living like a local: the osberg camping trip... part two

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

the osberg camping trip... part two

Our route in the Queen Charlotte Sound: from Port Hardy to Burnett Bay to Cape Sutil and back to Port Hardy.... hope you can zoom in!

So, on with camping trip stories. You had the big bad wolf story and now... though a whale and porpoise symphonic show sounds cheesy and unbelievable, it happened. Every night we enjoyed sitting in front of fabulous campfires, drinking tea and/or Bailey's (yum), toasting and eating marshmallows and watching whales in cahoots with their fellow friends, the porpoises. Okay, so it only happened one night (we did see whales and whale spouts every night, though most often in the near distance) but it was crazy! All of a sudden there was this mild, (and initially unrecognizable) frenzy of water and animal; there was a team (or a few teams) of porpoises that were swimming/playing/jumping around with the whales. The show lasted for about ten minutes? And it happened right in the very bay we were camping in. It was sooooooooooo cool. Through the binoculars you could actually see the porpoises darting ever so gracefully in and out of the water around the backs and spouts of several gray whales. We were all enjoying the sunset show, and snapping away with our cameras... though none of the pictures do it any justice whatsover. It was awesome. SO! Burnett Bay showered us with wildlife spectacles. There were eagles around all the time, and Steve and Doug hauled in some sizeable lingcod that we enjoyed for dinner (cooked over the open fire - drizzled with a butter-lime juice-wasabi-pepper glaze: deLISH!) and then again a day or two later in a seafood chowder. We ate WELL on this trip. Yum, food. So wildlife viewing story number two: a whale and porpoise show.

A third wildlife highlight - this was the best trip in terms of flora and fauna in the history of Osberg Adventures - was the sea lion colony at the north end of Hope Island... what a spectacle. Several years ago (actually ten, yikes) we were taking a gander at a group of sea lions at this very spot when we took a bit of a spill - we involuntarily took a chilly swim with the sea lions - so revisiting the scene of the crime was interesting to say the least. Anyways, there were tons of them! (pah!) What was so special about this visit was that we were greeted (either with curiosity or territorial defensiveness and animosity, not too sure) by a dense pack of female sea lions that were none too shy about coming fairly close to the boats. The noises these ladies made were horrendous - giant belcho-burps and guttural honks.... wow. There was also a big, BIG king pin up on top of the rocks... who was also horrendous - horrendously humongous. This guy was enormous. Not sure if the pictures or videos will do this spot justice but you might get the idea. It was sooooooo so so neat.

We made the trip past Hope Island on day four of our sojourn, on our way to a beach just south of Cape Sutil. It was another gorgeous spot - not as sandy or expansive as Burnett, but still very beautiful.... despite some wet weather. We read, slept, beachcombed and ate. And ate. And ate. On Friday in the late afternoon a fishing boat moored out in the bay, and after a few group yells of "COME FOR DIIINNER!" sans response, Joe and I motored out there to invite fisherman in for some food and company. As it turns out, the boat was manned by Barry and Carlene, two fisherpeople (?) from Port McNeill, a smaller town south of Port Hardy. I've never supped with true fisherpeople, so it was an interesting and enlightening experience; they were great people, and very opinionated (and rightly so) on the Department of Fisheries and Oceans policies and procedures. They were mainly fishing for cod: live cod goes for $10 a pound while dead cod sells for only $1 a pound... so they had a pretty decent school of fish in the hold. We had some beers, sat around under a red tarp, and learned a bit about commercial fishing and tools and techniques until the light was low and we were all ready for bed. We were planning on staying until Sunday morning, but Saturday morning was rainy and damp, and the seas were perfectly calm so we decided to take advantage of the favourable travelling conditions and get back to Port Hardy and then Nanaimo in time for the 9:30 ferry. It was an amazing trip... so much fun and soooo beautiful. Even though we were only gone for a handful of days, coming back to the city was a bit strange; seeing all of the houses and lights and people living so close together in such an urban and busy place - the polar opposite of the life and times of where we'd just been.

So now I'm wrapped up in much busy-ness; I'm working! Finally! I'm doing some volleyball camps at Capilano University (Cap College) and things are as busy as can be. Volleyballs flying everywhere and kids - this week is grades 8-10 - everywhere too. There are some super sweeties, and there are some icky-attitudes, which, as my dad succinctly reminded me, is not uncommon for the grade nine girl. So... here are a few more camping trip shots, and a few amateur maps of where Osberg Adventures took us this year.

Steve's first catch - a lingcod

Doug and Steve with their fish of labour

A perched bald eagle

The north end of Burnett Bay