Day 5 - Galiano Island

In the morning, we had our first glimpse of the incredible view off our balcony (since it had been almost dark when we arrived) and that made up for how groggy we felt getting ready for breakfast at the enforced B&B time. When we arrived in the dining room, the first treat was a little card with my name and the breakfast selections waiting at the bar. We got our own table and a sweeping view of the water and the boats and the sweetest waiter in the world immediately brought us excellent coffee, fresh squeezed juice and just-made baked goods with fruit. And it didn't end there! We had a choice of three entrees from the menu card, too. Ella Fitzgerald was playing, the sun was glinting off the water, and every bite of food was heaven. It may have been the most enjoyable breakfast of my life! :) One of the owners was circulating and let us know that all the major hiking trails were closed due to the fire warnings, and that helped us decide to take the whale-watching trip that the Inn was organizing for that morning on its own little boat. Silly me, I'm such a San Diegan that I had assumed there was no such thing as killer whales outside of Sea World, so I was pleasantly surprised to find out that British Columbia actually has one of the largest concentrations of orca pods in the world! At 11:00 we were ensconced on the boat, which had indoor seating and two outside decks with nine other folks, including two little girls, one of whom was celebrating her seventh birthday. Our leader was Captain Mike, a pink, white-bearded gent of indeterminate British-y origins who put me in mind of the Old Man and the Sea. He announced with great excitement that someone (he had a sophisticated radio network of whale-followers) had spotted a "transient" just off Galiano so we sped off in hot pursuit. I was giggling about this because I felt like we were storm-watchers or something, with our own lingo, but we did indeed find the transient, a large male who was too shy to get very close to the boat. Mike has apparently been successful finding whales in 26 of 28 expeditions, so we simply nodded when he said he was headed to the San Juan Islands off of Washington where there were reports of an entire pod feeding. It was at least an hour of zipping along, but it was absolutely gorgeous, and we spotted sea lions, a Dalls porpoise and at least one leaping salmon on the way. Suddenly we could see a bunch of fins (and boats ahead of us) and Mike cut the motor, and as we rocked in silence we could see that the whole group of whales was actually headed in our direction! A couple of them swam right under the boat! It was very cool, and we were even able to observe behaviors like breaching, rolling over and whatever it's called when their tail is in the air. We saw a couple of babies, too. Heading back, we saw several more swimming along not too far from us. We were out there for about 3 and a half hours, and it was just a magical day. And perfect timing, too. As we pulled back into Sturdies Bay near the Inn, the clouds were rolling in and it started to rain and thunder less than 30 minutes later.

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Undeterred by the rain (and quite hungry since we'd missed lunch and the afternoon tea at the Inn was underwhelming with its small near-frozen hunks of muffin under glass) we walked into "town" (about aminute's walk) to a place called Scoops! We were perusing the menu when we heard "All that whale-watching makes you hungry," and looking up we saw a couple from the boat smiling from a nearby table. We laughed and made some chit-chat with them and they invited us to join them while we ate. No sooner had we sat down when they (really he-she sat rather glumly the whole time wiping her pinkish nose) launched into a protracted version of how Yogananda and Kriananda and the Self-Realization Fellowship had changed their lives. They live on a sort of yoga commune in Nevada City, CA, where they are the network administrators for the commune, basically, and the products it sells. About 200 "followers" live there. As is the case with most zealots, "Aumkara" (his wife was plain Andrea) felt compelled to give us every detail of his spiritual journey, and for some time I found it quite fascinating. For instance, he saw the light when the '86 Challenger Shuttle exploded-he had been an engineer for the failed booster rockets. Also, it was obvious that he had lured Andrea into his web, so to speak-she wasn't a follower before she met him. I was sort of having fun with them, such as when Aumkara reported that Kriananda hadn't even wanted to be a spiritual leader, and tried to flee from this calling, but his followers drew him back. "Oh, kind of like Life of Brian!" I chirped, and David nearly choked on his veggie burger. Finally, our bellies full and growing weary of the one-sided conversation, we politely made our excuses and headed up the road which wound through the trees. It was raining lightly, but we had our umbrellas, and I was thrilled to find tangled blackberry bushes growing along the road. We ate some and they were lovely. We weren't really going anywhere in particular, and had a laugh when several young men in tuxedos buzzed by on Vespas, obviously somebody's groomsmen. We saw the actual bride later on the edge of a gray rock near the water, getting her picture taken, with the wind whipping her veil around. Our stroll, which was almost silent except for our voices and the sound of the rain, took us to Bellhouse Provincial Park, where we were able to clamber down to the water from a new vantage point other than the one we'd had at Sturdies Bay. Even though the day was now gray and stormy, the view was stunning, with the ocean broken up by fingers of land, trees, tiny lighthouses.

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The island was actually longer than we'd imagined (about a 40 minute drive from one end to the other, we were told) so we walked back to the Inn to get the Bee Mobile and drove about 6 kilometers to a turn off for Montague Harbour. The trees on the service road were so dense it was almost completely dark, but soon we emerged into a parking lot next to a beautiful little beach. There was a beach trail there that we'd been told was safe for hiking (ironically, the fire warning was still very much in effect, even though it was raining) and we started the walk along the little beach that turned out to be made of millions of very white crushed shells. There was so little actually dirt or sand that if you picked up a fistful and let it go, your hand was completely clean. The contrast of the white shell beach against the translucent green water and the dark green trees was just mesmerizing. We began walking along the pine-needle covered trail under the trees, which sometimes dipped down to the water and other times rose above it in small cliffs. I wanted to keep going and going, but David was afraid it would get dark. We later found out it was a loop trail so it would have been fine, but oh well. Once we were a ways out and no one else was around, we sat down on a large grey tree (the water, too, was filled with floating driftwood logs) and looked across the channel at another part of the island. It was so quiet, and then we noticed a sea lion a few feet out, seemingly swimming right for us in curiosity. He turned away before getting to shore, though.

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Because of our late lunch (where we ate too much as Aumkara droned on about consciousness-at one point he said he was no longer a victim of emotions, which control us, and I blurted out "How useful! Emotions make me nuts.") we weren't hungry for dinner yet, so we decided to forego a fancy meal on this night and we hung out at the Inn for a couple hours before heading back out to the Hummingbird Pub. It was funny, because one of the innkeepers had delicately wrinkled her nose when we asked about casual dinners, and said "Well, there's the pub, but it's PUB FOOD." Pub food turned out to be just what we wanted after a chilly walk, and we enjoyed our mini-pizza, salad and the best pita and hummus we've ever had! By 10:30 we were back at the Inn, snuggled in bed with the fire crackling and the Celtic music playing, and I slept very well.