There’s Darth Vader playing the violin – Day 5: Victoria – Campbell River

Today we were up at 7:00 and cases were outside the door for collection at 7:45. We had been told that departure would be at 8:45 so at 8:30 we made our way to the front of the hotel. As I got onto the coach we were told that there would be a delay but we should be away in about 15 minutes.

Time went on and we found out that one of the couples had put some items in the safe in their room and were now unable to open it again. Bearing in mind this was a Sunday and the nearest major city was Vancouver, a good couple of hours away, we started wondering how long we were going to be there for. As it turned out we were away by 9:50 after the keypad on the safe had been replaced by one from another room.

Our first stop was the Cowichan Cultural Center, which is a tourist attraction sharing the heritage of the Cowichan tribe. Now I have to admit that by the time we arrived here it was raining, most of the tour was outside and the umbrella we were provided with wouldn’t stay up so I wasn’t paying that much attention and can’t remember most of what we were told.

From there we went to Chemainus, also known as the city of murals. Chemainus was originally a logging town but when its mill closed in the 1980’s the townspeople decided to try and get income from another source. They came up with the idea of attracting tourists by painting huge murals on the walls of some of the town’s buildings and they did indeed build up a major tourist industry, which continues to this day. Dad and I stopped off for a slice of pizza each and then we went for a wander around town but because there were cars parked in front of most of the murals we didn’t take any pictures.

Our afternoon coffee stop was in the little village of Coombs, which is another tourist trap with a large indoor market, famous for its mountain goats grazing on the grass roof. After a short stop there we left at 4:30 to make our way to our hotel for the night.

We arrived at the hotel at 6:00 and made reservations for 7:00 for the buffet. The buffet consisted of green salad, Caesar salad, prime rib, pasta, potatoes and veg and yet again we were on the honey brown lager.

After dinner we went back up to the room and yet again we were both in bed by 9:20

Tomorrow: Whale watching