From the time we moved to British Columbia, Canada, Vancouver Island has been on my mind to make a visit for the various adventures it offers. In 2020, when the pandemic hit, and I thought, all of this needs to wait another year.
But over summer, (Canadian summers begin from June until Sept), things slowly opened up, most of the Provincial parks opened, ferries began & limited gatherings were allowed. This motivated me to search (quite frantically) for a place to book in, people were not able to fly anywhere and so getting a spot was a huge challenge. Normally we did road trips and stayed at AirBnb, hotels, motels. But now with the fear of catching covid, plus very high expensive stays at AirBnb's, we started considering camping as an option.
For my first ever trip to the island, as we Vancouverites like to call it, "the island", we found this beautiful and amazing private campsite near Nanaimo. It's known as Living Forest. Truly, this is a forest with roughly 300 campsites at the edge of the Nanaimo river, amazing open ocean views from so many of those sites !
Getting one of those ultra scenic sites is a fight, involving many months of advanced booking as we gradually learnt. Nevertheless, we were very happy with our lovely spot in the woods.
We planned this as a Road trip-cum-Camping trip-cum-Adventure trip ! We did one part of the Sunshine coast circuit & travelled from Vancouver - Tsawwassen to Nanaimo (by ferry) - travelled as far as Comox, Qualicum beach, Parksville, did an awesome once in a life adventure with underground caving at Horne Lakes & sightseeing around Nanaimo, all while camping for 2 nights !
The only ways to get to Nanaimo or the island are by ferry, small chartered seaplane, or a commercial flight to Victoria/Comox. Ferries is the most common mode of transportation. One can take a car, camper, carry their pets on this ferry ! All of this was spectacularly new for us. If you don't have a car, you can just walk in as well. BC Ferries is the only ferry service run by the government.
In July 2020, there was only 1 way to get there via ferry - through Tsawwassen ferry terminal. Due to covid, the number of runs and routes per day was very limited. Tsawwassen is far out in Richmond, south of Vancouver, a 40 mins drive from downtown. There are no training classes for you to learn how to drive your car onto a giant boat, that, you experience first hand. Here's a recording of how surreal that felt, like driving right into the ocean.
Tip: Make sure to reach the departure terminal at least 45 mins before to get in the queue, and boy ! Those queues are long - Book ahead, reach ahead, plan ahead. Its 2 hours travel time to Nanaimo from Vancouver.
Once they start loading folks and cars, it's a clockwork operation & so much easy too. You can explore so many decks on the ferry, tons of open spaces and indoor large windows to gasp at the beauty of sounds & fjords, tiny islands and blue ocean.
Enjoy the food, admire the ocean, soak the sun 🌻& breath the fresh air..
Once we reached our camp site, after setting up the tent, we went to a spot near the river within thecampgroundd to catch some seals playing, sunset and get some of their delicious-can't-stop-eating Rainbow ice cream.
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