Dear All,

Even though this entry relates to my time in Victoria, I am actually writing this one and the previous New York one from Vancouver. I arrived a couple of hours ago.

Victoria was really really nice but it was a little too much like England for my liking. In fact, it was just like Torquay but much, much nicer and without the chavs. It was lovely and clean and I felt safe walking around on my own. The female dorm in the hostel was 18 beds and the mens dorm was 40 beds! It wasn't too bad because they kind of sectioned the beds off in to groups and I took earplugs, which came in very handy. The hostel was much smaller than the New York one but I preferred this because it means that you get to know people much easier. There were some really nice girls in my dorm, including one from Plymouth!

Sightseeing is really easy to do in Victoria because it is all within walking distance. I liked Thunderbird Park, which had loads of totem poles in it. I was hoping the weather would be good enough for the beach but it wasn't. Apparently I was a week too late - typical!

I went on a whale watching trip at 5pm on Friday for 3 hours. It was really good and we saw loads of whales. It took about an hour to get to the whales and I spent the hour hanging on tight to the boat because the sea was rough and the boat was one of those speed boats that the RNLI uses.

Apparently there are three main families (pods) of whales that live around Vancouver Island and it is very rare that they all get together. When they do it is called a super pod and this happened on the day of our trip! We didn't get too close to the whales because there are regulations to protect them. We saw them jumping out of the water and stuff but it was really difficult to get photos because they were so quick. There is a few photos that the boat driver put together and the link is below. There is a proper dodgy one of me in my whale watching outfit - oh dear!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gy79Oc0vxsQ

I met someone on the trip that was staying at the same hostel as me and I ended up going out with him and some others that evening, sampling the BC pubs. He is at the end of his six month tour so it was quite exciting for me to hear his stories. I know that time will go so quickly and soon it will be me saying that to someone else! Quite a lot of the people that I met in Victoria have also moved on to Vancouver so I hope to meet up with them again here.