A DAY ON THE WATER.
Day 234 – Any day on the water is a good day. We took advantage of a day where no rain was forecast. Complete clouds, yes, that’s what they said, but no rain. As it turned out, it did rain some, but not too much, and the sun did come out. We did have a good day.
We had looked online for bus tours. We wanted a quick overview to become familiar with Victoria and what it had to offer. We wanted a drive-around with narration, some history, some funny stories, not too long of a tour, basically information so we could decide what we wanted to do. Mostly what was offered was a ride through the city to a specific destination, i.e., a castle, or Butchart Gardens, or Fisherman’s Wharf, or the Parliament buildings, or the Empress Hotel – they either drop you off or drive from location to location – allowing you to get on & off as desired. That wasn’t what we were looking for. We found what we wanted with the water taxi service – a Harbor Tour plus a Gorge Tour – a boat tour of the city rather than a bus tour.
Victoria and surrounding areas are growing. There is plenty of construction going on, both improvements to original buildings and roads, and new construction of condo’s and housing projects. We’ve found that driving in Victoria isn’t too bad, at least in a car. Driving the RV towing a car is more difficult. Some streets are rather narrow and parking is often allowed along the roads. If not parking, it’s a bicycle path. This city is made for bicycling and walking; there are a lot of both bicyclists and walkers, and runners, skaters, etc. You have to watch for the people as much as you have to watch for the other cars. The streets are well marked, which is great, and one-way streets don’t dominate the city. The city has grown at a very fast rate. Parking is at a premium. Prepare to walk. We’ve been to Canada before. One thing we’ve quickly noticed each visit is how much Canadians value their properties. There isn’t trash lying around. Lawns are very well kept up. Gardens are everywhere, ditto flowers. Homeowners have extremely well manicured lawns and yards, very colorful. It is beautiful (and refreshing). Victoria is a nice, historic city, and they’ve obviously worked hard to keep it that way. There are lots of cars, bikes, and people walking. It’s vibrant and full of life. And many, many tourists of all nationalities – we didn’t hear many people speaking English. Tour guides, people working at restaurants and in stores, often spoke more than one language. In general what we have seen so far, Canadians appear to be happy, relaxed, fairly well off, and very much supportive and proud of their country. Just some observations.
We arrived at the harbor at about 9:15 a.m. The first tours began at 10:00, so we walked around some. Parking was easy to find at this hour. The harbor area was interesting. We took pictures from the harbor of the Empress Hotel across the street and the Parliament building nearby, and also of various displays at the harbor. A large group of people speaking German were on a walking tour. Another group of Scandinavians were being delivered by bus to their whale watching tour. Tour buses are going by, stopping, people are getting on and getting off. An occasional horse-drawn carriage clip-clops by us. The water taxis are a constant – the little yellow and black ones, made to look like yellow taxi cabs; and the little green ones that act as taxis and also work as tour boats. And last but not least, the bicycle rickshaws (and human-powered rickshaws!! without a bicycle!!). The cruise ships, so huge they seem out of place, arrive almost daily and usually stay less than 24 hours. Pleasure boats, barges, container ships, kayaks, canoes, rowing boats, and the occasional stand up paddle boarder share the water with the seaplanes taking off and flying back to port. The Coast Guard facilities and the helicopter tours also have their spots in the harbor land, sea, and airways. Various harbor cruises drive slowly by, and there are the hot tub cruises, of all things, a group of no more than six scantily-clad people sitting in a hot tub and cruising around the harbor. Very busy place.
At 10 a.m. we boarded our Gorge Tour – no that’s not gorging yourself with food, just a small-boat tour of the narrower waterways between the pieces of land that make up Victoria. This trip lasted a little longer than an hour. There was the driver/tour guide plus five of us on board a small electric boat, which was nice because the boat was so quiet. The other three guests were from Toronto, three generations on a trip together, the older gentleman was very sweet and had a wonderful sense of humor; the middle person was his son; and the granddaughter was in college – they were making this trip together – very nice. It was a good tour. The nice thing about water tours is the lack of traffic to contend with compared to the stop and go and noise of being in a bus or car. And we got our first glimpse of what a hot tub cruise was like (it had been hard to imagine).
Next we waited about 15 minutes, then got on a different boat for the harbor cruise which lasted about 45 minutes. We shared the harbor cruise with two women, a mother and daughter traveling together from Saskatchewan. We were on one of the little green part cruise/part taxi boats. It had a regular motor and was loud; sometimes it was difficult to hear the driver/tour guide speak. Very little of this tour repeated what we’d just seen on the other boat. We saw historical places and old homes from the water. We went right by the RV park and waved to the kitties. We saw many of the houseboats that line the harbor waterways – people living on them or renting them out, B&B’s and Air B&B’s – and they are NOT cheap to buy regardless of size. We went to Fisherman’s Wharf and could have gotten off there to be picked up by the next tour boat if we’d wanted to stop. This was convenient because we had an evening whale watch tour coming up and were able to familiarize ourselves some with the area. Both tour guides talked about how the area has grown so much and how it is still growing. This area of Canada is really changing.
After the cruise we went to late lunch at the harbor – a restaurant with outside dining – Milestones. The food and service were very good. We knew we wouldn’t be having dinner because of our sunset cruise tonight, so we basically had dinner at lunchtime. Rob and I split an appetizer of a Bang Bang Shrimp copycat (not as good as the original from Bonefish, but still pretty good), and we split an order of Seafood Pasta with Garlic Toast and an order of a Fresh Salmon Wrap with Garden Salad.
After lunch we took a drive following the coastline east, and stopped at a couple of parks along the water. Then we headed north into neighborhoods beyond Victoria – Saanich, Oak Bay, Ten Mile Point. Some of the houses in these towns were unbelievable – an all glass huge house on a large rocky piece of land surrounded by the sea, a house so big it looked like a large lit-up restaurant, tudor-style english garden style homes, castle-like houses that were gated communities in themselves, etc. We drove past the University of Victoria. A huge immaculate golf course. Then we went back to the RV and relaxed with the girls until time to leave for Fisherman’s Wharf where we’d be getting on our Sunset Whale Watch Cruise.
We had to check in at Eagle Wing Wildlife and Whale Cruises at 5:15 p.m. and we knew parking might be difficult, so we left the RV at 4:45. We got there early enough to get a parking place and were one of the first to check in. We walked around Fisherman’s Wharf, which, like most of these locations, had cute little stores, restaurants, ice cream stands, souvenirs, and various tourist attractions. At 5:45 we were gathered together with the other cruise participants (20 people counting us) plus two guides, and we were each given survival gear for warmth and dryness. We all put on our bulky outfits and boarded our boat, a 24-passenger open cockpit jet boat. No cabin for warmth, we were glad to have the awkward, bulky clothing. It got very cold in the ocean with the wind and the sun behind the clouds – without the gear I’m sure we would’ve been too cold.
Soon after we got on board we were told that they’d been communicating with the other whale watch tours and no one had seen any whales, but they’d all be chatting with each other during our trip, keeping each other apprised. It wasn’t very cold until we left the Victoria harbor and headed out into the middle of the Strait of Juan de Fuca. They turned east first and went to where we assume they usually see whales. We saw nothing. We spent some time out there, then turned around and headed a good distance west to Race Rock, where there was a lighthouse and a grouping of rocks where Seals, Sea Lions, & Sea Birds hang out. There were beautiful clouds, which signaled the possibility of a good sunset. We saw a new bird, new to us – a Rhinocerous Auklet. Also, we saw several Pigeon Guillemots. Still no whales. The thing that was difficult was that there was often debris – logs and large tree branches floating by in the distance and people would point or you, yourself, would think you were seeing a whale. Disappointing, but………….
Everyone was having fun and we were learning a lot from the guides. They announced that they’d gotten a report that a whale had been spotted in another direction. Even though we were more than halfway into our allotted three-hour tour, we turned around and went back the way we came, passed by Victoria Harbor, passed by the area we’d been before turning to go to Race Rock and turned north out of the Strait of Juan de Fuca and into the Upper Puget Sound, which runs between Vancouver Island and northern Washington state. We passed by some of the fancy homes at water’s edge that we’d seen earlier on our drive. We sped past some of the Puget Sound Islands. As we approached San Juan Island, they got a call from one of the other boats that two Humpback Whales had been spotted by the Island. We kicked it up another notch and raced with five other boats to converge on San Juan Island and the two whales. It was going to be dark soon, but there was enough light to clearly see them. All the boats kept their proper distance and the whales continued feeding. We spent a good amount of time there, then the boats all turned around and headed back to their various ports. It was cold and dark, but beautiful with all the lights on as we approached home port. Three cruise ships were now berthed at Victoria Harbor. Mission accomplished. The cruise was excellent and the crew went out of their way and stayed out longer than planned to guarantee us several sightings.
When we got back to Fisherman’s Wharf, everyone took off their survival gear and with cold hands, accepted the hot chocolate the company had ready for us. Very nice! On the way out of downtown Victoria, we grabbed a couple of pictures of things all lit up. We drove back to the RV and were greeted with 4 cats deliriously happy to see us. They were so excited, running around, it was great – and no they weren’t hungry – we fed them early before we left. But evidently they missed us and weren’t used to us not being home at night. Nice to be loved! Grin.
What a wonderful day!!