Katchafire in Canada

There was a week long SkaFestival going on in Victoria, back on Vancouver Island and on the Saturday night the main act was Katchafire!! We had to go back to see them, even though Friday night we had a big night out in Vancouver City we got up Saturday and caught the ferry back over to the island.

We made an Aotearoa banner for when Katchafire got up on stage which they all seemed happy to see and we danced the night away, reggae style..love my NZ music..

First Nations Pow Wow

On Sunday we were lucky enough to be invited to a First Nations Pow Wow, it was a three day event where several bands of the First Nations culture get together. There was markets, food, and lots of people dressed up in costumes who later performed in the competitive dances. There was also drummers for the dances and elders speaking who shared the importance of their culture.

It felt like I was in my of my anthropology films we always watched at uni, it was pretty amazing to see.

 I got some pictures of the beautiful costumes..

Vancouver Island

Last week we spent four days over on Vancouver Island, about 30mins to the port and 1.5 hours on the boat so not too bad. We left one night after work and arrived on the island round midnight, we drove as far as we could before pulling over to sleep in the back of the truck. Next morning we finished the last of the drive to the west coast,Tofino.

Brendon was stoked to surf Tofino..

We went and checked out the little hippy township and found this funky cafe

The next day we went down to the rocks for a fish before heading to the Tofino Botanical Gardens

The gardens where nice, you could get a coffee at the Darwin Cafe and take it with you while you wander around the gardens. It was a pretty random place though with some weird statues

Random stuff like this...

As we left the west coast to head inland, we did a tiki tour past another small town called Ucluelet with a nice coastal trail to walk

We drove pretty late into the night so when we went through Chemainus which is well know for its murals we didn't get many good pictures. There were so many older brick buildings and most of them had giant vintage murals painted on the sides of them

Luckily that night the park ranger at Bamberton Park forgot to close the gate to the beach carpark so we found somewhere nice to stop and sleep.

Third day in we drove through a town which I absolutely loved called Duncan on our way to Victoria. It was the town of totem poles, and randomly there was a Maori totem pole from a carvers exchange program which was choice to see

This town also had lots of beautiful painted buildings

My favourite thing in this little town was this awesome old building turned into a tiny indoor market with all organic stuff, I could have lived in there

We quickly checked out the Birds of Prey park, before we got back on the road. Most of them looked to be rescue birds, and had a little area with food, water and a perch so they were so close to you but couldn't reach you

Turkey Vulture, he was in a cage

This little guy was my fav, look at him clutching his little lead

That night we spent down town outside the famous parliament building in Victoria for Canada Day, there was live bands, fireworks and tonnes of people out on the streets

We actually got a place to stay here, three nights in the back of the truck was enough, we managed to find a nice little old done up apartment walking distance from all the action

Our last day over there we walked around the town looking at all the old buildings and going for the famous alley way walks past all the little alternative shops

The last alley way ended up in old Chinatown

We had a bit of time left before we had to catch our boat so on the way out there we stopped into Butterfly Gardens

Heading back home on the boat...