The Beach

MP3 track of the day - Pure Shores - All Saints

Weather: A beautiful hot day with a cool breeze ... perfect beach weather.

I didn't sleep that well last night ... not sure why (maybe due to the huge amount of sleep I got in Port Hardy) and so I was ready to leave for the day at 8:15am. However, beforehand, I needed to check if there were any cancellations for the hostel I am in ... and there were, huzzah! So I booked in for an additional night (Wednesday night). I also needed to phone up the 'C&N Backpackers' hostel in Ucluelet as I am planning to spend Thursday night there, however no one answered the phone (I left an answer phone message and asked them to email me).

Once out of the hostel I headed straight to the nearest beach, which the owner of the hostel had recommended. The beach was superb and, to make it even better, there were only about five other people there ... brilliant. I spent about an hour and a half there photographing whilst walking up and down the beach a couple of times ... the views were stunning and, apart from it being a little chilly, it was heaven.

I then left the beach and headed into town; just like in Port Hardy and Prince Rupert the town wasn't that big and so it didn't take me to long to look around. As I was now staying another night (2 full days in total) it now made it worth doing a grocery shop (I never do a grocery shop for one day as I wouldn't be able to eat the stuff in a day, and I would struggle to carry it to another hostel). I purchased:

1x pack of cheese slices

1x pack of 6 cinnamon cakes

3x oranges

1x frozen Ravioli meal

1x loaf of white bread

1x tinned Irish Stew

1/4 x Watermelon

1x 2ltr bottle of Pepsi

All for $30.00 (£21.00) and that should do me for my time here; the Ravioli and Irish Stew (with a cinnamon cake for dessert) for tea, cheese sandwiches, watermelon and a cinnamon cake for the lunches and some breakfast bars I already had, the oranges and the cinnamon cakes for breakfast ... sorted.

It was nearly lunch time and so I headed back to the hostel for a cheese sandwich, the biggest slice of watermelon you can think of and a cinnamon cake (with bottled water to wash it down). It was probably the healthiest lunch I've had for ages and I was so glad to be eating fresh fruit again (in North America it's very difficult to eat healthily and so I have been eating burgers, crisps etc for ages and I'm sick of them).

After lunch I checked my emails to see if the 'C&N Backpackers' in Ucluelet had got back to me ... they hadn't and so I phoned them and booked Thursday night over the phone. I also worked out my average spend which has gone up AGAIN, but only by £1 to £63.02 ... I was a little surprised by this considering how much travelling I had done in the previous week but I wasn't complaining. The problem is that I'm now running out of time to get my average back down to £50.00 per day, and so I'll try to aim for £60.00 a day.

Being at a little of a loss for what to do this afternoon I enquired with the owner off the hostel whether I could walk to Long Beach. He said no, however he also said the best thing would be to hire a bike ... probably tomorrow so I could get the full benefit of the 24hrs rental. I'm not sure about hiring a bike ... I don't really like bikes, I much prefer to walk, and so I decided to have a think about hiring a bike over this evening. Still this left me the problem with what to do this afternoon; after looking at my map and guidebook I decided to head to another beach (MacKenzie Beach) which was about 40 mins out of town. The beach was just as lovely as the first, however as 3 or 4 resorts backed onto it, the beach was a little busier and so I walked up and down it once before returning to the hostel.

I'm back at the hostel early tonight ... I had planned to do this as I want to go to the beach I went to this morning to get some sun set photos ... hopefully the tide won't be fully in tonight.

Tomorrow I think I might hire a bike ... not sure what else to do.

Toodle Pip!