Volume 6: Pete in Canada Part 20. Beaver Las Canada. 1 Continent, 2 Blokes, Infinite Weird Sh*t
Day 48 – Tofino
I awoke today at 9am, in debt to my body to the tune of about 3 hours sleep. I made a deal with my body to pay off the sleep debt over the next 5 years, with my comfy bed back at home going guarantor.
After breakfast we drove to a nearby golf course and inquired about playing 9 holes. It was going to be $32 plus $12 for club rental. Brad, now 48 plus days into his tour budget and with no job security for the next 12 months went into negotiation mode. Thankfully, for future hostages and potential high rise jumpers Brad has no intention of working in a field relating to negotiating. I think the main body of his argument revolved around the words “C’mon”, “mate”, and “can’t you do something for some Aussies on tour?”. The bloke working at the pro shop somehow wasn’t swayed by this convincing argument and fired back with a rebuttal of “I think it’s reasonably priced”. Reasonably priced if I was playing 9 holes at Augusta or St Andrews, not for 2 Aussies 7 weeks into a tour. We struck up a compromise and settled for the driving range where I promptly pumped about $5 of balls into the surrounding forest courtesy of my massive slice.
With the weekly regimented tour exercise out of the way, we headed into town to see what sort of activities were on offer. We settled on a small trip out to Meares Island over the $90 7 hour whale watching, hot spring encounter as quite simply I couldn’t see how a boat tour could take 7 hours. Gilligan only went on a 3 hour tour and he ended up on a remote island. A 7 hour tour could only mean disaster, landing on such a remote island that not even the Harlem Globetrotters would be able to find (very obscure Gilligan’s Island reference, look up “Gilligan’s Island Harlem Globetrotters” on youtube for those unfortunate not to have seen it). On the small boat ride out to Meares Island we met a Canadian couple, one of those couples that have been together so long they now look the same. They would also be added to the long list of faces that now have a name I’ve forgotten, which was unusual because the bloke had an unusual name like “Croy” or “Cray” or some sort of sea crustacean which traditionally makes the name easier to remember. Not in this case, however. We all talked about the local area and then Croy banged on about how they’d also been to long beach the day before and how they’d seen 9 foot swell. Brad and I didn’t say anything at the time, but we both later revealed that we were thinking you’re full of s#$t Cray. The swell at best was 2 feet, waves that would’ve failed to intimidate a midget on his knees.
Off the boat we followed the Big Tree Trail. A trail put together by a year 8 remedial woodwork class of students who’d nailed random sized pieces of wood together at random distances between 2 to 6 inches. At the conclusion of the trail are some big trees, helping to give you an idea of how the trail got its name. Big, however, is an understatement. They were massive. They were around 1500 hundred years old which made cutting them down and making a cricket bat out of them all the more appealing so you could tell your mates you owned a bat that took a millennium to make. As an incentive for the boat to return to the island, you pay the driver for the return leg at the completion of the return leg. As this had been a slow day for him, with just the 4 of us on the boat, I was fairly confident he needed the cash and he would come back. Fortunately, he did.
Off the boat, we parted company with the Canadian couple that looked like each other and headed for the nearby town of Ucluelet. Ucluelet is an indigenous word that means “Town near ocean with name hard to pronounce”. At Ucluelet we decided to take a stroll along the Wild Pacific Trail. At the start of the trail is the Amphitrite Point Lighthouse. The original lighthouse was erected in 1906 after the Pass of Melfort slammed into the rocks in 1905. That lighthouse was destroyed by storm waves in 1914, so with great thought they decided to make a future a lighthouse out of materials stronger than those used on the original lighthouse, which I’m assuming was chocolate or some other water sailable material. That lighthouse was put up in 1915 and is still standing today. It was at the lighthouse that we freakishly bumped into the Canadian couple that looked like each other. We exchanged pleasantries before heading off on the Wild Pacific Trail. It was about 500 metres into the trail that we decided this was lame so decided to find a bar to have a beer. What we found was the true definition of a dive bar. We wanted to play pool but couldn’t find the cues. We inquired at the bar about the distinct lack of pool cues and their importance to the game. It was then we were told that there was a $10 deposit for the pool cues due to the all too much common occurrence of them walking out of the bar. Class! What could you expect from a bar that offered 35 cent chicken wing Tuesdays? People looking for a dinner under $3.50 are typically not a quality clientele.
After enjoying the dive bar for a few quite ales, we headed back to the campsite as it was getting late in the afternoon. On returning we discovered the Quebec girls were gone. We again had some tinnies on the beach while watching the sunset and enjoyed chicken wings for dinner. It was over the beers and chicken wings that Brad once again pondered returning to Montreal and possible job fears. He had been texting Melissa constantly since we left that great city, and the opportunity to hook up with a hot French chick was something that weighed heavily on his mind. His original plan when coming to Canada was the clichéd Aussie thing of working at a Ski Park on Whistler or Banff, but the French accent had changed that. I wasn’t a snow boarder or skier so the choice was easy for me, head back to Montreal. I also wanted to end the discussion on Montreal versus Whistler as it was one that had played on about 2 weeks past its expiry date. An attractive woman with a French accent versus a mountain; is there really anything there that requires more than half a second contemplation? He’d already spilt the wine (quite literally on her), now all he had to do is take the girl.
We once again borrowed our neighbours’ axe and propane torch. Our neighbours were a pleasant Canadian middle aged coupled, with the bloke finishing each sentence with “Right on!”. I tell you; even though this bloke was white it was like being transported into a 70’s Blacksploitation movie. I would’ve been wrapped if he called us Honky or some other black slang from the 70’s but it wasn’t to be.
That was the height of my enjoyment for the night as we called it an early night.
Day 49 – Tofino to Victoria
Today we headed to British Columbia’s capital, Victoria. The construction work on every 2nd mile of Highway 4 continued and in a victory for the sisterhood and passing lesbian drivers a great many of the stop/slow signs were being controlled by women. We bypassed Nanaimo as neither of us was in the mood to smoke a crack pipe.
After a reasonably long drive we reached Victoria late in the afternoon and tried our luck at the HI Hostel. As we waited to check in I watched an interesting conversation between a Japanese patron and a Hostel employee. The Japanese bloke with his accent sounded like he was complaining “You take my seat”. I couldn’t see the problem, find another seat and move on champ. Surely all the seats were communal in the hostel, unless they’d duped this bloke out of paying for a chair to sleep in instead of a bed. Fortunately, the Hostel employee was fluent in broken English and interpreted the true meaning of the conversation; the hostel had taken his sheets. He was given some new sheets and we all got on with the rest of lives. The Japanese bloke was just one of many Japanese that seemed to be on Vancouver Island, as if all planes coming from Japan slammed into the Vancouver Island Mountains meaning Vancouver Island was the only part of Canada they got to see. Japanese and excessively tall white chicks; the general makeup of the Victoria population. Never before have I seen so many 6’ 3” chicks, with a great many of their sisters at 6’.
Checked in, and after listening to some whingeing POM in our room claim he couldn’t go to a Hockey game because it was too expensive (look at the exchange rate tight ass!), we moved our car from the nearby multi-floor car park to out on the street on advice of the Hostel staff who suggested that would be the safest option of ensuring all windows of the car were left intact overnight and nothing liberating itself from the car via a broken window. With everything sorted we cracked open some beers from the esky in the hostel and got used to hearing a chorus of passing people congratulating us on how good an idea that was. There was only one person smart enough to stop, a tall Dutchmen named “Edwin”, finally a name I remembered. But what I remembered most of Edwin was that he was full of shit. Brad and I, being top blokes, offered him a beer and he promptly accepted. To prove we were great ambassadors for Australia, we invited him to come out with us for the night as he was travelling alone. At this moment in time, we didn’t know he was full of shit, it was only as we searched for an ATM that that less then redeeming feature of his personality came out. According to Edwin he’d seen many ATMs earlier in the day and almost implied we’d have to be dicks not to be able to find one now.
After finding an ATM and getting cashed up, we decided to setup shop at the Sticky Wicket, a pub with cricket memorabilia as a tribute to incredible success Canada has had in cricket on the world stage. After an hour of meaningless small talk from Edwin including incredibly uninteresting stories from his 5 trips to Australia, that I’m sure should the Australian Tourism Commission heard I’m sure would have got a court order to gag him as it did nothing to endorse our great country, I was really starting to regret inviting Edwin out. As the meaningless small talk past into it’s 2nd hour all I could hear in my head was “I can’t believe we wasted a beer from our esky on this bloke”. You know a person has to be annoying when not even alcohol enhances their personality.
Earlier in the night I had noticed some 40 something woman with a tan that suggested she’d fallen asleep in a tanning saloon. Judging by the unnatural glow it was the best 10 hours sleep of her life. According to Edwin she had been checking me out all night, something I didn’t notice as I tried to shield my eyes from the glow emanating from her skin. As Edwin was full of shit I didn’t think much of it, until she came over and asked for the time. Her friend also came over and what ensured was a 5 minute conversation which basically consisted of them telling us they loved our accent and inviting us out to some club the next night. Thankfully, for my eyes, they soon moved on. Something we also did after 2 jugs of beer.
Our next option was Big Bad John’s but the line was too long so we headed for some non-descript Irish pub. Brad and I initially got talking to some old timer from Ireland, whose accent was so strong I could only make out about 25% of what he was saying so spent most of the time nodding and agreeing despite having no idea about what he was saying. As I couldn’t understand the Irishmen, my attention soon changed to scanning the room for talent. 2 hot chicks were dancing proactively, I was watching them as was every other man in the building, something they knew and I’m sure loved. Chocked full of confidence that comes with being somewhat intoxicated and having numerous women tell me they loved my accent I moved in for the kill. Back home this would be suicide for I was just another Aussie, but here I was an Aussie. It went reasonably well (read I wasn’t punched in the face), but I knew it wasn’t going to happen when one of the first things the hotter one said was “You can buy us a drink”. That translated back into my head as “Please let us play you for a sucker by buying us drinks all night before departing without any love”. I picked it up early and replied with “Sorry, I’ve just run out of Canadian currency, all I’ve got is these damn Aussie dollars”. Sensing I’d be just wasting my best material, I bid them a fond farewell after a few minutes. The way I see it is my best material is a finite resource, therefore don’t go to the well too often otherwise you’re just wasting it.
From the hot chicks that were out of my league, I returned to talk with Brad. He had another mission planned, this time a table full of chicks. Like a Vietnam Vet, but in my case a Kamloops Vet, I was having flashbacks to Kamloops and that night we were shot down at the lions den. We lost a lot of good egos that night. Brad, however, was back on the horse and was soon on his way to the battlefield that was their table. In true digger tradition, I followed my mate into action. As it turned out, these lovely ladies were very accommodating, and invited us to sit at their table. Unfortunately, most of them were married as they were quite easy to talk to, with one of them acknowledging us on the courage it took to approach a table of full of women. Why can’t all women be like this?!?
After a pleasant few hours, we parted company and headed back to the hostel. It was just as we were entering the hostel that we noticed Lucky’s across the street. Still able to walk, we figured we can’t have been too drunk so we headed in there. Inside was some live music in the form of 3 female rappers who went by the name “Stink Mitt”, which I’m pretty sure is a colloquialism that suggests they needed to practice better hygiene in the downstairs department. After a short while Brad wanted out and said this was “not our scene”. I refused to acknowledge we were becoming Danny Glover and sent him on his way. I hung tight until they finished their gig and took a Stink Mitt badge as a souvenir. Wanting another souvenir I decided to buy a Stink Mitt t-shirt. Unfortunately, they didn’t have my colour but the chick serving me took my Australian address and said she’d post one to me. It was only the next day I figured $10 for a t-shirt and postage seemed too small amount to complete this transaction. To this day, I still do not possess a Stink Mitt t-shirt.
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