The Ferry and Prince Rupert
CANADA | Thursday, 3 July 2008 | Views [79]
The girls.
Sounds like a fairy tale. Maybe it began with a young Prince Rupert trying to capture a wild ferry as it cruised the seas around his castle. Okay, back to the story.
I'm kind of losing track of the sequence of events and who was there, so I'm going to try to keep this short and general:
On the bus on the way to the ferry we'd almost worked out a luggage duty roster between the four of us - even to the point where we were going to make a nice soft bed out of luggage so the person on luggage duty could sleep. With a 15 hour ferry ride ahead of us, this seemed important. It was a bit of a relief when we arrived to find that we could check our bags in and pick them up at the other end. But it's okay, we still looked like backpackers without our luggage - sitting in the ferry dining room making sandwiches with any food we brought with us (while neighbours wolfed down bacon and eggs).
It seems strange getting up at 4:30am to get to the ferry and on board by 5:30am - when it doesn't leave until 7:30am. By the time we had breakfast, explored the ship, and found good positions to take photos as the ferry was leaving, it was still only 7am and nap time beckoned.
It's a lovely scenic journey through the Inside Passage, but we didn't see any bears (always we look for the bears). Luckily, with a 15 hour journey, it didn't matter so much that we all stopped to take naps throughout the day. There was still more to see when we woke up. And ice water from the on-board restaurant is a bit of a wake-up call.
We arrived at Prince Rupert at 10:30pm and got a little nervous when we didn't know where to pick up our bags.
I got to my hostel and into bed, only to be kept awake a little longer by the 11pm fireworks (oh yeah, Canada Day!).
Prince Rupert is a nice little place - plenty of eagles and seals hanging around the harbour looking for a feed. The lady in the tourist information service was not very helpful - she kept telling us (but mostly Carole) that there was nothing to do until Saturday because everything was booked up by the cruise ships that were expected into town. She got quite rude about it. We asked for a bus timetable and she told us it was written on the board and we should write it down. I think the other tourist information people were a little embarassed and tried to be helpful (one of them gave me a timetable pamphlet).
We spent both days in Prince Rupert walking around town and on the local tracks through wooded areas. They recommend all the tourists go to see the Butze Rapids, which is a short but pretty walk. If you get there at the right time of day you can see the reversing rapids.
We found a nice pub in town and met two other travellers - a father and son. To make this more entertaining, I'm going to pretend they were superheroes on holidays (I believe they left their sidekicks in charge, but hey, they could always fly back if they were needed). We met them for dinner and drinks again the second night, but this time they didn't wear their superhero outfits.
And then our time here came to an end... and Fabienne and I trekked off the to bus stop with our luggage for the overnight bus to Prince George.
It has to be mentioned: As I begin my trip again, I find that at least once a day (and with complete strangers mostly) I am having a conversation about toilet-flushing. A lot of the toilets here are auto-flush, however it seems that if the auto factor doesn't work, or if the toilet is manual, then it will remain unflushed. In this instance, there is one toilet in the Greyhound station and a short queue for the use of it, so it wasn't hard to work out who was responsible. She didn't even look slightly abashed. Okay, so it's not an auto-flush, but ugh! This is not a time to share.
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