Thursday, June 9 Victoria and Whale Watching

We decided to eat in our room this morning so Jim made a run to the grocery store.  He remembered passing 2 or 3 supermarkets yesterday.  After a half hour, he returned to our room defeated.  One place called Save On Food was a sports arena.  He did find a shopping mall with much of its parking on the roof – a wise idea.  It had no food store, though.  

As a result we went to the cafe attached to our motel and had a very good breakfast of eggs scrambled with cheddar cheese on a croissant roll with bacon slices on top of the eggs.  Melon and pineapples slices were also on the plate.This is the only hotel / motel that either of us has been in that had instructions for using the bathmat

We headed into Victoria to make reservations to go whale watching, and were signed up for a 2pm tour.  Before the tour we decided to visit the historic site of St. Ann’s Academy.  We decided to visit because it was listed in a garden tour brochure and was less than a mile from the Five Star Whale Watching office.  When we got there we decided to poke around the school also.

It was a girls’ school started by nuns in the late 1800s as the first Catholic girls’ school in Western Canada.  It has been restored to what it looked like in 1925.  They have put together a very well done self-guided tour booklet that gave lots of interesting facts about the nuns, the school, and the restoration.  

The gardens were very pleasant, if not spectacular.  We did find an amazing looking yellow flower, though.

After walking through the restored school and its grounds we followed a trail to Beacon Hill Park, a very large city park filled with lovely gardens and playgrounds.  We really didn’t know what we were getting into with the park.  Ardith wasn’t sure about the very natural look from the way we entered the park.  Jim thought that was wonderful.

We were delighted to find that part of the park was a nesting site for Great Blue Herons.  The herons have selected several very tall pine trees and are now nesting with their newly hatched babies.  There are signs all around reminding people that this is a nesting site and dogs are not allowed in this part of the park.  Some avid birders let up look through their spotting scope.  Jim took lots of photos utilizing his camera’s 20X zoom capability.  

One heron was quite happy just strolling around, allowing people to come within a few feet of him.  There were lots of mother ducks with chicks near every body of water in the large park. Most of them were largely unconcerned about the humans.

An attractive stone bridge still survives that was part of the original 1889 construction of the park.

This was a wonderful time to see flowers in bloom.  Here and in several other gardens we saw yellow wisteria (as well as the tradition blue/purple ones).

We drove to the other end of the park where there are cliffs overlooking the water, and watched some para-sailers taking advantage of the winds.

The trip out to watch for whales was very exciting.  There were some tall ships in the inner harbor that were apparently used to train teenagers for teamwork skills. 

We started with 14 people on our boat and two naturalists as our guides, but room for over 40.  We stopped in an area with several houseboats to pick up 3 more passengers.  

When we boarded, they allowed the first 10 people to go up to the open top deck.  We were quite happy to be below.  We could see everything well, were warm and could easily hear our guide.

We passed an island that has 30 rare species of plants, 15 of which are in danger of extinction.  Only scientists are allowed on the island.  The boat bounced along but the scenery was great.  We stopped at one site and watched two transient whales going in and out of the water.  The male has a longer, straighter dorsal fin than the female so it was easy to spot each one. Our guide found pictures of the dorsal fins of these two whales and was able to identify them from previous sightings.

The other kind of orca whales are called residents because they spend most of their time in the vicinity and are not passing through.  They eat fish while the transients eat other marine mammals, such as seals, sea lions and baby whales.  We moved to another site near an island in US waters and got to see a number of resident whales.  There were several of them, but Jim failed to get a picture of more than one at a time.  They always dived before the he framed them and the shutter went off. Our guide was very excited since he has not seen both resident and transient whales in the same trip. Usually you see one kind or the other since they rarely share the same territory at the same time.  It was the first time our guide had seen both on a single voyage in the not-quite a year had has been working here.

When we returned to the harbor, our guide noted that the seaplane port there is actually an international airport, with flights to Seattle and other places in Washington state.   He said it is probably the only international airport that was temporarily shut down due to whales in the runway.

As we left the boat there was a large barge set up nearby with ramps on it for a bike jumping event scheduled for tomorrow and Saturday.  We got to see several bikers taking practice runs on the jumping course.

Two of the folks on the whaling trip told us about a local restaurant called Pagliacci’s that was a few blocks from the boat landing, so we decided to check it out.  It was well worth doing so.  The waiter brought us a basket of bread that was outstanding.  It was soft with a nice crust and an herb flavor with a hint of salt.  Both of us had spinach salads, Jim had maple vinaigrette dressing and Ardith had creamy dill dressing.  Ardith had Casablanca chicken breast which was stuffed with ham and brie, coated and fried quickly so it wasn’t dry, and had a pesto sauce with it.  Jim had Chicken Garbo with ham and a mushroom sauce.  Both were served with fettuccini with olive oil and parmesan cheese, and steamed veggies.  Delicious – but no room for dessert.