WE'RE WALKING ON SUNSHINE ... WOO-OH!

We've arrived safely in Prince Rupert after our 10-day trip on Haida Gwaii (Queen Charlotte Islands) and have finally found an Internet cafe to update you on all our adventures. To those who have been living vicariously through our travels, sorry for the delay.

Also, we make reference to various pictures in the following entry, but we are running out of time and won't get them posted today (those slow Windows operating systems, you know). We should have them up and more stories in a few days.


Courtenay continued from entry "Reaching ferry ride #16" (May 9)

A phone call to Rachel's relatives resulted in an invitation for supper, sleep in a bed and visiting. We promptly accepted all of the above and escaped Redneck Central, relatively unscathed.

While Wayne picked us up, Elvera had prepared four homecooked dishes of gourmet food, plus fresh strawberry pie with whipped cream. We weren't used to having more than one dish for a meal and found ourselves overeating just a little bit. Breakfast the next morning was no different! (see photo)

We spent one night at Miracle Beach Provincial Campground, before making the connection with the Campbell River city transit that took us almost directly to the ferry terminal.


Quadra Island

We took the 10-minute ferry ride to Quadra Island, hitched a ride to the Heriot Bay campground and immediately fell in love with the area. This may have had something to do with the warm sun on our faces, which we hadn't felt for what seemed like an eternity. And the sun didn't stop shining for our entire time there. We even flipped through the classifieds for possible places to rent.

The campground was beside the Heriot Bay Inn and we were excited to see that the inn's pub would have live music our first evening there. We decided to go.

Charming (??) locals

We arrived just before 9 p.m. and picked a table facing the band's equipment. On our right was a harmless-looking fellow, maybe in his 50s or 60s, who seemed to have settled himself comfortably in front of his plate of fish and chips. We could hear him having a converstion but quickly noticed the conversation was with himself.

In situations like this, that is, being in the vicinity of someone who is socially awkward, you wish you could only be far enough away so that talking is impossible; but you most definitely want to be close enough so that you can watch what the person is going to do. The excitement of unpredictability was running in our viens. Before long the fellow asked, "Where you from?" proving we were all too close. Rachel was able to expertly avoid eye contact but Eric failed and responded. Eric told him where we were from, the short form, while he muttered to himself. The only comfort was that we knew that soon music was going to blare and conversation would be impossible.

Well music did start and as soon as the first note pounded from the speakers, the man we now knew as Tom was out of his chair doing manuevers. We use the word "manuevers" because it was not exactly dancing. One has to be moving with the beat of the music to be dancing. It was like watching a Jane Fonda workout video meld with Bruce Lee winning a marathon which produced a very grotesque manuever which can only be described as such. Could this really be what the ad that enticed us here had meant when it boasted "charming locals"?

The only thing that further stressed us out was the pole that stood in the middle of the room.

Tom began rubbing his body all over the pole in a manner we don't feel would be appropriate to describe. We found ourselves trying to remember if we had touched the pole on the way in. Judging by the locals cheers this appeared to be a regular event.

The climax came when Tom lifted his shirt and started to rub his nipples. At this point we decided we were too tired to stay for the rest of the set and promptly paid for our Yam fries and left. That's the great and sometimes dangerous thing about travelling. You never know who you are going to meet.

Free feast of food

The next day, we learned about the re-opening of a museum that was taking place in an indigenous village on Quadra. The museum had been closed seven years ago after 25 years of operation. It was now re-opening after the addition of a pavillion and new exhibits, all very impressive. We toured the museum and checked out the ancient artifacts and learned the local history. Then we made our way to the rec centre where they were serving lunch. We have never seen so much seafood under one roof. We filled our plates heaping with prawns, traditionally barbecued salmon, salads and cheese. All for free; we were in heaven.


Day trip to Cortes Island

We took the short ferry ride to Cortes island on May 14 and hitched to Manson's Landing, a natural saltwater lagoon. The tide was out and this left most of the bay's floor exposed. It was impossible to walk on the sand without stepping on the countless oysters on the ground. We ran into a woman named Julia who was clam digging. She was only using an oyster shell to dig and was turning up clams at a rate that baffled us (see video). Afterwards Eric managed to scam a few oysters for himself eating them raw on the beach...yum. Doesn't get much more fresh than that.

From there, we walked a short distance to Hague Lake. What awaited us was a totally empty beach on the most clear and pristine lake imaginable. Rachel even took off some of her layers and walked in the water then lay on a log to take in some sun. It was perfect.

All too soon, we had to make our way back to the ferry and to Heriot Bay. Are we falling in love with this place?

Once we got back to Heriot Bay we began to make supper. This was no normal supper though. We were going to make Parma Rosa Rotini with clams, (which we poached from Manson's Lagoon), onion, and red pepper. This took us about an hour and a half because we had to cook the clams first, then the vegetables, then the sauce and finally the pasta, each separately. We gave our little wilderness one-burner stove quite the workouot. Unfortunatly Eric was pretty much full when we were done because he was secretly nibling while cooking. It sure was good though.


Heading north

Finally it came time to leave Heriot Bay which was sad but we were eager to see the Queen Charlottes (Haida Gwaii). We got to the bus stop and purchased our Greyhound tickets in the grungy waiting room. We decided to wait outside as the view and area was not quite as suicide inducing and saw Julian (who we had worked with at Iguana Ranch) getting off the bus from Duncan and found out that he too was going north on the same ferry.

This marks the start of many very strange ccurances where we met the same people many times. We rode the bus for 3 hours which was...well what can a Greyhound ride be but boring and uncomfortable. Although we did overhear the driver saying Greyhound employees might be striking on the coming Friday . . .