2022/09 Great Bear Rainforest - Return to Hope |
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Friday - Hope
Friday was Truth & Reconciliation Day in Canada so the lodge was hosting a lot of visitors in town for the ceremonies. There were lots of T & R orange tee shirts to be seen that morning.
All but four of us bear seekers were going home. Two of the tour boats were taking us to Bella Bella to catch our plane. The other was taking the four to Knight Inlet for another opportunity to see spirit bears.
We were going to visit the sea lions on our way to Bella Bella. Or rather we hoped to. The fog was thick with no hint that it was burning off.
About halfway to Bella Bella we emerged into bright sunshine and this gave us more hope, but then we were abruptly into the fog again. Moose said we’d lost too much time going slowly in the fog. We’d have to skip the sealions.
Perversely the weather at Bella Bella was perfect. Ryan fetched the van and shuttled us to the airport where we were told that our flight was running 90 minutes late, presumably because of fog somewhere.
There wasn’t enough room in the terminal for us all to sit and wait, but luckily the weather was warm enough for us to sit outside at the picnic tables and eat our lunches.
There was news about the plane; it was now another 60-90 minutes late. Ryan asked if anyone wanted to go shopping and he took a van-load to downtown Bella Bella to visit the shops. With a population of about a thousand the shopping was probably a bit limited but it killed a little time for those that like to shop.
When the plane, another Saab, finally arrived we had another problem; the plane was too heavy to take off from Bella Bella’s short runway. The staff asked for Vancouver-based volunteers to offload their checked bags and have them delivered the next day. Sandie volunteered our two as they only contained dirty washing and hiking gear, but they weren’t willing to deliver as far away as Hope, so it was no deal.
Instead, the pilot declared he would reduce the plane’s weight by burning off excess fuel until we were light enough to take off. So we all piled on the plane and our luggage was loaded too. The pilot taxied to the far end of the runway and we sat there for about twenty minutes with the engines roaring and the brakes firmly on.
Finally we were ready. With the engines screaming we set off and stopped a second later. Oh, Oh. With a second try and the engines screaming even louder we rocketed down the runway like a motorcycle at the drag strip. We missed the trees so the take-off part of our flight had been successful. We just had to hope that he’d got his sums right for the landing. We didn’t want a repeat of the Gimli Glider. (Look it up.)
Happily the flight was uneventful, but the luggage pickup was not. The terminal is badly designed with passengers with only carry-ons exiting through the group of people waiting for their checked luggage. There were lots of collisions and Sandie ended up falling backwards onto a pile of barriers and luggage. She wasn’t hurt but our fellow travelers were probably convinced by now that we weren’t fit to be allowed out.
Our original schedule had us arriving in early afternoon but we were now well into the Friday evening rush hour so it was slow going as we drove home to Hope. We didn’t know if we’d get there in time to buy milk and bread, so we stopped at Chilliwack’s Walmart. We were hungry so our quick stop turned into a week’s worth of shopping. This was lucky as it turned out.
One of the passengers on our tour boat had become ill a couple of days into the trip. Sandie could hear her coughing at night. Her friends were trying to persuade her to get herself tested, but she insisted that all she had was a simple cold. Most of the time she was sitting directly behind us, so we weren’t all that surprised when I developed a cough the next morning and tested positive for COVID. Sandie was only a few hours behind me. Luckily we’d stocked up on food and were able to isolate for just over a week. As I write this Sandie has just tested negative, a couple of days behind me.
I posted some of these pictures on Facebook and our friend Geoff responded with a news article about the recent finding of a spirit bear in Michigan. If such a rare genetic event can occur in Michigan then it could also have happened in Minnesota and resulted in the naming of White Bear Lake.
Travel plans for the future? This last trip was a partial success but we definitely had a few problems. It would be great to pick up our plans from three years ago and go ahead with those, but we’ve suffered a lot of wear and tear in those three years. Some of our potential destinations like Russia and China have also lost their appeal!
We are working on it!