Friday June 19th

10:10pm

This morning we awoke to the sound of rain. As Mathew’s credit card AND debit card weren’t working still, he got up early and tried to call the card help lines...to discover our phone had restricted access. SO he went out to try the cards one more time before calling from a payphone. He came back at 8:15am after having bought an International Phone Card, and got through on the phone line in the room. It turned out that there had been a block on the card – the bank had LOST the note saying he was in Canada between May 24th – June 25th!! Unfortunately, there had been two bogus transactions on his card in a different country, so it was cancelled, and another one sent. Sent to his home address. In Cambridge!! He tried his debit card line, the same thing had happened but no bogus transactions – he could finally withdraw money after losing use of both cards for a week!! At last!!

So we went into Tofino and then I tried to get money out on my debit card....and it didn’t work!! Fortunately I also used the International Phone Card and there was just a block on my card, and the credit card was fine, so all was sorted!! Phew! Mathew had gone to get some food for lunch so I waited outside the shop. I saw a man come out of the shop with a younger guy, and he pointed to the ATM in the wall to which the young guy, laughing, said:

“Oh my God! It was there all along!!”
Older guy (laughing): “How did you come into the shop? How did you not see it?”
Younger guy: “I came in from the other side! I was standing on the other side of this vendor and I didn’t see it so I went into the shop the back way!”
After a few laughs, and after the older guy exchanged a few laughs with me, being the spectator of all this (“He takes me away from my girlfriend to ask me where the ATM is...I don’t even work here!!” ), they parted ways and the young guy took some money out the ATM.
“So, do you like to sit here and watch people miss the cash machine and not tell them where it is?” he joked. I told him I was waiting for someone who was in the shop, and I would have told him if I’d have known he was after the ATM, as I did see him earlier. I felt like saying “yeah, I do it all the time!” but I thought better. “Well, have a good day,” he said to me as he left. “That may have been the most exciting part of it!” he laughed as he walked off. Well I certainly remembered it....!

We went on the Rainforest trail which was another wooden boardwalk trail, again, quite fun. It felt like we really were in a rain forest especially because of the weather. When we finished the walk, we went to the beach for lunch. We had started out late because of all the card trouble, but now the sun was shining and we went to Combers Beach. It was nice at first, but we could see such dark cloud on the horizon, and what looked like sea fog coming in. When we walked into it, it felt like drizzle and it was far too cold!!

We left the beach, not really knowing what to do next....but we stopped off at Long Beach and had a good long walk there. Wind was string and so were the waves – quite a few surfers, but they must have been unsatisfactory because they weren’t surfing, despite the frequency. Too foamy perhaps? I don’t know, I know nothing about surfing....! The sand drifted along the beach in waves with the wind. That was pretty cool to stand in! ;o)

After a visit to Radar Hill, we went back to the B&B for a rest. At 7:00pm we went to “Shelter” for our evening meal, and finished with a walk on Chesterman Beach where we FINALLY saw the sunset. A little cloudy, but definitely worth seeing! We gladly went home a little after 9:00pm as the wind had been very cold and strong. Nice to get back to hot tea.