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| Ross Its. |
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| Map of the Deer Group Islands |
Have
you ever thought of being lost in the wilderness surrounded by seals, whales
and other awesome sea creatures just on a kayak loaded with essentials
to survive for a week or so and enjoy it?
Klara took me to this place. We
explored the Deer Group Islands on Vancouver Island, which not even many
Canadians know about.
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| Paddling across the Trevor Channel |
Getting
there is a challenge though. Arriving on a
ferry to Nanaimo and driving on a neat highway towards Port Alberni seems like cruising the autobahn comparing to what we had to face on the journey from Port
Alberni to Bamfield. Bamfield is an
amazing little village, where apart from a local pub, a liquor store and a few
docks and fishermen houses you're gonna have a hard time finding anything
else. And good for the people living in
there! So the feared 80km on a dusty
gravel logging road turned out to be a good fun. After about first 5km of a cautious
driving we ended up really going for it.
We only had 2 hours to make it so drifting through the gravel curves was
inevitable but fun.
Thinking
you not gonna have much of a good food we started the whole trip by a fresh
portion of halibut fish and chips from a local bistro and energised from the fiest we
loaded the kayaks and set off for the adventure. Nothing but the amazing
weather couldn’t motivate us more to paddle across the Trevor Channel straight
to Ross Its. The beach was amazing and
welcoming fishermen let us camp on the island with them, which paid off the
next day when we were given a fresh salmon fillet not more than an hour
fresh.
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| Haines Island |
The
next day we packed and were headed to Diana Island the Indian Reservation. You can clearly see that once the islands were inhabited by a civilisation. But mostly all you can find around the islands is ruins of the aboriginals' villages and their new build resorts. In
the IR it is not favoured to stay overnight so after a little exploration of
the island we started cooking the salmon. It only made me realise how good the
food can get for the rest of the trip. If only we had a fishing rod and
known how to catch one on our own.
The
next destinations and places we camped at were absolutely spectacular. Haines Island
hosting us with a beautiful beach and further exploration of the southwest
spits of the islands, and then heading up northeast for the Roberts Passage and
Marble Cove.
In
spite of little dramatic accidents with landing on a rocky beach and paddling
through a cave we made it safe and sound back to Bamfield. We experienced the
most picturesque sunsets, saw a couple of dolphins and seals just curiously
diving around our kayaks and paddled through a calm sea that all of a sudden
turned into an adventure of having to cope with big waves. Definitely a place I’d like to come back one
day and equipped with more advanced gear explore for a bit longer than
that. After all one of the fishermen
that we met had a basecamp set up and was probably staying there for weeks. No wonder, good for him.
