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In last year's Georgia Straight BEST OF awards we took home an editor's pick 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 this new series of features entitled Super, Neighbours in British Columbia we'll be taking you on adventures to other BC locales that we think you should check out. |
In this fourth part I'm bringing you... a bear! We actually saw 9 of them on an afternoon bear watching tour courtesy of Jamie's Whale Station and I know I promised you all-Wick-all-the-time but what I learned from a breakfast with Charles Mcdiarmid, co-founder of the Inn, was that when they first built the place they made a conscious decision not to offer fishing charters, tours, or other stuff like that which already existed in Tofino because they figured it would serve the local economy better if they simply referred business and made connections between their guests and people offering these sorts of services. Monopolys aren't good for anybody, especially small communities like Tofino, so they lined up this boat watching tour for us courtesy of Jamie's so we could get a sample of the awesomeness that's a stone's throw from the resort.
On our tour (which set out specifically to look at bears) we had a bit of a slow start in the boat but we were super lucky in that we came upon some orcas that the captain chased (and by "chased" I mean that he turned the boat around slowly when he saw them and kept a safe distance as to not disturb them, but to give us a great view) for a bit. He also took us to see some harbour seals, an eagle's nest, fish were jumping all over the place and eventually the bears started coming out of the bush at the edge of the water everywhere we went. It was amazing to see them, at one point there was a mother bear with two cubs that were bumbling up and down a tree half foraging and half just looking really cute. I've seen bears in the wild before but 9 in a couple hours? What an experience.
