There’s Darth Vader playing the violin – Day 6: Campbell River – Port Hardy

I was up at 7:45 today and after the usual morning rituals our cases were outside the door ready to be collected by 8:15 (you have to like living out of a suitcase to do these holidays).

We were on the road by 9:00 and our morning coffee stop was at the Cable Cook House café, which is a building literally made from used cable.

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Here we had a coffee and a huge cinnamon bun, which was delicious but not as nice as a Cinnabon.

From the Cable Cook House we made our way up to Telegraph Cove for lunch following which we went out on a whale watching cruise. The boat holds about 50 people so our group of 38 took up most of it but there were a few Canadians on there as well. We made our way out into the calm waters of the Johnstone Strait and started looking out for wildlife.

After about an hour we found our first whale but he soon disappeared so we set off in the direction he had been heading to see if we could pick him up again. Following sightings reported by other boats we rounded one of the islands and soon spotted a couple of Orcas surfacing every so often. Following regulations the Captain switched off the boat’s engines and we waited to see if the whales would come towards us. They did indeed swim around us but they are tricky wotsits to take photos of so these are the best I could get.

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After around 45 minutes of watching the whales the Captain decided to leave the whales in peace so we made our way off to see what other wildlife we could find. We spotted a few bald eagles and an otter and then headed off to open water where we found another couple of whales which I think were either humpback or grey whales. The cruise was certainly an experience and although Dad and I agreed that at 3 hours it was maybe an hour or so too long I am certainly glad that I got to see the whales in their own environment as I had only ever seen them at Sea World before.

Once we were back on dry land we made our way back to the coach and off to our hotel for the night, The Quarterdeck Inn at Port Hardy. We reached the hotel at 6:00 and as I wasn’t feeling that hungry we just had some drinks and nibbles from the next door shop.

We were both in bed by 9:00 ready for an EARLY alarm call tomorrow.

Tomorrow: Inside Passage