The Blog of Lone

Up at 7am to try and catch the Torfino Bus.  Another night without sleep, this time because the cot they had me in was 3 foot to small and I couldn’t stretch beyond a fetal position.  Despite the lack of sleep am feeling good, this wanderlust and the excitement of a new place at the end of each road is really getting to me.  8-3 on the bus, Subway for lunch during the swap over at Port Alberi(?)  Absolutely pouring with rain when I got to Torfino, soaked through instantly.  Tried to have a look around but was beaten back by the rain after a few streets.
Sharing a room with 2 attractive French girls, no sleeping naked tonight.  One of the girls is friendly at least, might see them at the pub or karoke later.
Nothing in Canada is actually the price shown, can never have the right change ready as they add on hidden tax to everything.
Had overpriced but good fish and chips for dinner, fish straight from the port. 
Torfino HI, the Whalers Point is great, very friendly and right on the sea.
View from my room window o the Clayoquot Sound.

Got brews from local booze shop.  Chilled out updating the diary in my room and hit the local pub later on.  Was karoke night, as it is every night and the entire town was there (is a small town), even the Native Americans from the rez boated over for it.
Everyone very friendly.  Met a Mancunian called Carl who took a shine to me.  The guy loves Torfino so much that when he divorced his wife he came here on holiday for a week, fell in love with it, and only moved back home to sell his house and business to live out her permanently. Spent the night drinking together and chatting absolute rubbish.

Coffee and muffin for a healthy breakfast, nothing fried today.  Left the Cambie with all my baggage and decided to walk to the Greyhound Station.  Very nearly died walking with a full backpack in the heat (had suddenly turned into something of a heat wave), not a very sensible idea.  Took a quick shot of the shiny science museum, which I’d never got to see.

At the station I caught the Pacific Coach Line to Victoria for $40, which included an hours journey over to the island by ferry.
Luckily enough I’d been to Victoria briefly before on a family holiday, so knew that pretty much everything in town was crowded along the waterfront, so found my hostel easily.
HI Victoria was clean and large, excellent showers and bathrooms, but unfortunately there were very few beds left so I had to bunk in a dorm with 40, yes, 40! other guys.  That’s a lot of snoring and noise at night I can tell you.
Victoria itself is a very self consciously pretty town, kept in pristine order down by the water front for the tourists.  Everything is green and pleasant and just so, but if you walk a half dozen streets back it looks much like any other largish Canadian town.  Is a little bit like a plain woman wearing a veneer of make up on a date.
Chinese for dinner.
Decided to head for a localish ‘pub’ called the Sticky Wicket several streets away from the tourist area.  The Sticky Wicket is a very strange place, being the Canadian idea of what a quaint English pub should look like.  So everything is wooden, with strange nick-nacks on the walls, but the place is huge with a couple of pool tables.  It looked to me how an ‘Irish’ bar must look to an Eireman.
Sitting at the bar, having a few drinks and chatting to those around me, (as you do in Canada) I ended up talking to a dude called Jason.  Weirdly enough he’d lived in the tiny teeny town of Harps for a while, and we reminisced about its pubs and the strangeness of meeting someone else who’d been there.  It is a small world after all it seems.
Got stinking drunk at a club called Luckys.

Luckily (no pun intended) it was directly opposite the hostel and the staggering distance wasn’t too far.  Even having drunk endless tequilas I could just about manage it with a minimum of bumping into walls.  Made good use of the excellent bathroom facilities that evening.