Sunday afternoon (6/5), all the coulds disappeared and we got some really beautiful sunshine. So, we went on a final hike, this time on the Wild Pacific Trail, a well prepared trail that follows the wild shoreline west of Ucluelet.

Even if the wind was mild and friendly on this particular Sunday, it is evident from the trees that the ocean breeze is persistant in this part of the island coast.

But there were big trees here too. I wonder what my teacher of dendro chronology (the science of creating a climate chronology from analyzes of tree rings) back home would say about this tree. Where is the center?

The coast was made up of headlands and bays, hidden beaches and high cliffs. Oh, to come here in the summer and spend a day on one of these beaches, swimming in the ocean and eating peaches from the Okanagan.

After dinner, we went to the lighthouse again to watch the sun set into the ocean. Well, it didn’t. It set into a thick blanket of strato clouds. But it was beautiful anyway, and it became a nice and refreshing evening walk, this my last night with the girls.

On Sunday (6/5) we drove to Tofino, just to see what it looked like. Tofino is where most of the tourists stay when they visit the park, which became obvious as soon as we entered the little town. All the houses on both sides of the main street had signs offering surfing lessons or kayak renting or were small shops selling postcards and surfing clothes.

It reminded me of Rurrenabaque, the main tourist attraction town in the Bolivian Amazon. The difference was just that there, the tour offices were selling pampas tours and jungle trekks.

I’m happy Frida happened to find a good deal on a weekend condo in Ucluelet instead of Tofino. Somehow I always feel cheated in the very touristy places.

Finally, I got my second chance to make my lentil soup and reclaim my reputation as a decent cook. This time, I had the red lentils and even though it ended up being slightly on the boring side (no cayenne pepper), it was good enough. Now they can all go back to South Korea, Norway and Uppsala and remember me as the crazy Finn-Swede who skied far too fast, skinny dipped in the far to cold Pacific Ocean and made a decent lentil soup. I would say that’s a pretty decent impression to make.

The Pacific Rim National Park was one of those places where I went completely nuts with my camera. All that moss! And ferns! And mushrooms! Bare with me…

Wild strawberries! Just by the beach. Oh, I’d like to be here in the end of June.

Okay, so, this maybe isn’t rainforest greenery. But it’s green and lives on Long Beach, just next to the rainforest. And they’re pretty too.

Isn’t it amazing, how many things that can live on one larger organism. It isn’t only on the trees that life flourishes in Pacific Rim National Park Reserve.

They even have wild blueberries. Amazing.

The last time I met Natalia before I left for Canada, she gave me two things: Mr. P, who wanted to see the world, and a dare.

When we were in Bolivia together, Natalia, Jonna, Cecilia and I, we visited Lake Titicaca and the island Isla del Sol. On a particulary sunny and warm day, we walked by a beach and decided to take a swim. Or more accurately, a real skinnydip. Four pale Swedish girls, running down into the chockingly blue water of the world’s highest  lake. At 3800 meters above sea level, the water of the lake was obviously cold, so the swim didn’t last for very long. But we did it. We skinnydipped in Lake Titicaca.

So now, to keep the tradition, Natalia dared me to skinnydip atleast once during my trip. And I’m not the one to back out of a dare like that. Before we left Pacific Rim National Park, I dragged the girls with me to a desolate beach. At first the girls didn’t really believe that I would do it, but here is the photographic proof, professinally captured by Frida:

The ever-returning dilemma of the semi-spontaneous skinny dipper: where should the clothes be put, close enough so that I won’t have to freeze too much on the way up, but far enough up so that they won’t get wet. I ended up chosing a rock full of mussels to stack my clothes on. They didn’t really want to stay in place, though. It was slippery.

Me, stark naked, in the cold North Pacific. It can’t have been much warmer than 12 degrees. But I’m tough, though. I have to live up to my Finnish-Swedish ancestry. And honestly, after the first chock, the skin goes numb. I even managed to take a little swim.

The best part of the swim: walking back to the car, barefoot and high on adrenaline.

So, Natalia. Pay up!

But dad might be happy to learn that this slug is not like the brown ones he picks in his summer house garden and puts into buckets of salt, cursing them as if they were his biggest enemy in the whole wide world. No, this is a banana slug, and it is actually a vital part of this coastal temperate rainforest ecosystem. Not to be salted. So, slugs are not all bad.

… as long as they’re not eating all the strawberries.

The Long Beach Unit, situated inbetween Ucluelet and Tofino, of the Pacific Rim National Park Reserve is a very diverse piece of protected land. It’s got beaches, windswept coastal forests, lush temerate rainforests and wetlands. And everything within a twenty minute stretch of highway.

Saturday (5/5), we spent an entire day hiking on the extremely easily accessible trails in the park. The first trail we took was along the shoreline, and after taking a photo of the ocean I turned around to find the girls standing neatly in a line waiting for me. Adorable. But that was the last time they waited for me. I’m not an easy traveling partner – but all of the girls wanted to copy my photos on Sunday night. So I’m not all bad.

The trails were really crazy easy to hike. It was not at all like the rough, narrow trail in Goldstream Provincial Park. And most of them weren’t longer than a couple of kilometers. I think that there is a good chance that this park might be one of the most easily accessible rainforests in the world.

Me, trying to hug a red cedar. I simply can’t understand how evolution has been able to create these trees. What the advantage was. But they’re magnificent.

And when one tree dies and falls down, new ones start growing on top of it, feeding on the nutrients in the dead trunk. That’s why there’s also trees that seem to be growing a meter above ground, with air inbetween their roots. Those are trees that started growing on a dead trunk, and continue standing above ground once the trunk has decomposed.

Frida had a goal with this day: that we should walk ten kilometers, or one Swedish mile aw she put it. Well, adding all the trails we walked, plus the extra turns around the beaches, I’m pretty sure we reached that goal. Poor Kate, she was exhausted. She wasn’t used to our crazy, hearty, out-doorsy Scandinavian pace.

Ucluelet is this small coastal town next to what might be the most by tourists frequented park on Vancouver Island, Pacific Rim National Park, the Long Beach section. On the other side of the park is Tofino, which is where most tourists go to stay, but Frida had found a place in Ucluelet where they had condos for rent quite cheaply. And I must say that Ucluelet was a really cute town. Small houses, some hostels and B&B’s and surfing stores, a gas station, a supermarket and a few restaurants. A very relaxed and slow paced place. I liked it.

The small apartment was originally probably only meant for two people, or maybe a couple with two kids. There was only four of everything in the kitchen. I had to lay out the couch cushions on the floor and sleep there. But I didn’t mind, because the place was awesome. Really. Such a nice change from the crowded hostel in Victoria. All new and fresh and clean and with a balcony with a beautiful view of the tiny harbour and the mountains on the other side of the bay.

On Friday evening (4/5), as soon as we were settled in, we cooked dinner, ate it and hurried on to the Hatteras lighthouse, a ten minute drive from Ucluelet.  We had been told by the condo owner that the sunset would be beautiful to watch from there.

Well, the sun went down into the clouds, but it was beautiful anyway. An the ocean! The wind was blowing strong and the air was full of the smells of open sea – salt and sun dried cliffs and seaweed and that hard-to-place smell of freedom.  I could have stayed all night, just to watch the waves roll in and the almost-full moon rise and fall on the starry sky.

But the others were starting to get cold, so eventually we walked back to the car and returned to our awesome apartment. But before that, a fellow tourist managed to catch us (in focus!) with my “fancy” camera. So, the girls, from the left: Karin, Frida, Marit, Kate and me.

For the three nights that we spent in Victoria, we stayed at a hostel called Ocean Island Inn. And there’s just smething with backpacker’s hostels. Wherever in the world you go, there’s a special kind of atmosphere in these places. And for me, they make me feel at home.

I think it’s from when I stayed at Loki Backpacker Hostel in Cusco, Peru. I went there with Jonna to see the Machu Picchu, but after that we were to split up. She would be going west to Lima, to catch a flight home, and I would be going back east across the Bolivian border to La Paz. Or, that was atleat what we thought. The day we were set to leave, there was rumours about a strike. I went with Jonna to the bus terminal and she got on the Lima-bound bus, safe and sound. But a couple of hours later, when my bus to La Paz was supposed to leave, the strike had broken out and I was told stories about how angry Peruvian farmers were throwing stones at passing busses. The bus drivers refused to leave the bus terminal.

So, I was simply forced to return to Loki and hope that they still had a bed for me there. I ended up staying four extra nights in Cusco due to the strike. At first, I felt panicky and scared, I was in this strange city all by myself and didn’t know for how long I would have to stay. But that feeling was soon exchanged into a feeling of safety. I was taken such good care of, by the hostel staff who, every night that I returned from the bus terminal, somehow managed to find me a bed, and by the other guests. There was a group of a couple of Americans, two Brits and a guy from Lima who kind of adopted me, as the helpless orphan that I felt like, and one of them was always around somewhere in the big hostel building for me to talk to, if I ever felt the need. I have nothing but strong positive memories from Loki in Cusco.

There is something with those kinds of hostels. In the way they’re built. The actual floor plan. There are so many places for people to meet, without it feeling forced. With the Loki hostel in Cusco, the places were the inner courtyard with all the hammocks, it was the kitchen, the common room/breakfast room/computer room, the bar, even the hostel main entrance and reception room. At the HI Hostel in Jasper, the big kitchen with ajoining common room with the big fire place and couches were just perfect for random after-ski conversations with fellow hostel guests (as my acquaintance with the guy who called me ‘honey’ proves). At Ocean Island Inn, most of the ground floor was made up of a big lobby-like space with couches, computers and magazines, a small bar and the kitchen and dining-room.

They are also usually furnished and decorated in a way to create a relaxed and cozy atmosphere. In Cusco, the walls were full of Andean art and textiles. In Jasper, the feeling was more of a hunter’s cabin, with dark wood and a some antique mountain equipment to decorate the walls. In Victoria, the theme was for some reason Indian (as in the country, not the indigenous peoples of the Americas). Masks and photos filled the walls. Which I kind of found a bit strange, since they have such beatiful First Nation art from the Island itself that they could have decorated with. But they had also painted everything in strong, distinct colours like purple and lime green. That I liked.

And I just felt at home immediately. Ocean Island Inn was a real backpacker’s hostel and it felt so homey. It feels safe to know, that almost whereever you go, backpacker’s hostels will be the same. Somewhere to meet fellow travelers. A place of refuge when the world suddenly feels far too big.

Friday (4/5), we picked up our rented car in Victoria and started our drive towards Ucluelet and the southwestern coast of Vancouver Island. We somehow ended up with a brownish Dodge, and I know nothing about cars, but both Karin and Frida got all excited about it. Frida wouldn’t be allowed to drive it, though, because I had coaxed myself into the position of second driver. I felt I really needed the practice, but god, was I nervous. With the car full of friends! In an automatic! In a foreign country!

Karin drove the first stretch, to Nanaimo where we picked up Kate. Then it was my turn. And to be honest, it was much easier than I had expected it to be. Driving an automatic is like driving a toy car, and even tough I think I prefer the manual (because it forces you to think on your driving), the automatic felt like a friendly way to start off in this new position of mine.

Proof! Photographic proof! Me behind the wheel, actually making Marit comfortable enough to steal my camera and taking a shot. That must be a good sign.

At first the highway continued to be straight and the surroundings to be more or less suburbs and smaller forests. But slowly, the landscape changed and suddenly, I was driving through a forest with huge trees, by a bright blue lake with high mountains on both sides. Or I’m pretty sure that’s what I was driving through – I was so busy keeping my eyes on the road that I mostly just heard the amazed murmurs from my passengers. I felt as if I was missing somethng magnificent. (And really, I was. Luckily, Whiskey Creek Farm, where I went after our Ucluelet weekend, lies just about fifteen minutes from that strip of highway and that lake and that forest. I’ve been there several times – but that’s another story. I’m getting ahead of myself.)

In Port Alberni, we stopped for some grocery shopping and switched drivers again. From there, the road became narrower and more winding, with twists and turns and a lot of going up and down. And the view was amazing. We drove past more glittering lakes and snow capped mountains.

We arrived in Ucluelet at about seven. My first day as a designated driver was coming to an end. And it felt good. I felt as if I’d behaved well behind the wheel. Ivan, my driving school teacher would have approved of me. I’m pretty sure.