Island to mainland

Our 3 days in Nanaimo were relaxed to say the least. A pretty quiet small ish harbourside town that we lapped in about 30 minutes.

Nanaimo began as a trading post in the early 19th century. By 1853 the town was chiefly known for the export of coal. At the end of our street, where we'd chosen to call home for a couple of nights, stood the Nanaimo Bastion. An historic octagonal shaped fortification. The Hudson's Bay Company, which then held a royal lease on all of what was then the Colony of Vancouver Island, built it in 1853 to defend its coal mining operations in Nanaimo. Through the summer months the original cannons from within the bastion are fired daily at noon.

For us it was the ferry departure point for Canada mainland. We had walks along the harbour front, where I managed a find a good guy running a small old school barbers. Visited the library, where me and my credit card momentarily decided to be separated after it was left under terminal one's keyboard. But that was about as exciting as it got. This island certainly lives up to the fact that it's the preferred spot for Canadians to retire to.

Our original plan was to venture out West again to the coast where a nice sounding town called Tofino sat, but timings and below seasonal conditions just didn't pull on us enough to complete the 8 hour mountainous round trip to a west coast we'd already eyeballed down in the good old USA. My latest barber of choice had mentioned that the current temperature was 10 degrees below last years which made him stop instantly barbering my bonce to wildly laugh out loud. As he then explained "this time last year the winter Olympics were really struggling for snow as it was just too warm"!

This downtime in Nanaimo gave us time to take stock and sort a few mundane things out for the coming future and more interestingly to do some research on the next leg of our trip, three and a half weeks exploring the mountains of BC and Alberta states, mainland Canada. With a bit of skiing and trekking thrown in the mix to break up the bus journeys! Given the geographical locations and the sheer remoteness of these parts we'd opted to completely rely on the driving skills of the Greyhound. But as with every public transport system much planning ahead was needed.