Dispatch from the BC coast.
There is good news and bad news. The good: I’ve been immersed in the wilderness of the BC coast for nearly a month now. The bad: there is little opportunity to update this blog.
Well, I guess that isn’t really that bad.
Now that I’ve got a few minutes of internet access, it feels hard to sum up everything I’ve experienced since my last post.
There is most certainly no shortage of spectacles around here to suck the breath out of a person: white bears in the rainforest, the mist of whale breath hanging on the air, bioluminescent jellyfish at 2 am, steep mountains veiled in clouds.
Two days ago I bumped into a pod of playful pacific white sided dolphins, speeding around our boat, leaping into the air, splashing us. Yesterday, I came face to face with a female grizzly and her two cubs – always a sobering and exhilarating experience.
And then there is the rain.
Usually, we say its been a good rain if we get 80 mm in 24 hours. Today the sun came out for the first time after we were pounded by 250 mm in 35 hours. That is about 10 inches.
The rain wouldn’t stop. Behind my little float-house the waterfall that was dry the day before began to gush – thunderous. The river became an angry swirling brown vortex, tearing trees from its banks and spewing them into the ocean. We crouched at home hoping a landslide wouldn’t crash down the mountainside into our little floathouse.
In the end, we managed fine and the countless waterfalls leaping off all the mountains were worth it.
Okay, that is just about all the time I have right now.
But the highlight has got to be staying in a lovely riverside villa with thing1, thing2, thing3 and the little halfthing sing’n bout our old friend MacDonald and the wonderous animals on his farm!