Our Valdes Adventure

We really look forward to our annual mini holiday with our friends Ann & Rob to Valdes Island and this years' 5 days break was so relaxing.

Friday - we depart from our place at 8am and meet up with A&R at 8:45, transfer all our gear into the van and we're on the road to the ferry terminal. We take the Gulf Island ferry to Galiano, once there we drive to the boat dock where Jim our "water taxi" is waiting for us. Quickly load the boat and we're off the Valdes. We arrived at 1:15pm, it was low tide, so we hauled our gear up the rocks and across the trail to the cabin.After unpacking, setting up we were relaxing with our 'happy hour' beverage when we noticed an odd looking boat out in the water. Out came the binoculars... it's a bird, it's a plane... no wait it's a pod of Orcas and a whale watching tour boat! OMG... how spectacular to see the pod of whales but we were concerned about the boats (it's now two) getting too close to the pod. After a short time the boats left (I guess their time was up) and that's when the show really began. The pod were merrily feeding and all of a sudden one starts to breach! and the then again! and OMG look at another whale, it's spy hopping! We couldn't believe it.... nature at it's best! (The breaching and spy hopping photos below are not mine)Norbert and I cooked a salmon dinner on the BBQ that night and we literally ate, drank and sang the night away! No one (despite the photos) was too hung over on Saturday :)Saturday was the start of our weekend "Horseshoe Tournament" the annual Germany, England, Canada & Scotland rivalry kicked in... this year we played a four day tourney.
Norbert is the undefeated champ! He didn't lose a single game it must have been his unusual throwing style not to mention the leaners and ringers he kept throwing... he must have had Horseshoes up his arse this weekend! Rob (the previous champ) will be practicing to de-thrown Norbert next year... The rest of our time we read our books, played chess, relaxed, sang songs, strolled around and generally had a great time. The mother otter and her babies were out one night, the seals were feeding merrily, the eagles were floating on the ocean breeze and the marine life was abundant! We couldn't have had a better mini vacation!