A quicker end

Yesterday (May 21, 2011) my laptop, socks, underwear, some gifts, and all of my wine were stolen from my car at Myra Bellevue Provincial Park in Kelowna. The only thing that frustrates me is the pictures that I lost. Oh well, I can't do anything about it now. So that will be the end of my blog pretty much.

In short the bike ride on the Kettle Valley Railway Trail in Penticton and Kelowna was pretty cool.

May 13th – West Coast Trail hike part 2

I had gone back to the Juan de Fuca park to hike some more of the West Coast Trail. On my drive I spotted a black bear next to the road. That convinced me to suit up my bear mace and small knife on my belt – just in case. I started at the Sombaro Beach point and hiked all the way to Kuitshe Cove. On the map, the trail was rated moderate in terms of difficulty. But damn it was tiring, I hate to see what difficult is. I give props to anyone who did the whole west coast trail hike with all their camping gear on.

Overall the scenery was nice, but nothing too spectacular. On my hike back, I was approaching fairly close to the starting point. I was walking along a stony beach, with several surfers further down from me. And all of a sudden I see a black bear run towards the bushes from the beach after I guess I had startled it with the noise of the rocks shifting under me as I was walking. It was probably just under 100

meters away from me. It stopped short of the bushes and just stared at me for several long seconds. It was a somewhat big bear, I guess 250-300 pounds. I automatically went into alert mode and placed my hand on my bear mace, and returned the stare. After those several long seconds it ran into the bushes. I then proceeded to walk along the beach, with now the bear mace in my hand with the safety clip unlocked – ready for giving anything a dose of mace. As I carefully walked on the beach, over the slippery rocks, I kept looking over my shoulder for any signs of the bear.

Later thinking about it, I realized I made a mistake in the encounter of the bear despite all of my wilderness survival training. Firstly I should not of stared back at the black bear into its eyes to give it any sign of a challenge. Secondly, I should of stared down and talk to it in a calm, quiet voice. Also if it weren’t for the big rocks around me, I would of slowly backed away. I was just too caught up in the moment to think about doing that – it was a wild experience!

I was pretty exhausted when I got back to the car. On my drive out of the place, I spotted a small black bear cub, next to road eating the leaves of a plant, it was cute. But no sign of its mother, but I just kept driving past anyway. Three sightings of black bears in one day! And this time I didn’t have to join a bear watching tour to do it.

One more funny story. In the morning Jeroen, had told me about the half Chinese/Native guy that he met at the hostel. Jeroen, had spent part of last night hanging out with this guy, kicking a few drinks around with him. Jeroen, told me that the guy had later acted pretty weird. What happened was that the guy stole Jeroen’s pants (lying next to his bed), and give it back to Jeroen because according to the guy – if you take something and give it back to the person, it makes you two best friends for life. Also Jeroen said he saw the guy hanging around his bed 2 times, and seem to plan it for them to meet up. That completely weirded out Jeroen, and I was glad that I was too tired to hang out with them last night.

May 12th – Gowlland Tod Provincial Park Hike

I had a simple map of the hiking trails, and I was expecting an easy flat trail hike. Instead I was hiking up and down hills for 5-6 hrs, which completely exhausted me. At first I thought the view would be nothing special, but I was wrong. The view at Jocelyn Summit was pretty nice, and I think I was the only one who hiked up there that day (didn’t really see any other peoples foot prints on the trails).

Later that night I went out to photograph the Legislature building and the surroundings at the Victoria Downtown harbor front.

Oh before I forget, there is a club (called Lucky) across from my hostel. And every night (and I mean every night) there is party with people there making noise (seems to be like university aged people). It seemed it was like the weekend for them every night. Luckily I had ear plugs, not that I really had a problem with them partying every night. I just didn’t expect Victoria to be such a party town. The same was a bit true in Nanaimo (but to a lesser extent).

May 11th – Royal Museum and Rest Day

I decided to just take it easy today and give my legs a rest. So to take it easy I planned to check out the royal museum. The museum itself was nice, but I didn’t find it to be anything too special.

The one thing I craved on my whole trip was eating out at a restaurant, which I haven’t done for a while. So when Jeroen suggested to grab a bite to eat somewhere I was in. We headed to the Keg, and I got the sirloin steak and polished everything on my plate (including the free bread) no problem. All I can think about now is eating steak all the time, soo tasty.

May 10th – Juan de Fuca Provincial Park hike

The ride to the Juan de Fuca hike was a lot longer than I anticipated (2hrs from Victoria). I hiked a small portion of the West Coast Trail which was pretty cool and it ran right along the coast. I like to come back another day to do some more hiking on this trail.

I also met this pretty friendly and easy going Dutch guy, named Jeroen, in my dorm room section at the Victoria hostel. He’s pretty talkative and likes to mingle with everyone. We had gone to the Irish Times pub later than night for a few drinks, which was what I needed after a long tiring hike.

May 9th – Drive to Victoria

Nothing much exciting to mention here, except that there was one cool lookout point along the drive to Victoria. I could see all of the area from Swartz Bay to Northern Victoria.

May 8 - Nanaimo, Mount Benson Hike

After taking a rest yesterday, I went on to tackle the hike up Mt Benson. I didn’t bring a map with me, figuring it would be a straight forward hike according to the maps I found on the internet. However this was a mistake that I should of known (the trail isn’t clearly marked), and I got a bit lost taking the wrong trail. I had gone up on the Westwood ridge trail instead, and I was pointed in the right way by a nice British couple hiking on the trail. So that was 2 hours gone by. I finally got on the right trail (although that took me a few tries to figure it out), and got going.

The climb to the top of Mt Benson was kind of fun, it was steep in certain areas also (there was a rope to grab on and climb up on those tougher spots). The view at the summit was pretty nice of the city. I could even see the snow peaked mountains in the far distant on the BC mainland. For the hike down, I took part of the logging road to make the descent a bit easier and encountered a cool slug.

May 7th – Walk around the Nanaimo harbor and rest day

Nothing special about today. I just strolled around the city’s harbor, and stopped for some fish and chips. I got the Halibut fish (most expensive), for my fish and chips, it was $20 – a bit pricier than what I thought. It was still good nonetheless, but I’m not so sure it was $20 good.

May 6th – Cathedral Trail hike part 2

I drove back out to the Cathedral Trail from Nanaimo (about 65 km I think). It was nice to do the full walk, but unfortunately it was raining a bit that day and ruined quite a few of my shots.