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.

Quick change in the UK ...

Under the Wave off Kanagawa (pic from Wikipedia)

After our five months in South America, we did a quick return to the UK. We only had a couple of weeks, so it was a bit of a flying visit to family and a quick stay in London, but we managed to get done what we needed to.


That included a bit of shopping for new clothes in smaller sizes, in particular, gym and running gear, that we would be taking to Canada.



Despite the expected slowdown in Argentina, During our time in South America, I had managed to lose 2 stone 13 pounds (which for non-UK people is 41 pounds or 19kg) and Nic had done even better at 4 stone (56 pounds or 25kg).

So while I still have a long way to go to get to my target, I was still pretty pleased, and there was a noticeable difference. Nic had of course got much closer to his goal already, and the effect was probably best described by the fact that when his mum first saw him, her response was an exclamation of "Oh my God!"

We didn't fit in too much during the fortnight, but aside from family, a couple of friends, and shopping, we did get in a visit ton the theatre. We had booked tickets for the last night of Don Juan in Soho, staring David Tennant. We thoroughly enjoyed it.

We also went along to an exhibition at the British Museum. We didn't have time to look around the rest of it, so we'll have to go back again sometime, and this time also take some photos of the impressive inside of the building.

The exhibition we saw was Hokusai: beyond the Great Wave. It was about the work of Japanese artist, Katsushika Hokusai - though he went by various other names during his lifetime - whose best known work is Under the Wave off Kanagawa, and is of a huge, frothy, blue wave, with Mount Fuji in the background. It is one of those pieces that you may never have heard of, but you would probably recognise.

It isn't a painting though. It is actually, in my opinion, more remarkable for being a woodblock print. What this means is that Hokusai did the initial drawing, but then a specialist woodcarver had to use it as an outline to create wooden blocks that would then be inked and printed. It is all a highly skilled process, but very effective.

The exhibition contained many other pieces by this prolific artist, and was well worth going to see. We found his work really interesting and enjoyable, but I'm afraid I still like the classic The Great Wave, the best.