A couple of years back we took home the Georgia Straight’s BEST OF award for “Best Navel Gazing Web Site“, and while our non-profit organization that supports our web site (Vancouver Is Awesome, Inc) is focused on celebrating all of the awesome things that make up our city one of those things is it’s proximity to other awesome places. In Super, Neighbours in British Columbia we take you on adventures to other B.C. locales that we think you should check out. ********** For this next series of posts we’re taking you on an adventure to Sonora Resort up in Desolation Sound. It’s a private fishing resort, spa and wellness centre on a small island (Sonora Island) that is obviously not accessible by road, and it has a few other things in common with heaven which I will be outlining in the coming days. The first is getting there. There are various options available for getting up to Sonora, and by “various” I mean “two”: you can get there by water taxi or you can get there by way of London Air Services‘ AW 139 helicopter.

LAS is a sister company of Sonora Resort and they’ve got transportation available from one of the smaller YVR terminals every Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. It’s a bit more expensive than taking the water taxi but so worth it. Simply put ours was the Best. Flight. Ever.

Here’s the AW 139 boarding. It seats twelve passengers very comfortably and my wife and I were lucky to be two of only six who were on this particular flight along with the two captains.

It’s a mere 50 minutes from YVR to the resort, and here’s what it looked like as we were coming in for a landing on the pad pictured top left. Kinda like a postcard, isn’t it?

But hold up! Let’s rewind a bit here and take a look at some sights you’re not generally going to see when flying out of Vancouver International Airport. The little things. Like one of the little terminals that the private airlines like LAS fly out of.

And a much closer look at the mouth of the Mighty Fraser river dumping out into the Pacific and slowly turning silt into what might one day be more land. I bet when the salmon are RUNNING you can see them from this vantage point. (Note the foreshadowing as we are making our way out to a fishing resort after all!)

We sat on the left hand side of the helicopter for the ride up and we got a great look West out at the Gulf Islands and the Sunshine Coast. One of the more interesting things I spotted when looking straight down at one point was this makeshift breakwater made up of what appear to be old tankers in Powell River. Whatever works for recycling, I guess!

Lastly, I’m going to break my personal “don’t post photos of yourself on the blog” rule here to give you a peek at the comfort you’re afforded. Leather seats. Big windows. In the middle row, seats that face each other so you can converse with your partner/friend. Minimal jostling and a generally calm ride. And of course the option to take off your hat without worrying about how messy your hair is.

We’ll return to some much more epic scenery from the air in the final post in this series – the flight back to Vancouver – but first stay tuned next as I show you around the resort a little bit, then take you fishing!