short walk in an area where the topsoil had prevented the trees from growing properly. The trees looked a bit like wild bonsais, which was very cool. The walk was supposed to take about 30mins, but because of the bad weather we did it in less than 15! After our very thorough soaking, we decided to leave the other walks for a return trip and decided to head for the ferry. Unfortunately, the rain turned into a very bad snowstorm, which delayed us so much that we missed our ferry and had to race to catch another. Fortunately, and due primarily to Lee urging me to drive like a maniac (don't worry, there wasn't any snow in Nanaimo), we were able to catch another ferry, which got us to the mainland in time to return our car rental.

Long beach in Tofino (that small figure in the centre is Ulrik).
Back in Vancouver we celebrated New Year's with Karen and Scott, and Julie (Karen's sister) and Colin, which started out with a very nice dinner and degraded into some pretty serious drinking (damn those drinking games). It was a pretty great evening all around. The next couple of days were mainly spent recovering, getting the last few items for our trip, and taking a few walks around the city. We even went five-pin bowling (we had tried to go skiing/snowshoeing, but the weather turned against us), and Scott kicked our collective butts. In good spirits (but with our bowling egos seriously bruised) we said good bye to Vancouver, and jumped on a grueling flight (we were in transit for more than 36 hours!) to Jakarta, Indonesia via Seoul, Korea and Singapore.

New adventures aplenty await us in the Southern Hemisphere. (By the way, we tried to check the rotation of the toilet flush, but the only flush toilet we've come across just wooshes down and doesn't swirl ... how disappointing!)

For more photos, see our Tofino & Ucluelet photo album, and/or our New Year's Eve photo album.