Canada On The Up Leg

We arrived on Vancouver Island, Canada, in the BC capital of Victoria, right in the down town port area, to a new guy on the customs check-in who thought he was going to throw his weight around and scare the hell out of us. We casually sat on the bike and answered his silly questions with silly grins on our faces. How many times have we been through this? The more we grinned the more agitated he became. He didn’t know what to do with the American travel papers so went and asked his boss. Soon he came over to see what was on the go.

He was a bike rider himself so we had a good laugh and chat about biking and as we were last off the ferry this went on for a wee while. Then he turned to the new guy and told him to go stamp us in for six months, gave us a Canadian flag pin each and wished us well and left. New guy comes back with our passports and hands them over with a look of, “If it was up to me……..,” on his face.

Vancouver Island was a beautiful place with a lovely climate, even for this time of year. We could see why so many Canadians retire here. In fact it is the major retirement destination of all Canada. Victoria was stunning. A lovely setting around the old port and fort, with float planes landing and taking off right in front of the down town and the draw bridge with its massive concrete counter weights all adding to the view. The bridge was designed by the same guy who designed the Golden Gate bridge in San Francisco. It is so well balanced that to lift the bridge only takes a small 75hp engine to run the mechanism.

We stayed for two nights, as the main attraction was to see the world famous Butchart Gardens, Canada’s top tourist attraction. Well, Annette wanted to see them. I, in the mean time, was more interested in what was going on down in the port as an NZ flagged ship was in the harbour. Real men do not do garden tours. Well I’m not a real man and ended up hugging trees and talking to flowers for the day. No, seriously it was well worth it and it was a great time to see the place. In the summer, with up to two cruise ships in harbour on any given day, this place really hums and walking around the paths is shoulder to shoulder according to our bus driver.

So, this blog is for all you lovers of all things green and Annette has selected a few flowery photos for you to see. I will come back soon with some real men photos of bears and more beers.