Going around in circles to get to Port Hardy

After we got back from Alert Bay, we jumped straight into the car for the 350km drive back to Nanaimo, to drop off the hire car. We had originally hoped to hire a car that we could drop in Port Hardy, our final destination on Vancouver Island, but that had proved too awkward and expensive, so instead, we were driving back to Nanaimo, dropping off the car, spending a night in the hostel there, and in the morning, getting a seven hour bus to Port Hardy, which is only about an hour’s drive away from Port McNeill. Oh well, such is life!

The drive down wasn’t bad, and we stopped off for dinner in Courtenay again, this time without having to make any silly detours for elusive petrol stations. I was a bit concerned about seeing the engine warning light lit up on the panel, but had been assured by the rental company that it was OK to drive, and thankfully it made it back OK.

The next morning, we came all the way back again, with a brief stop for food in Campbell River, and having hit roadworks along the way, arrived in Port Hardy, late, at 6:30 pm.

We were only here for the one night, just to catch our ferry in the morning, so no touristy stuff to be done here, just a bit of food shopping. We had checked on the website to find out whether we could get healthy food on the two ferries we would be taking over the next few days, and weren’t that hopeful that the options available would do our diets much good.

As we were also going be having a lot of long train journeys coming up, with food choices being ‘oh so healthy’ options like pizza pops and cheeseburgers, we had bought ourselves a coolbag, which we were planning to stuff with salads, cold meats, fruit and some skimmed milk to go in our tea and with our healthy breakfast cereal. We weren’t aiming to cover every meal, but we figured that if could make two out of three meals OK, it would at least limit any damage.

So, we did some shopping, prepared our food, and then got ourselves to bed early, as the ferry shuttle bus was arriving to collect us at the unearthly hour of 5am.