We have booked (well done Sarah G.) so have no trouble getting on the boat, and our Voyager takes pride of place right up the front. Once we have parked, we immediately charge up to the top deck, which is deserted throughout the journey, apart from us and a few smokers. As we find pretty soon, sensible people who have done the journey before take shelter below decks; only mad dogs and Englishmen brave the high winds up top.
We see no whales on our journey (another thing that Sarah is keen to see now that the Moose has been ticked off), although there are plenty of mysterious fins that appear and disappear, frustratingly, always just out of vision. The journey itself is only a couple of hours, and we arrive on Vancouver Island at Nanaimo late afternoon. Sarah has booked a stop-over hotel for the evening, because our place on Frank Island isn’t available until the next day. It’s cheap and cheerful, but we don’t brave the bar food and so go exploring around the harbour. Soon enough we find a Thai restaurant which serves us noodles and glasses of milk in vast quantities. We sit by an open window and freeze. The kids play in the ornamental pond.
The next day we explore Nanaimo harbour in the daylight. We find a decent café which serves us bagels and jam (Jemima is hooked on bagels) and look at the boats. Frankly, although Nanaimo puts itself out there as a tourist destination, you wouldn’t want to do much here other than pass through. One treat awaits, however; the local highland dancing club is putting on a display to commemorate something momentous that happened here a long time ago, so we watch their prancing up and down, accompanied by a burly ginger-haired piper whose genes tip their hat to a Scottish legacy.
He is a good piper. And then, the real highlight of the show – at 11am the piper is to light a huge cannon in front of which the girls have been dancing. Some Japanese teenagers have been watching, and one is selected to put the taper to the powder to light the cannon. This she does (albeit clutching a friend closely), amid much giggling and fingers in ears.
The cannon itself is indeed very loud, and the kids think the whole affair is great fun.
The Voyager awaits, so we drive off to the other side of the island after breakfast. The journey is complicated slightly by our need to buy supplies for the next three days, and also because if we arrive after 4pm the tide will be in and we will be cut off from our dwelling for the night. We pass through lakes, mountains, and forests of the biggest redwoods in the world. It’s all very spectacular.
We follow the instructions and arrive at the beach just short of Tolfino in time for the tide. There then follows one of the most impressive movements of supplies in the history of human endeavour – everyone carries something and everyone is carrying far more than they can comfortably manage. Eliza and Jemima between them carry the new green bag; Sarah is carrying a couple of rucsacs, and Monty some food. I carry the North Face red clothes bag on my back, and also booze supplies in a rapidly failing box, alternatively in front of me, on my back, and finally on my head. It is a long walk – well over a mile, and this becomes tiresome for everyone soon enough. But there are some nice waves to watch rolling in as we suffer.
Eventually we walk onto a long spit of sand extending away from the land with sea on either side. Long strands of kelp are washed up, like bullwhips. Monty thinks these are fun to jump on, because they have a floaty thing at one end which pops when you stand on it. Flocks of small birds skitter around, flying in waves as if connected or in sync somehow. I think these are sand pipers. They are so small that you can’t make them out until you get quite close, and their legs move too fast to see. We are told by an aged beech-comber that these wonderful birds have been quite rare recently, and she is pleased to see such a number this season.
And at the far end of this spit of sand is our island - Frank Island. And on the island is our house for the next three nights.
No plumbing, no mains power. An outside loo, an outside shower (which we don’t find for a day or so),
and just a few car batteries recharged by the sun to power a couple of small reading lights. The hut has been put together well, albeit in an amateur way, and is literally perched on a rock on its own 10 acre patch of land, invisible from the mainland, and facing out to sea. There is a small room in which the kids sleep, and a double bedroom upstairs on a kind of maisonette level, which also provides access out onto an outside area with a couple of seats from which you can watch the whales spouting a few hundred yards off the shore.
With binoculars, we can see humpbacks breaching every now and then. The first time we saw one, we couldn’t believe it, so we fished out the binos and spent long hard minutes looking into the sunset through them, hoping for a breach. It’s pretty much guaranteed that if you do this you will be looking in the wrong direction. The trick is to see one with the naked eye and then focus for the next 5 minutes or so on that place, in that hope that it pops up again. We reckoned that there were probably 4 or 5 different whales mucking about one evening. Sarah gets excited about going out on a boat to find them.
We drink too much white wine in the sun that evening, then rise late and throw together some breakfast.
We have bottled gas, but no running hot water so washing up involves warming water in pans. Slow, but we have plenty of time. We then decide to go and explore Tolfino, so make the long walk back to the beach and the car parked where we left it yesterday. The waves are not looking quite so strong today, so I begin to get itchy feet in case the swell drops off altogether. This puts surf rental at the top of our priorities, and I do this straight away while Sarah and the kids order breakfast in a café opposite the rental shop. Monty makes friends with the owners by climbing up the counter and pulling the whole thing down on top of him. Next door is one of Tolfino’s many activity centres offering bear-watching tours, whale-watching, speedboat rides, sea-kayaking etc. Sarah is getting excited about whale-watching, so we book a trip for lunchtime.
We have plenty of warm things with us, but it turns out that we have to don comedy suits anyway as protection against the cold and the spray.
They don’t have ones Monty’s size (as usual, we have had to be optimistic about his age when booking), so there is lots of rolling up of sleeves and trouser legs etc.
The trip itself is really very good – our guide is a local who clearly knows his whales and their habits, and we see Grey Whales (with very bad breath) and Humpbacks, both very close to the boat.
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We also see sea otters, sea lions and gulls of various sorts in droves.
Being far out to sea also allows us to look back at Vancouver Island and its impressive topology.
Whale-watching is all very well, but I am by now almost beside myself at not having yet got into the sea. We go back to Frank Island and I get into the water. The sea is extremely cold and I now understand why everyone else is wearing full suits with socks, gloves and balaclavas. Fortunately the surf is good enough to keep me warm inside. I enjoy my 6’2 which is a bit shorter than I am used to (Costa Rica excepting).
The next day is spent chilling on the island. We go crabbing, fishing, scrambling; Sarah does art and crafts with the kids while I go in the water again. I could live here for quite a long time doing this.
Sarah less so, though, so the following day sees us once more in Tolfino, but this time sea kayaking. We go in pairs, with Jemima crewing with Mum; Monty with me, and Eliza with the guide. I have never seen so many star fish – they come in two shades, either purple or orange. We also see another otter, which is cool, and perhaps coolest of all – a dead shark which must be at least ten feet long. It is washed up on a sand bank in the middle of Tolfino sound, so we all disembark and have a good look at it. The guide has a leatherman with him so we pull a few teeth out for no reason. The kids make a sand castle.
We have supper in a local restaurant (Shelter), served by an Ozzie who gives me some advice on the best breaks while clearing up soft drinks spilt on him by the kids. Good food, good wine – this Tolfino place could be worth a return trip one day. The sun is set by the time we finish so it’s a romantic walk back to Frank Island across the beach in the fading light.
In fact, we do the same walk home again on our last night, only this time in complete darkness. The reason is that we attend the Tolfino lantern festival in the early evening, a cracking “do”, whereby all the kids around have made lanterns in which candles are lit, so that in the dusk light (and, later, complete darkness), the colours and shapes are lit up. The lanterns are hung in the trees and you walk along paths through the woods with the lanterns lighting your way. Very jolly, and there are various bands dispersed around the place providing accompanying music.
One more surf the next morning, and then it’s off to our final destination on the other side of the island – Yellowpoint.
