Nanaimo – Day 3

Today started overcast with rain – the constant type which just keeps falling. No matter, I have my waterproof jacket.

Having got myself ready I set off to the bus depot to sort out my ticket to Port Hardy. As the bus journey takes seven and a quarter hours and would get me there, assuming no delays, at 15:45 I decided to go on Tuesday and stay overnight at Port Hardy. The ferry sails at 16:30 and passengers are requested to book in two hours prior to sailing. Although, as a foot passenger, I could probably get away with less I didn’t want to risk missing it and then having to wait another week for the next ferry!

I was chatting to “the nice Canadian guy from Toronto”, whose name is Patrick by the way, and he was most interested in the Alaska part of my travels. I said I would post some pictures on the blog (which I will) and gave him the address. If he reads it, at least the Alaska parts will be at the top until I get into mainland USP (United States of Paranoia). By the time they have fingerprinted me, burnt my eyes out with laser beams and tried matching my DNA against the CIA database for any possible matches, I might not feel like going after all. We shall see.

Patrick was heading for Tofino & points east today before coming back to Nanaimo on Thursday. By that time I will be in Prince Rupert (not in the biblical sense – well actually it will be truly in the biblical sense; as in made up story) and looking for his passage north. (If anyone can remember Julian & Sandy from “Round the Horne” fame then I trust they are laughing because as I was typing it that is what came to my mind! “Bona to vader your eek Mr. ‘orne!”)

Sorry, now to attempt seriousness (a little bit).

I got back to the hostel and got changed because my jeans were wet – from the knees down due to rainfall, not anywhere else due to incontinence – and decided to mess about on the laptop. I got photos downloaded, blog up to date, replied to emails and then played some more Civ4. Meanwhile the rain fell constantly from a solid slate sky.

About 2:00 pm it stopped and the skies cleared. The sun came out, birds began to sing and children were playing in the streets. (Well alright, the sun came out.)
Not to waste the opportunity I went out for a walk through the Old Town part of Nanaimo. At one stage this was a very big producer of coal – correction; the coal had already been produced, miners dug it out of the ground. As a result of this the town grew rather rapidly.
The Bastion, a wonderful octagonal building up on the hilltop which I will have to get some pictures of, was built as a lookout tower and defence post. They have a couple of the original canons sitting next to it. Having walked my feet to aching point, I decided to head back and grabbed some food on the way. I took this back to eat at the hostel and then plugged myself back into the laptop in order to drown out Mr. Canned Laughter (an American college student on vacation) who was chatting up a German walrus and issuing his annoying artificial laugh every other sentence. A selection of Deep Purple, Groove Armada, Nine Inch Nails & Black Eyed Peas kept the annoying idiot drowned out and to some lesser degree preserved his life for another day. I just indulged myself with expanding my empire!

I turned in about 23:30 in preparation for Thanksgiving Day.