Our plan was to head south to Castro on a bus but as luck would have it an old Chilean couple staying at our hostel offered us a ride in their rental car. They were on holiday from Santiago but the man had family from the UK so he spoke perfect English. We awkwardly carried…
Tag: nature
Hitchhiking to see the penguins on Chiloé Island | Chile
We hadn’t heard of Chiloé Island until we arrived in Chile and started searching for places to visit enroute to Patagonia. It sounded like an intriguing place where locals still believe in witchcraft and ghost ships. To get there we caught a bus from Puerto Varas to Ancud on the northern part of the island….
Chile’s Lake District and hiking around Osorno Volcano
Chile is a wild country; it’s extremely long and narrow, home to deserts and glaciers and prone to earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Mother Nature sure had fun here and we were treated to a birds-eye view of the landscape as we took a flight from Santiago to the Los Lagos region (the Lake District of…
From dirt roads to civilisation |Our final days in Canada before selling our campervan
We peered through our wing-mirrors hoping to see one last grizzly bear before leaving the Bella Coola Valley, but as our van rumbled onto gravel we had to focus on the road ahead. It was the start of a 60km stretch of gravel that climbs from the bottom of the valley up to Heckman Pass…
Our best grizzly bear encounters in the Great Bear Rainforest | Canada
Grizzlies can be a little fussy with what salmon they choose to eat, a bit like humans. Their favourite is said to be chinook which can weigh up to 45kg, but when thousands upon thousands of pink salmon fill the rivers that’s what really gets the bears to the rivers and it becomes quantity over…
Spawning salmon and fishing grizzlies in the Bella Coola Valley | Canada
The Great Bear Rainforest is a vast area of coastal rainforest which is pristine habitat for grizzly bears. During the late summer and autumn salmon come up the rivers to spawn, creating a feeding frenzy for the bears and that’s exactly why we wanted to visit. The easiest area for us to access was the…
Waterfalls, Alpine Meadows and Idyllic Camping in Northern Vancouver Island
As soon as you go north from Campbell River things become a lot more wild. The towns shrink to villages and the traffic dwindles. Our first port of call was Elk Falls Provincial Park where a short walk led us to a swing bridge and two overlooks to view the mighty falls from. It was…
Orcas and Humpbacks | Our encounters on two whale watching trips, Vancouver Island
Wherever we are in the world we try to do a whale watching trip and so far we’ve seen humpbacks in Hawaii, sperm whales in Norway, blue whales in Sri Lanka and Orcas in Alaska. With a little research I found out that Northern Vancouver Island is one of the most reliable places in the…
Roadtrip to the Pacific Rim National Park and Tofino
Everyone we’ve spoken to about visiting Vancouver Island has raved about Tofino. It’s a 300km round trip to reach so it’s a hell of a long detour but we couldn’t come to the island and not see what all the fuss was about. There were two forest trails on the way around Cathedral Grove which…
Beach walks, rainforest and bears | Our first few days on Vancouver Island
I stuck my middle finger up at the stressful traffic of Vancouver city as we zoomed onto a ferry bound for Vancouver Island. We were heading to the port near Victoria, the islands capital but we took a wide berth around it, not interested in cities we wanted to head straight for the natural spots….
Hiking and wildlife watching along the Icefields Parkway | Jasper National Park
After hiking almost everyday for the past two weeks we were shattered and had clocked up roughly 130km and climbed up and down 7000m of altitude, plus waking up at 6am everyday took its toll. It was a shame as it meant we didn’t have the energy for any big hikes in Jasper but luckily…
Walking to the hidden gem of Lake O’Hara | Yoho National Park
Lake O’hara has always been a bit of a mystical place to me. It’s basically just a very protected area of Yoho National Park that is only accessible with a shuttle bus, therefore it remains a tranquil paradise. The shuttle system is to limit the number of guests so within minutes of the tickets going…
