As usual, I woke up far before the sun arose. Up here, that’s close to 7 a.m. My first stop was a neat little coffee shop, The Tofitian, to load up on caffeine and food before I set out to do some hiking. They had a delicious ham and brie scone with a red pepper jam.
Next up, I headed to a trail recommended to me by the aforementioned bartender – Schooner Cove. This trail did not disappoint. If I could describe it with one word it would be: “green.” I don’t think I’ve ever trekked through anywhere with this many trees, leaves, bushes, mushrooms, creeks with every step. The air was a perfect crisp 50 degrees, no sweat required. It even smelled fresh. The trail led to another beautiful beach. At this time of the day, I had the place to myself. I have to say, it was awe inspiring.
Schooner Cove was a relatively short hike so I decided to go and check off another trail, Rainforest Trail. This trail was very much like Schooner Cove but without the payoff of a beach. I did get a chance to talk to a nice old lady and learned more about Tofino. Apparently, it gets busy up in Tofino during the summer. It was interesting to get her perspective of the place as someone coming from Toronto vs my perspective coming from OC. To her, this weather was nice and warm. To me, it’s a bit chilly. To her, this spot is well-known. To me, very few people knew where I was going.
After completing those trails, I went to The Surf Club near my resort. Surfing is pretty much the main course of the trip for me so I wanted to talk to them to get the inside scoop in preparation for my session. The owner is going to let me use a 5’8 fun board. While they say the water isn’t too bad, I am still a little apprehensive of the thought of 50 degree water. We talked about the conditions and the locations of where to surf. Local knowledge is everything. I am super stoked to get a few waves tomorrow. We’ll see how long I can last in that water. For those who don’t surf, I consider low 60 degree water back home to be cold. This is a full 10 degrees colder.
The rest of my day was spent wandering and eating my way through the “downtown” area of Tofino. That’s in quotes because it is a tiny little place so I hesitate to call it an actual downtown. I walked through the whole place several times over within an hour.
I really wanted to get some oysters at this spot called Ice House but it just happened to be closed for the season. Instead, I popped into a fancy restaurant, Wolf in the Fog, for happy hour. They had the fanciest tater tots ever. The tots were the size of golf balls and were served with a romanesca sauce. Luckily, the normally 20 dollar drinks were half off during the happy hour too.
With a few more hours of sunlight left, I checked out the only brewery in town, Tofino Brewery. They have a solid session ale. Over there, an English dude and I connected over our shared interest in surfing. He was telling me about his home break while I shared with him what it’s like to surf back in OC. He also happens to be a chef in Vancouver. Maybe one day he’ll hook it up with some good eats in Vancouver. But for now, I’ll just keep an eye out for him tomorrow in the water.
Tomorrow is the moment of truth. By this time tomorrow, I should be able to let you know how uncomfortable the water was and/or how fun of an experience surfing out here was.
those are some big ass tots.
For real. Must be the imperial to metric conversion on the tot recipe.