Day 8 - Tofino and surfing

We woke up to a rainy day which was slightly disappointing as we had a few more walks and a bit of beach action planned for today. We weren’t going to let it stop us but it would’ve been nice to do them in the sunshine. 

We got up and headed into Tofino to the Common Loaf for breakfast, we ordered a couple of breakfast items, then noticed a massive amount of cakes so we made a list of the ones we fancied and decided to get them on the way back. 

The Common Loaf (from a day when it wasn't raining)

Breakfast was lovely, we were sat up in a little room which had nice view (of rainy Tofino), we had a little chat with a Scottish couple and their daughter - who was quiet for most of the meal as my short hair freaked her out; was I a boy or a girl? It’s difficult to know when you’re 5! She got a bit more confident as they were getting to leave and she managed to squeak something out, we didn’t catch it the first time and it seemed very important so I asked her to repeat it, “our car is a Hyundai”. Excellent. We also learnt where she lived and that she was starting school when she got home. Lovely. Very cute.

We finished breakfast, paid up (adding a chocolate scone, banana and chocolate chip, coconut square and a lemon square thing to the bill) and set off for a day of exploring. First on the list was to go look in the rock pools at Chesterman Beach where the wildlife is supposed to be good. Then we planned to go to walk the Rainforest Trail. We drove down to the beach, there were loads of surfers taking advantage of the waves that the wind and rain brought with it, then we walked down the beach to the rock pools but the sea was in too far so no success with sea star spotting. Plus, there were houses built on the little islands and they had Private Property signs up so we couldn’t even explore them properly, boooo.

As we walked back up the beach we decided that, as we were incredibly soaking wet, that we might as well go the whole hog and get into the sea. So we drove to the nearest wetsuit hire place, got ourselves a wetsuit, gloves and boots and rode our bikes (that were part of the Airbnb house rental) down to the beach. Anywhere else in the world, two wetsuited girls riding bikes with body boards attached would probably looked like a couple of idiots, but in Tofino this seems to be completely acceptable - the amount of times we saw people standing around on street corners in their wet suits was many.

We spent two hours in the sea, the waves were sporadic but when they were good they were very good. They’re what the Murphy family would class as ‘smackeroonies’; big, powerful, great to jump in. There were one or two really big waves that took me under and for a second I thought I was a goner but it all worked out okay. The current was also pretty strong, there was a couple of times that we almost got sucked out to sea but thankfully a wave came that I could ride in and we stayed fairly shallow after that. We have no evidence of the awesome body boarding moves we were pulling because we decided not to take the GoPro as we would’ve probably been worried about it falling off our heads and floating away. Also, it would’ve meant an extra five or ten minutes away from the sea and I wasn’t sure Natalie would last any longer. 

We eventually got too tired to do anymore playing (yes, even Nat) so we rode our bikes back home - some surfer dudes pushed me up a hill that I was struggling with on my pink shopper bike with no gears and peddle-backwards-brakes. The rules at Casita Tofino are to use the outdoor shower when returning from the beach and it was very nice to have a hot shower in the woods. (Natalie: it was awesome showering in the woods, it smelt very woody!)

We got ready and made our way out to dinner, we booked a table at the Sea Shanty Restaurant then had a little look around some of the little Tofino shops, where we bought more t-shirts and magnets (but I wasn’t allowed to buy a onesie with bum flap booooo). 

Salmon on the crossings in Tofino - cool!

The restaurant had a great view of the harbour and the sound, dinner was lovely, I had a salmon and rice dish, Natalie has fish and chips. I realised about 80% of the food I have eaten here has been fish or sea food; I should eat more food in future. While we were waiting, we were told a magician was in the house and they’d send him our way. He did two tricks, the first one was brilliant - kind of like a metal hoops tricks but with two elastic bands around his thumb and forefingers, he made the one on the bottom change places with the one on the top (hard to describe or imagine I’m sure), I was less than 30cm away from it and I could not see how he did it. It seriously looked like they just went through each other, it was crazy. The other trick was a card trick, not so good; but that was probably more down to Natalie ruining it (Natalie: not on purpose!)

We paid up, went home and packed up, preparing to leave to drive to Nanaimo (via Ucluelet), ready to get the ferry back to the mainland and continue our exploration of Canada.