Vancouver island
Trip Start
Aug 19, 2006
1
2
Trip End
Aug 25, 2006
Tofino, British Columbia, Canada
Wednesday, August 24, 2005
Next day. Left stinking Ucluelet. Headed towards Tophino. I see another hitchhiker. Blonde, tanned, European looking, and waving his thumb from side to side in a hypnotic fashion like he doesn't expect to get picked up, and doesn't care if he isn't. I throw on the brakes to pick him up. We don't talk. We go to a visitors centre. We introduce ourselves. Rasmus Hedin, 26 years old, from Sweden. This does not mean he speaks Swiss-German, this means he speaks Swedish. Many people make this mistake. We arrive in Tophino. We have breakfast at a cute little restaurant overlooking the foggy ocean with barely visible lush mountains rising out of the deep. The fog burns off during our meal and reveals paradise, the most beautiful place I have ever been to in my life. Welcome to Tophino.
Rasmus and I decide to go whale-watching. We buy our tickets, we put on our huge orange suits and laugh at ourselves, and board the boat with 2 pairs of parents and about 8 children. We get the front seat. This means that when we hit large ocean waves, the boat drops from beneath us and when we hit the seats our spines crunch. This also means we miss most of the ocean spray and laugh at the salty children screaming behind us. To quote Rasmus, this is the most I've laughed in a long time. The highlight of my trip. We saw a gray whale, and some sea lions. It wasn't really about seeing the animals though, it was more about seeing the mountains rising out of the ocean, and seeing the ocean stretch out to invisible Asia, and tasting the salt water on my lips for the first time. We decide to go out to the ocean to hunt for humpback whales. I now know how Moby Dick felt. We couldn't find any, but we agreed to tell everyone that we had seen one.
We then went to Long Beach, and he stripped down to swim trunks to swim in the ocean. Gorgeous beach. Rocks rising out of the water, covered in lush mosses, soft sand, salty waves, and surfers trying out the surf. I waded into my knees and had my pants rolled up. I then decided, when was the next time I'd ever have the chance to swim in the ocean? And I ran towards Rasmus and fell in the ocean. We laughed.
We then went to the Rainforest. Clayoquat sound is home to the largest remaining temperate rainforest in the world. We walked through some of it. Wow. Layer upon layer of wild sexy leaves. There was a ticker to keep track of how many visitors that was attached to the side of the boardwalk you had to walk on, and beside it there was a sign that said "This is not a camera. This is a counter." Rasmus said under his breath, "This is not a camera. The camera is underneath the boards."
The trip quickly turned from a father/daughter deal to a newly formed friendship between me and a sweet funny Swedish man. We drove the rest of the way to Victoria in the dark, with Rasmus keeping me awake and talking. We arrived before midnight, bedded down in a hostel, then went out to explore the town. Had a drink, had a smoke, talked about drugs, sex, and politics (in that order), and then went down to the waterfront. We walked arm in arm around the harbour until 4am, talking just for the sake of talking. A sweet chaste love affair of one night.
Dropped him off at the ferry the next day, hugged, said I hate goodbyes, got his email and cell phone number. If I'm ever in Sweden... Tophino and Rasmus was the highlight of my trip.
