Part 6: The Gulf Islands

Hello steemers today I’d like to share my experience solo backpacking around the Gulf Islands. These are a beautiful cluster of Islands off Vancouver Island and require a small amount of research to know where to go, luckily I’m here to help!

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I started in the seaside town of Nanaimo (Vancouver Island), which is the ferry port that connects to Horseshoe Bay (Vancouver side). The first island was a quick ten minute ferry that costs $7 return trip to Newcastle Island and departs from downtown Nanaimo next to Maffeo Sutton Park. It’s a tiny island that would take you about half a day to explore on foot. I arrived there late afternoon which gave me enough time to adventure around the island with some really good ‘golden hour’ (Tarrentino lingo for afternoon evening sunshine). The views are incredible. You have this vast blue ocean with jagged rocky mountains that surround the Vancouver area.

It truly is a stunning and unique city. If you’re lucky you’ll see dolphin and orca pods swimming in the open ocean from Newcastle Island’s northen tip lookout. If possible try and time your walk around the island so that it is low tide. Kanaka Bay during the low tide reveals loads of marine rock pool life: starfish, oysters, clams, crabs, sea anemone, pelicans and sea gulls (the sea gulls in North America are literally 3 times the size as the ones in Australia, what is in those oysters!). If you’d like to take things easy, watch the sunset and not in a rush, I would recommend camping on the island. It’s only $17 so if you’re with someone it’s a pretty affordable way to do it. That being said I was pretty tempted to pitch a tent the forest as there are no bears or any other dangerous animals, just watch out for those chipmonks!

Now if you’ve been following my blogs, my how to hitchhike blog will come in handy if you’d like to follow my footsteps. Using the hitchhiking maps I park myself at a set of traffic lights, headphones on with my sign “SALT SPRING” short for Salt Spring Island and continued to boogie for next 45 minutes. I got honks, waves and a lot of what the hell are you doing looks but when you’re in a country where you know literally no one, who the hell cares? My driver who stopped was a 19 year old guy who’d surprisingly never picked up a hitchhiker before and told me he had his day off from work and felt like doing something spontaneous, what a legend! We got talking so much that I completely forgot to tell him the turn off, 30 minutes later… I’m so privileged to have the bloke turn around still drive me all the way to the port of Crofton (this is where you need to grab the ferry to Salt Spring). The ferry to Salt Spring is amazing, there are little islands dotted everywhere and water is just this really deep blue colour! Now once I got to Salt Spring, I heard how this was hitchhikers heaven and is very common mode of transportation (locals and visitors alike). I recommend hustling to the front of the ferry and stick your thumb out to the cars that were on the Ferry. From there ask them to take you to Ganges (the main town), this is your crossroads of where you’d like to go. On the corner of Seaview avenue and Fulford-Ganges road is ‘the spot’ for hitchhiking around the island one local told me. There should be bakery right there as landmark for you to look out for. The first car to pass picked up, really its that easy.

My first destination was Ruckle Provincial Park. It’s loaded with heaps of walking trails, great views, lots of marine life like otters, dolphins, orcas and whales! While there is a payed campsite, I wasn’t keen on paying $20 for a spot that was next to a group of children on bandcamp. I decided to bush bash (Australian technical term for fighting your way through the forest) a few kilometres through the forest until I reached this really secluded cove which gave me an awesome ocean view to myself. I pitched my tent, prepared my easy mac, watched the ferries go by and read my favourite self-development book ‘The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People’ (probably the most influential book to have impacted my life, highly recommend).

With a change of scenery in mind I decided to hit the road on foot with no plans and just my backpack. Turns out that side of the island is compeltly dead, it took about an hour of walking before I was picked up by a shuttle bus heading to Fulford Harbour. I spent the next hour in Rock Salt cafe sipping on my long black coffee for an hour and a half to indulge in the free wifi to research where I’d like to go next. Originally I was planning to just camp anywhere along the shoreline, however the next 24 hours turned out to be one of the most fun spontaneous choices I’d made. Again first car that I stuck my thumb out for picked me up. Her name was Tanya and she’d literally just bought a brand new 4x4 three days earlier. I asked whether she could take me to Mt. Tuam and she happily agreed and we drove up a very dicey dirt road only to hit a fence with federal warnings of prosecution. Tanya offered me a cider she’d just bought and offered to drive to Mt. Maxwell instead.

Where we drank the first lot of ciders

Several ciders later we are driving down the road and I got the impression locals on this island don’t give a flying f*ck, I needed her to stop driving immediately. By chance she offered to stop for a swim a local clothing optional jetty, why not? The next 7 hours I spent lying naked in the sun with a bunch of local French Canadian hippies coming and going. Tanya (who was still legless at this point) managed to scuba dive back flip in her clothes into the water, at this point everyone was asking whether I could drive her. Tanya kindly agreed that I could crash in her loft if I drove her back (sounded like a great deal to me!) Unfortunately I can’t go into full details of stories that unfolded that day as I would be writing a mini book worth of writing but man that loft I crashed in was epic! It was a beautiful ocean view room!