Quadra Island was gorgeous, much more beautiful than Orcas Island and its waters were warmer. But everything about our lodging and activities was colored by our "hosts," Coastal Spirits, and not colored in a nice friendly way but in a dim, bilious orange. The third photograph on the right, being at the top of a page titled "Lodge-Based Tours," implies that the lodging is in that "lodge." It is not a lodge but the owners' house and it is quite clear guests are not welcomed in or near it. I am not sure I was even welcome to walk through the grounds near the gardens. Only on this photo gallery page, in the fourth row, is the guest lodging featured, as a "cabin," again suggesting something cabin-like and maybe that the pictured building is a single cabin. It is, in fact, a single building, but contains three units smaller than an average Usan living room with a corner walled off for shower stall and toilet. The fourth photograph on this page is of our room, with the adjoining door to the middle unit open deceptively to suggest more spacious accommodation than is offered. Two of the three units have ventilation only through the unscreened sliding glass doors and the bathroom window. We had the far right room with a window on the front, unscreened doors on the side, and bathroom in the rear, (and an unwindow, a fixed sheet of glass, over the single sink) but even marginally more ventilation did not spare us from the smell of mildew.
Dampness I expected in British Columbia; mildew in a professional lodge I did not. One of the things about lodge-based adventures I thought worth paying for was outdoor adventures ending in a dry bed, hot shower, and clean toilet, in a lodge. I might have lived in Denver for a decade and developed a horror of mold, but mildew is not just dampness but smacks of inadequate cleaning.
Nor was the cleaning the only inadequate thing. I have not slept in sheets with such a low thread count and high polyester count since a freshling year romp with a fellow in the next dorm. Freshling year is also probably the last time I had to resort to a single, puny towel (smelling of mildew) after a shower (there was no tub).
Coastal Spirits calls itself a bed & breakfast, but it is not, any more than a Holiday Inn offering an, ahem, continental breakfast is a B&B. At a B&B, you eat with the family, who enjoy having guests. At a B&B, your coffee and your breakfast are made for you. At a B&B, your breakfast is more substantial than a small cup of yogurt and a mini-muffin. There might even be orange juice.
Which brings us to the included lunch. When you're kayaking or hiking, you want a substantial lunch, something resembling the meal pictured in the third photograph of this page. But no. A single cheese and vegetable sandwich apiece, good but not ample or especially delicious, small nearly bitter apples, granola bars. The hot mint tea was yummy and refreshing, at least, and usually there were orange slices.
The "hosts" had not a single damn thing to do with the lodging or the tours. Our guides, who--the primary ones, anyway--were fine, told us that the owner might take one tour out per season. None of them appeared to enjoy either people or "adventures."
On our last night, at about 10 o'clock, I stood in the middle of the lawn looking starward through binoculars. Someone had left the lodge in a truck just as I went outside, which I noticed because I had turned away from the headlights not to ruin my eyes for stargazing. He returned just a short time later and again I turned away from the headlights in a clearly suspicious manner, and once out of the truck he called, "Who is that?" I didn't answer, because I didn't know he was speaking to me, because he couldn't have been speaking to his own guest in such a way, and because he should have known by this time who I was anyway--if he hadn't interacted with me directly he had seen me enough over the past few days to recognize a woman of my height and build and hair as a guest. Also I didn't answer because he had no reason to use such a rude tone.
When he called again, I deigned to reply, "Are you speaking to me?"
"Yes--who are you?"
"I'm Lisa, I'm your guest in number 3."
"What are you doing?"
"Stargazing." What the fuck business of his what it was I was doing? Stealing kayaks? Puncturing life vests? Stargazing? It was all equally criminal in his eyes. We were happily televisionless but there was just one reading lamp, on one side of the bed, aside from the glaring overhead, and the island is fairly without nightlife and the hosts weren't exactly inviting us into the house for cribbage or backgammon or Pictionary; so stargazing, even at sea level in a humid environment, struck me as a fine activity.
The one pleasant surprise was the optional cat. Gizmo, a guide, not a host, told me, was that very dark brown that looks black, and was the worst beggar of a cat I have ever met. He made himself known the first day, begging for In and content to cozy up on a lap and read for a while. Subsequently he appeared for breakfast so he could lick the foil tops of the yogurt tubs or possibly be given some in a bowl.
That was the lodging and board. The tours are the other half. We paid for Tour 6: Glaciers, Waterfalls and Lagoons. The first day we kayaked through the Breton Islands and the second day on the chained lakes. The third day we hiked. By the fourth day, we and the other guests asked when the glaciers, lagoons, and waterfalls would happen. There are no waterfalls on Quadra Island, come to find out, and though Coastal Spirits' site promises a trip to Elk Falls Provincial Park on Vancouver Island (where a 200' waterfall stops the salmon in their tracks), the guides said that not only was that not on our itinerary but that they had never brought any tour thither. Glaciers we could see atop the mountains on Vancouver Island and the mainland, and that's as close as we came to one. The left picture in the fifth row is of "Emerald Lagoon, Discovery Islands." Again, not only were we not ferried to Elk Falls Provincial Park, we did not kayak to any other island in the Discovery archipelago or any lagoon on one.
Paying for several days at a time, several weeks in advance, should have got us a better rate than parties joining us at the last minute for single-day tours. Ahaha, no. Planning so far ahead should have given Coastal Spirits time to arrange everything they promised, except that reportedly they never deliver everything they promise and it's not deliverable from Quadra Island anyway.
Quadra Island is gorgeous, and I had a great time when I wasn't dealing with mildew or our hosts. We want to return, but there is not a chance in hell of our booking through Coastal Spite or giving it any but the worst marks in honesty and hospitality.
The first day we kayaked from the tip of Rebecca Spit around the Breton Islands. In our party were three Canadians, mother, daughter and son; two Scots, boy and girl; one Japanese man; and us. Minus the Scots, these six would be together for the next five days.
That morning, some hoodlums had poached dozens of pink salmon. Their corpses, filleted and bloody, lay strewn on the beach. I asked if salmon eyes were a delicacy, like seals' eyes: these fish were blind. But no, corvi and gulls had taken the easiest pickings. Also I asked why the poachers hadn't taken the fish whole rather than spend time on the beach butchering them. They wouldn't want to be caught with the fish, the guide said, though being caught with oodles of fish steaks couldn't be much less incriminating. In the afternoon, upon our return, baby crows begged their parents for salmon guts even though the guts lay right there for easy picking.
At the start, I was screamingly incompetent. A kayak with a rudder? Getting the pedals properly adjusted was a bitch, and for a while I pulled the rudder up entirely rather than let it steer me in circles. At that point, the kayak was dead in the water, impossible to keep on any course at all, so I let it down again, but I still wanted to steer with the paddle.
We saw a bald eagle, harbor seals, and seastars. The eagle perched nonchalantly on a rock only a few feet above the tide line, perhaps napping off a large meal. Seals by the score napped and rested just feet away from us. Harbor seals vary in color and spottiness, but no matter how pale or dark or mottled they are, they all blend perfectly into rocks from a distance. Closer, they separate into tails and flippers, noses and eyes, cow and calf.
Lunchtime meant time to look at seastars and tie bull kelp into knots. Bull kelp, thick and strong as it is, is an annual. It is barely rooted to the seabed, and the stem that grows from bed to surface is solid but resilient and tough, like cork. Kayaking through a forest of it, plastic hull against hollow kelp, sounded like--yes, I am of the television generation--armless Hawkeye drifting among the cast-off limbs in "Dreams," one of my favorite MASH episodes.
Julie, a 17-year-old Ontario transplant to British Columbia, tied the kelp in knots as Bill, the guide, told us how Indians used kelp to straighten wood (for spears or arrows) and treated it to make it last, for storage, for syringes. He showed us several types of seastars, all of whose names I forget.
A little more paddling between the Bretons and Quadra and then another stop for a walk or a swim. Julie or Leann first tried to wade in, but that water was 58 degrees. I asked Bill if there was a jumping rock, and there was. All three of us jumped in, and I am glad to say I was not the only one shrieking off the worst of the shock. The shrieking did scare the nearby seals farther off. Sorry, seals.
I surprised and pleased myself staying in as long as I did. When I waded into the sea off Orcas Island, it was to say I had done it, and that was plenty cold for a 31-year-old. I expected this water to be much colder, that much farther north and six years on. I went in expecting only to come out again, just to say I had done it, but we all three stayed in for--well, not long, maybe 15'. Longer than just a plunge, anyway. The other two complained about the cold in their nipple piercings. Oy.