The Canadian Hillbillies

The hostel I stayed at in Powell River was pretty bad, so I took off as early as I could the next morning. It didn't start off as a good day, as I walked to the next city without getting a hitch. In the end this turned out to be good, because I would have never seen so many things in one day if I had!

While I was walking North, I saw what looked like a weird old boat lying in the water. I headed towards the beach to check it out but was stopped by a barb-wired fence. Knowing that I couldn't take a good picture from this distance, I climbed over the fence (without tearing any clothes!) and noticed that there were actually a bunch of those old boats.

As it turned out, these boats are actually called "The Hulks" and are being used as a breakwater to protect the logs stored in the water. Some of these ships were actually being used in World War I, while others are several years older.

After the exciting photo shoot, I headed back to the highway to hitchhike. An older waitress picked me up and I told her about my plans to see Desolation Sound. She then told me about two guys my age living near the restaurant who might be able to help me get a kayak, so I went there with her instead of going to Lund. These two guys, Travis & Chris, were some kind of hillbillies, but unlike their American "cousins", somewhat smarter, less ignorant and more friendly.

Just to prove to you guys why I consider them hillbillies: they live in a trailer outside a restaurant, had to get into town to wash up and one of them had just rolled his car off the hill (and the car also had gun shot holes). Anyway, they had a motorboat and took me out on the water to go to Desolation Sound Marine Park! On the way, there was a giant rock in the water which was full with seals sunbathing. We got as close as we possibly could but the seals got a bit mad and started to make a lot of noise.
I got to see most of Desolation Sound, which was really beautiful, but we didn't have enough gasoline to visit the whole park. On the way back, in the middle of the ocean, we suddenly fell out of gas actually... Travis miscalculated the fuel reserve but we were lucky that a boat came by or we would've been paddling around for hours! This boat trip only cost me a pack of cigarettes, so in the end I was extremely happy at how everything turned out. It also saved me like 2 days of kayaking and a whole bunch of money. :-)

We then went to Lund, were I apparently was at the start/end of the longest highway in the world, which goes all the way down to Chili (15.000 KM). There wasn't really anything more to do there, so I went back to Powell River. This time was even worse than the previous one, and it took a very long time before 2 hippies took me with them.

I decided to do something crazy and just hopped on the ferry to Vancouver Island, not knowing where I would end up (since I hadn't looked up any information on Vancouver Island). Walking from the ferry terminal to the town centre was kind of scary. It was starting to get late and I had this strange feeling something in the forrest next to the road was following me around. Not many cars passed by but I got lucky when a nice girl picked me up and brought me all the way to the Cona hostel in Courtenay.
If you ever go to the Comox Valley, this is really were you want to stay. This is simply the cleanest and coolest hostel ever, with cheap prices and a very friendly staff. I love it!