Tofino, Vancouver Island Escape

Watch black bears checking under every beachside boulder for green crabs, whales spouting a few yards from shore, and bald eagles ten feet from your deck. Kayak in a calm inlet or try it in the surf, if you dare. Explore beautiful tidepools full of starfish, crabs, and sea urchins. Treat yourself to a meal at one of North America's best restaurants, The Pointe, at the Wickaninnish Inn on Chesterman Beach.

Quick Tips:

Stay somewhere on Chesterman Beach -- I recommend the Wickaninnish Inn because it truly deserves its recent rating by Travel & Leisure magazine as the best in North America (T & L ranked it second in the entire world). If a hotel just isn't private enough for you, consider renting property on West Chesterman Beach.

Best Way To Get Around:

You need a car.

This is the most amazingly beautiful resort I've ever seen. It isn't opulent -it's West Coast casual, but deeply luxurious. For a complete photographic preview of the various rooms, visit their website here.

The photos don't do it justice, though. You won't be able to hear the ocean waves crashing outside your many large windows. You won't be able to smell the fresh lavender buds in pottery bowls scattered around the room or feel the soft wool carpet under your toes, or hear the ocean roaring in and out of the surge channels that run right beneath your balcony, or the eagles shrieking above it. Or the wind howling if you're lucky enough to be there on a storm-watching night. You can even hear and see the powerful waves from the bathroom Jacuzzi tub that's big enough for four people.

The staff outnumber the guests, so service is amazing. We asked for quite a few different concierge services - all of them graciously provided efficiently. The first night of our stay we weren't able to book a premiere corner room and stayed in a very "basic" room. It was so wonderful that I couldn't imagine anything nicer. The next few nights were spent in one of the best rooms with windows wrapping around two walls from floor to ceiling, only broken by the fireplace. The bathroom and Jacuzzi tub were even larger than in the first room. But I'm telling you, the first room was completely awesome, as it too had floor to ceiling windows, magnificent ocean and surge channel views, fireplace, and large Jacuzzi.

As beautiful as Tofino is, I really found it hard to leave these rooms and just wanted to stay in the room and snuggle into the down duvet with the lovely foghorn blowing, the waves crashing, and the bald eagles crying right above my deck. There was a small library on the mantle and I discovered in it a great biography of a woman who lived in an even more remote section of Vancouver Island's Pacific Coast. There is no fitness center, but you can walk along the beach. They even provide nice rain slickers if you go during storm season.

The Ancient Cedars Spa is the best I've ever seen. This resort was rated #1 in North America by Travel & Leisure magazine about a month after I visited it. I wasn't going to write about the resort for IgoUgo because I really wanted to keep it a secret - it's hard to get a reservation. But when T & L did that issue I figured I might as well write about it. It is a destination by itself. I wish I'd spent my honeymoon here. I want to go back without the kids for at least a weekend. A three hour trek from Vancouver or four from Victoria. You'll never see better views or feel so immersed in coastal nature.

This is one of those dining experiences that you know are going to be memorable, even before you see the menu. The restaurant is cantilevered out on a jagged rock promontory off Chesterman Beach. The floor-to-ceiling glass windows offer a 240 degree view of the waves and shoreline. The classical music is kept very soft because they pipe in the better music of the crashing waves that sometimes reach up and spray the windows.

The Pointe is one of only 13 restaurants ranked by Where To Eat In Canada with 3 stars. The menu varies depending on what is fresh and locally available--there is a strong emphasis on seafood. We have delicious prawn, oysters and salmon. Local fishermen, crabbers, mushroom pickers, oyster farmers and berry gatherers provide some of the ingredients used by their award winning chef.

Although the food was superb; I can't remember much about it, except that the sauces were delicious. I'm more of a nature-lover than a gourmand, and this place makes you feel like you are immersed in a craggy, gorgeous, windswept wilderness that just happens to be warm and cozy and serve fabulous food.

We really didn't expect to be able to get a table because people make reservations months in advance; but, since we were resort guests, special treatment ensued. Still, I'd recommend reservations even if you are staying at The Wickaninnish Inn.

Despite all this exclusivity and award-winning acclaim, the atmosphere is very, very relaxed and friendly. You can eat breakfast, lunch or dinner here. You should have a meal here if you are anywhere near Tofino. You'll see what all the excitement is about.

Sail, cruise or fly by float plane from Tofino. We took a boat with six other people to this series of natural rock pools fed by underground hot springs. We were dropped at the dock and hiked a mile through a rainforest boardwalk toward steam clouds at trail's end. The series of connected pools starts with a waterfall that provides a hot, hard shower. We stood under it for about four or five minutes--got as red as lobsters and loved it. I went down three pools closer to the ocean waves, where the cool ocean water mixes with the geothermally heated spring water and soaked in the lava rock pool until I started to feel guilty because there were other tourists and not enough "ideal" pools to go around.

I reluctantly relinquished my natural jacuzzi and we broke out our picnic lunch. Many of the people didn't seem to have thought of bringing any food and, again, I felt badly for them--but, we had only packed in enough for ourselves and our hungry kids. If you go bring water and food. You will get hungry and thirsty. There's something about a brisk hour-long boat ride, a brisk one mile uphill boardwalk in a rainforest, followed by a climb down a lava cliff through various connected soothing hot springs that just makes you ravenous.

You should also bring "water shoes" because the rocks are sharp. It can get cool even in August, so bring a towel so that when you get out, all red-skinned and warm, you can stay that way while you eat your lunch. Then, when you're dry you can get dressed in the clothes that you wore out there. We wore our bathing suits underneath our clothes so that we were the first to get undressed and into the springs--which is good if it's crowded.

The boat left us there for three hours and after we'd eaten and hiked back to the dock we were a little bored for about fifteen minutes until we figured out that there were cool featherdusters and other marine life attached to the dock pilings. That kept us entertained as the fog rolled in. That, and the sound of a new high pitched foghorn that was very different than the two-note tuba fog horn at Chesterman beach.

We got to see about a dozen whales, gray and humpback, on our way back to Tofino. The boat captain said that it is really common to see whales year-round. We were there in August. He stopped the boat and let us watch a mother and baby gray whale.

Some people prefer to take the boat one way to the springs and then go back by float plane; that way you can see the coast from an eagle's perspective. And it's quicker. But, I don't remember the boat ride seeming long.

I believe the staggeringly scenic Pacific Rim region of Vancouver Island is the most beautiful, restful, and perfect place...in the world. I had heard about it for years, but there were other, more "exotic" places to experience. Too bad it took me so many years to discover this wild, sparsely populated paradise. It has everything. Spectacular beaches that are each different in some fascinating way--this one with tidepools teaming with sealife, that one with pretty pebbles instead of sand, another one with powerful breakers and clean, vast sandy stretches, yet another with enough bull kelp to weave a curtain for your driftwood hut.

Rainforest trails through national parkland skirt the beaches. Green, craggy mountains seem to come out of the sea or to float in fog-filled valleys. I'm not saying I can't remember feeling this way about certain other places--Hawaii, Yosemite, the Swiss Alps, the Big Sur area, the Olympic Peninsula, for example. But this is really it more so than any other.

Our visit was a ten day stretch, with the last few days reserved for whatever we wanted to do. We'd planned on visiting Victoria or Whistler--both very reasonable places to pass the last few days. We ended up staying in the Clayoquot sound area and literally having to tear ourselves away in time to catch the last ferry back to Vancouver and the airport. We will be back for more kayaking, fishing, hiking and just being there.