Another Day in Paradise, Part 3.1

We have one week left in Victoria so we're trying to take full advantage of our time and see every bit of the island that we can. The last few days have been great, it's absolutely amazing how much there is to do here. After our little cave adventure the other day I started thinking that there may be more caves on the island. I did some research and sure enough, there are over 1000 caves on the island, some of which are several hundred meters long and hundreds of feet deep! Most of them are up island and so I knew we may not get to them this trip. But, we did find other fun things to do. We drove up West Coast Road in search of an adventure.

The first place we stopped was French Beach. A short hike led us down to a beautiful pebble beach stretching hundreds of meters on both sides of us.  The tide was out so we walked along the shore until we got to some rock formations jetting out from the shore. Small tide pools on the rock formation allowed viewing of all kinds of sea life including small crabs, sea anemones, mussels, and other little creatures. The mussels here were enormous, bigger than Dana had ever seen. On some places there were thousands of them, all sizes, completely covering entire sections of the rocks.

Walking further along the rock, we soon found a hidden cavity that had been carved away by the water. The huge inlet was dark and humid, and made me think about caves again; from the inside it felt like we were in one. Tanisha climbed the cliff face and discovered a huge slug, typical of the west coast, which she brought down to "show" us. Maybe those of you who are familiar with slugs on the west coast already know that when you lick one your tongue goes numb. Well, I didn't know, so Tanisha and Dana thought it was only appropriate that I find out.

After a few moments of hesitation and some coaxing and/or threats, I gave the slimy little guy a good sticky lick which I'm sure he appreciated very much, since he probably doesn't get a bath very often. Unfortunately for me it meant a very numb tongue which I spent the next half an hour or so trying to scrape off the goo. Then Tanisha thought it would be helpful to grab another slug and stuff it in my mouth, making my lips, cheek, and parts of my gums numb as well. She didn't stop there either. I'm guessing Tanisha thought Dana wasn't up to date with her face numbness so Tanisha decided to take care of that for her, giving her a nice little taste of it too, by smearing in it on her face. Our trek to the car was much quicker than it was coming down since we spent it chasing Tanisha all the way back.

The second place we stopped at was an unmarked beach near Muir Creek. Hiking down a pebble path we could feel eyes watching us...standing guard were moss covered "troll" trees. We made it to the beach safe, ate lunch and headed to a waterfall someone had told us about. From far away it didn't look like much, but as we got closer we saw how beautiful it really was, both from below and from above, laced with millions of fossils embedded in the sandstone.

Continued in Part 3.2...