Monday July 2. Victoria, Vancouver Island

We didn't get up early (what a surprise) and slowly made our way southwards to Victoria, a large city on Vancouver Island. We had received conflicting advice about the famous Butchart Gardens. Most people said they are a must see. A dissenter advised us not to and said there were better examples of gardens that were free. In the end we didn't go, mainly because of something called inertia, but I think Mary has regrets about this.

Instead we pretty much wandered around Victoria. I think we were all a bit tired after our massive trip around Canada. Perhaps we did too many kilometres in our 20 days (this was a source of some trepidation .. I deliberately hadn't checked the odometer for about a week as we had not yet worked out the extra charges based on the 31c per km fee)

Victoria is certainly aimed at tourism, with horse drawn carts lugging tourists around, prestigious looking hotels and an active shopping centre.

Near Market Square

The history of Victoria includes a large Chinese population drawn there by a gold rush

I think this is another Electric Vehicle- it's called a Daihatsu midget

There must be a recycling program going here

OK so Apple might be having an impact!

Chinatown Victoria

We really only had a few hours here and soon it was time to head for the ferry at Swartz Bay, heading for Tsawwassen and eventually somewhere near our RV drop off depot, CruiseCanada in Delta BC, the place we started at. We had experienced no problems with the vehicle and not inflicted a scratch.. a great relief.

The ferry trip was unremarkable and took us right to dusk. We chatted with some other Australians who sat opposite us. Ingrid, Alan and Erin, from Melbourne were heading to the Rockies and then a sailing cruise to Alaska.. sounded fantastic.

Having left the ferry, finding somewhere to stay the night proved to be a big challenge. There was an RV park near the terminal (ParkCanada RV park) but it had shocking reviews including "I feared for my safety". Mary wasn't even interested in having a look so we moved on.

We basically headed for CruiseCanada then circled like a great white shark around the nearby regions. This included a shark-like submerging under the nearby river (an underpass tunnel which was slightly disconcerting due to proximity of our large vehicle to the wall of the tunnel). Eventually we decided that illegal parking was not on (we cruised an entire suburb looking for a discrete place to park on the street), and we found a motel called Town and Country Inn. It was $129 for the four of us, so not too bad.....

Except the toilet overflowed during the night......