Everything was going fine until my last day there when my laptop froze on me. Went through all the troubleshooting processes but had a nasty suspicion that the hard drive was dead, meaning I'd lost everything on there. Still I was able to remain pretty calm about the whole thing as I knew I had everything important backed up but would still have to get everything sent from back home and set up everything up again. By the time I'd exhausted all options it was quite late and I'd been too busy for lunch, so thought I'd grab something from the vending machine, and was pleased to find I had the exact change. This is kind of a big deal for me as it still takes me a while to rummage around and locate the correct change (mainly because it's so stuffed full of bloody useless pennies) and because tax isn't added until you get to the register you can't prepare the correct change in advance, so any chance to get rid of some coins is a good thing. But of course the vending machine would accept everything except the very last two coins so at that point I that I flew into a dark rage at all machines which refused to work properly, or transform into anything cool (I'd just seen Transformers the night before - I'm sure I'd be much more interested in driving if there was a chance I'd get a car which was really a giant robot in disguise) and went stalking around the city in a bad mood. And forgot my camera on a day with a particularly nice sunset which didn't improve my mood any.
So the next day I was off on a ferry to Victoria, on Vancouver Island where I dropped my laptop off to get a new hard drive and have been on an enforced vacation since then. Victoria's quite nice, particularly the inner harbour with some really nice heritage buildings like the Empress Hotel and Legislative Assembly right by the waterfront. Went to the museum here - they had a special exhibit on the Titanic with a bunch of artefacts recovered from the wreck and recreations of some of the rooms and stuff. When you enter they hand you a card with an actual passenger's details, mine was an Irish guy about my age travelling with his brother. So at first it was kind of fun - you could see what kind of room they would have stayed in, what they could have to eat and there were people dressed in period costume so it had a good atmosphere. But when I got to the iceberg room where they started talking about the crash (there was a big interactive piece of ice to touch, probably not a piece of the actual iceberg I'm guessing though) it occurred to me that being a single male second class passenger, things probably weren't going to work out too well for my guy, which was confirmed by the list at the end of who survived or not. So that was kind of depressing actually, at least until I got around to the next exhibit with the woolly mammoth which cheered me up again. Also in Victoria I went to the Butchart Gardens, which I wanted to see as they're quite famous, and they are quite pretty even if it is a bit expensive to get in and made me feel like I was going to sneeze the whole time I was there.
After Victoria I headed up to Tofino on the shores of Clayoquat Sound on the west coast. The drive's there really nice, actually passes through some very nice mountains which I wasn't expecting to see yet. Tofino revloves around 2 activities really, surfing and whale watching so there's some really nice beaches around there. Not being much interested in surfing I opted for whale watching, was a pretty good trip, a bit choppy though and we only saw one gray whale, but did see some Stellar's Sea Lions and sea otters (both of which are much bigger than I realised) and bald eagles, which I was quite excited about as they've always been my favourite birds. Also caught a ferry across to Mears Island where there was quite a nice walk through some huge old cedars.
Then it was over to Nanaimo on the east coast, which was kind of dull to be honest. I think it's going through a bit of urban renewal at the moment (the hostel I stayed in had been a brothel and shooting gallery a few years ago, but was quite a nice place now) so hopefully it will be a bit nicer in a few years. They do have some nice islands just across from downtown though, I visited Newcastle Island which has nothing but campsites, cycling and walking trails so it was good to really get hiking again. More bald eagles here, was brilliant to be standing around in the forest with one wheeling through the trees just above me, also blonde raccoons (raccoons are meant to be nocturnal but I keep seeing them in the middle of the day so I don't think they're very good at it) and a beach with literally millions of tiny little crabs, which is kind of freaky when you wander right into the middle of them and suddenly everywhere you look there's these little crawling things, but only a little bit.
So I'm back in Victoria now, just got my laptop back yesterday so have been busily reloading stuff onto it and catching up with posting photos and blogs and everything else. Heading back to Vancouver next to pick up my backup stuff being sent from home so I can do work again, and then I have to plan out my movements for the next few weeks, but will probably start heading east to the Okanagan region.
1 comment:
"enforced vacation"
Is there a better kind of holiday?
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