Vancouver Island Part 1: Toquart Quest

8th of August

I'm leaving Nanaimo on the west coast of Vancouver Island, to hitch west to the coast. I'm on a quest to find Toquart Bay, the inlet I was told about by Charlie Lewis back in Surrey, Vancouver, where he claims the water is still and the oysters can be picked right off the rocks.

The morning is cloudy but doesn't look too much like rain, and I get away at ten in the morning to walk out to the highway. It's a long uphill walk to the connector with Highway 19 and I'm pouring sweat and very relieved by the time I drop my bags by the side of the road. My first ride, just shy of two hours, is Matthew, a drywaller from Nanaimo. He has a jewelled lip stud, thick brushed-steel necklace and roses tattooed down his left arm, and he wants to go travelling too. He's got two kids, 3 and 5, and he reckons next year they'll be big enough to come backpacking with him. I recommend Servas to him - I've gathered that lots of hosts like to take in families.

Matthew is only going a few miles down the road, and he drops me at the last exit for Lanzville. I'm there for another couple of hours before I'm picked up by Hank. He's a concrete finisher (there's a lot of construction work everywhere in BC, mainly it seems due to the coming Olympics) who lives just south of Parksville, and he has a fair bit of hippie in his history as well as a lot of hitching. He has a long face, a thick moustache and ponytail, and little round sunglasses pushed up on his forehead, and he's really excited about my hitchhiking plans.

Hank drops me, with enthusiastic good wishes, at the junction where Highway 4 splits off across the island, and I walk on round the corner onto the westbound to be picked up almost immediately by Bruno and Arianne, an attractive Belgian couple who are backpacking themselves but have hired a car in order to see Torfino before they run out of holiday time.

Bruno's English is perfect, Arianne's excellent but she's very self-conscious about it, so we have a pretty good three way conversation with me speaking English, murmurs in French from Arianne where she's curled up in the passenger seat with her bare feet on the dashboard, and Bruno translating back and forth with amazing dexterity, often changing languages in mid-sentence.

A few kilometers from the junction we enter Cathedral Grove, where the huge ancient Douglas Firs and Sitka Spruces have grown for hundreds of years. I decide to drop off there and walk into the grove, but Bruno and Arianne are also keen to see it so they decide to make half an hour so we can walk round. The grove is stunning, the giant trees stretching up to 250 feet high and 29 feet wide, and forming a thick living canopy high overhead.

The forest floor is thick with vegetation, ancient gnarled stumps and fallen giants, which are left where they land to provide nutrition for new trees. Everything is covered in a thick carpet of bright green moss. The grove is aptly named - the vaulted roof of branches above, soft light filtering down and the ancient trees instill a feeling of deep calm and inner quietness. It's a busy tourist attraction with cars lined up along the road outside, but inside the grove voices are hushed, footsteps swallowed up by the forest.

We carry on to Port Alberni where I need to stock up on supplies as I don't know what will be available at the bay, so I say goodbye to Bruno and Arianne and they continue their rush to Torfino. I find a 7-eleven and sit on the curb to eat my remaining beef and salad rolls, then stop in to buy pretty much everything "cookable" they have - Campbells tomato soup, 5 Minute Rice, a tin of beans and two packets of instant noodles. Then it's a leisurely stroll out to the west end of town and back to the thumb.

It's less than an hour this time before I'm picked up by an elderly Native Canadian gentleman called Jim. He's only going a few miles up the road to the reservation adjacent to the town to buy petrol, and he drops me at a fuel station from which I walk on into some fairly hilly stretches until I can find a spot with good enough visibility to hitch again.

This time I'm picked up by Neil, who is about my age, round-faced and very cheerful, and test-driving his new green coupe which he just bought off a friend. He's training with his uncle as an electrician but wants to do some travelling before he settles down into the job.

He's going all the way to the coast, so he's able to drop me right at the entrance to Toquart Bay turnoff. Just before we reach it I see my first bear - just a black shape shambling into the forest but clearly recognisable. Unfortunately we can't stop as there's a ranger there moving on two dozen tourists who've stopped traffic to take pictures. So I can't take any pictures.

I say goodbye to Neil and start up the road to the bay - there is signage here showing a campsite at the bay itself. The road turns out to be pebbly and very up-and-down. I reckon I can make the site by nightfall if I absolutely have to (it's after 7pm already), but I hope for traffic and after about half an hour a campervan passes and stops obligingly at my thumb.

I am picked up by Norm, a dignified, softly-spoken islander in his late sixties (although he doesn't look it) in a white t-shirt and rimless square spectacles. He is driving his OKanagan RV (with boat in tow) down to Toquart for a few days of fishing. Norm is going travelling soon as well - by boat and plane all over Europe to celebrate his 70th birthday. In the past he's been all over the world on numerous trips.

We chat as the RV rumbles slowly along the bumpy track to Toquart, and as we arrive Norm asks if I want to come out fishing with him in the morning. "Well, I've only fished once before and that was from a riverbank - I might be a bit of a liability". Norm looks at me over his rimless glasses. "Oh, that's alright. If you're too much of a liability you'll go over the side". That seems to be that, and we climb out to negotiate our camping spaces.

Toquart isn't what I expected, but everything I had hoped. It's a busy campsite full of gargantuan RVs and kids running around, but it's right on a long sandy beach and completely surrounded by Toquart Bay, a bite of the Pacific ringed by cloud-capped mountains and scattered with little islands - the Broken Group - each with its cap of evergreens. As I walk to my space (the cheerful rotund Native Canadian woman at the registration trailer puts me in a slot which backs onto a little forest trail so I can hang my tarp between the trees) the sun is nearing the horizon and the sky is shading through pale orange, the nearest islands sillhouetted against the sky, their deep slate-blue reflections rippling below them in the calm water.

I fetch water from the tap by the dock and cook a quick supper of instant noodles over the trangia before settling in. My mat is comfortable, the sleeping bag warm and I'm bushed, but sleep is a little broken as four guys arrive at about 11 in the next slot to set up camp, a process which seems to require many beers and a lot of crashing noises.

Mark Hewitt is an English foodie, cook, philosopher, geek, shaman and writer. At the start of 2007 he sold or gave away almost all his possessions and left on a backpacking journey round the world, the purpose being (at least in part) to figure out why he would want to do such a thing. You can follow his journey and find other articles at: Seeking An Extraordinary Life.