Up The Inside Passage!

The Inside Passage, British Columbia

I don’t like early mornings, so I can’t say that I was overly impressed that our 5am shuttle didn’t actually turn up until half an hour later, as I could have had an extra half hour in bed. We got to the ferry the required two hours before departure; quite why we had to be there that early, just to then sit in the harbour for a couple of hours, I really don’t know. OK, OK, I know, I’m grumpy about early mornings!  Enough of that, onto the post.

We had opted to take the daytime ferry, despite the early start, because it travels up the Inside Passage, which we understood was a rather lovely journey. And it was indeed good scenery, albeit a lot of it quite similar, with lots of rugged, tree lined shorelines.

The Inside Passage, British Columbia

Clearly though, I wasn't nearly as impressed as the man sitting at the next table, who was telling his younger companion, probably his son, that “You can’t get scenery like this anywhere else in the world.” I can only assume that he doesn't travel much, and has never seen images of Norway, for just one example. I resisted pointing this out to him though, and contented myself with just rolling my eyes and muttering to Nic instead. Thinking about it afterwards, I can't decide whether to feel happy for the guy because he believes that he (thinks that he) lives in a uniquely beautiful place, sorry for him because he obviously hasn't seen the other similarly beautiful places, or frustrated by him appearing to be so ignorant that they exist!

The Inside Passage, British Columbia

Despite all our good intentions with food, by the time the ferry actually set sail, we had long since eaten our allocated portion of healthy cereal, skimmed milk and fruit, so when the restaurant opened for breakfast, we decided to give it a try. Nic was thrilled, as he has harboured the desire to be an honorary hobbit, ever since he discovered that they have a second breakfast!

The Inside Passage, British Columbia

In fact, we weren’t too badly behaved with our breakfast, so it wasn’t the end of the world. And we were OK for lunch, as we had our healthy salad. The problem came at dinner, when having been told by a regular user of this ferry that the restaurant buffet is excellent, we decided to give it a go. This was a mistake on so many levels.

The Inside Passage, British Columbia

The food selection really wasn’t good for me, so my choice was limited to some pretty tasteless and very fatty slices of beef, some very dried out rice, and a combination of over and undercooked vegetables. I did have a cup of soup which wasn’t bad, but of course I added a slice of bread to that, which was naughty. Nic was happier with his meal – he had more choice, and he assures me that his food was better quality, but it wasn’t very diet friendly.

The problem was, the one part of the buffet that genuinely did look rather inviting, was the desserts. By which time, I was still hungry, and now I was grumpy too, so I threw the diet out of the window (or should that be porthole), and filled my plate with apple crumble, chocolate cake, chocolate mints, a lemon cakey thing, and goodness knows what else. Nic was no better, and we both ended up stuffed and feeling rather guilty! Oh well.

The Inside Passage, British Columbia

Food aside, it was a long journey, but it was at least a pleasant one, and I spent quite a bit of time out on deck watching for whales. There were quite a few along the way, mostly too far away to get any decent view of anything other than the jet from the blowhole, but there were a few that were close enough to see the fin and the tail fluke.

We arrived in Prince Rupert at about midnight, and shared a taxi to our hostel with two others who were also staying there.

The Inside Passage, British Columbia

The Inside Passage, British Columbia

The Inside Passage, British Columbia

The Inside Passage, British Columbia

The Inside Passage, British Columbia

The Inside Passage, British Columbia

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.