Day 9 - Tofino, Ucluelet and Nanaimo

We had to check out of our lovely little Casita Tofino by 11am today so we woke up nice and early, well I say we, more like Natalie woke up early, faffed around and at about 9am popped off to get us a breakfast sandwich and smoothie from Swell while I ‘got up’. It was raining again so I wasn’t in a crazy rush to move anywhere just yet. On returning with said food, Natalie said it was lovely to walk through the rainforest with all of the sounds and smells of nature (sounds like Nat doesn’t it!).

Nice roof in the Tofino airbnb

We ate our food, packed up and headed down to Ucluelet (or Ukee as the locals call it) to walk around the Pacific Rim trail, this was a bit like the ones we’d done previously but it was a bit more of a coastal scene, which would have been really gorgeous on a sunny blue sky day, but was once again atmospheric and moody weather. This didn’t ruin it or anything, we just thought it might have been nice to see this area in a different light. As it was, it was a bit like walking around the Devonshire coast, but with little islands in the distance than just sea (and if the Devon coast has woods along it). There were a lot of crazy trees and the remains of an old wooden road that was from about 1909.

An old raised road

We decided just to do a small section of the hike rather than the whole thing as we had quite a long drive to Nanaimo ahead of us and we would probably be taking it a bit easy if the rain didn’t ease up. We stopped in at Ukee to get some food, I’m not sure if we missed a turn in or something but there didn’t seem to be a huge amount going on there, despite it looking a bit bigger on the map. We found a little coffee shop, had a nice little slice of pizza and quiche and a cinnamon roll and the WEAKEST CUP OF TEA IN THE WORLD EVER. On the colour scale of tea, it was a like someone had taken a pipette of lemon juice and added it to a bathtub of milk, even after squeezing the teabag for five minutes. Nevertheless, it was warm so we drank it.

The majority of the day following this was taken up by driving to Nanaimo, it took hours and it rained nearly all of the way. Natalie was upset that the weather was so rubbish as she was hoping to jump in the river she’d played in on the way to Tofino, but decided against it with a long journey ahead. (Natalie: there were a couple jumping and swimming in that bit when we went passed it again, so I could have joined them and been a third wheel… but yeah, no.)

We finally got to our hotel looking out on the harbour of Nanaimo, we freshened up and headed out for dinner. Nat ordered mac and cheese, I had yet another seafood pasta dish because it was on the specials, which came out in a portion that would easily feed a family of four. We played cards while we waited, which seems easy enough but a table covered in leather makes it kind of difficult! After dinner we had a quick walk along the harbour front with an ice cream, but decided that neither of us were particularly bothered about exploring Nanaimo; it’s not really a place I would choose to go or recommend to anyone, it just has the ferry terminal in it and if you need to be at your ferry for 7am you probably want to stay quite nearby!

We planned on having a really early night but then found American Ninja Warrior: USA vs The World (the world being Europe and Japan), which was insane, some people are stupidly fit, I don’t know how they do it. It was very exciting and by the end we were cheering along. It was so tiring I fell to sleep immediately and slept all the way through.