Two days and a world away
We spend a lot of time talking about taking mini-vacations, my friends and I. All it takes is a particularly frustrating day at work for one of us and we’re fantasizing about a girls’ getaway to the beach or the big city, even going as far as to check accommodation availability or last-minute flight prices before the idea somehow shuts itself down. We’re too busy. It’s too expensive. The beach will be better in the summer. The city will be better with a little more time to plan.
Two weeks ago, a text from one of my friends popped up on my phone: “Would you be up for going to Tofino next weekend?” I checked my schedule for the weekend then texted back something likely involving more exclamation points than strictly necessary – after all, it was Monday afternoon, and the best way to make Monday afternoon slide by a little faster is to start making concrete plans for the weekend; booking a hotel room is like a mood-elevating drug.
By the time Friday afternoon rolled around, I was giddy. I fidgeted my way through a conference call that seemed like it would never end. I stuffed more clothing than I’d ever need for a weekend away into my bag. I filled up my car’s tank with gas, filled up my phone with a selection of road-trip-worthy music (upbeat for the highways, and something more downtempo to act as a soundtrack to those twisting mountain roads), and then we were off, the car crammed full of girls and their clothes, rain boots, a skimboard, and a rainbow hula-hoop circling awkwardly around the back-seat passengers.
As far as destinations for weekend getaways go, Tofino is just about as close to perfection as you’ll get. It’s separated from Victoria by a five-hour drive up the island that gives you just enough time to feel like you’re on a real road trip before you’re rolling into the destination. It’s got long, foggy beaches, mysterious forests, and a colourful village populated by hemp-loving hippies and dreadlocked surfers, but it’s also got heaps of luxury and good food, and the whole place seems to suggest that you should slow down a little bit, forget about work for a while, and maybe spend a morning just sitting on the beach and scrunching your toes into the sand.
And that’s exactly what we did. Middle Beach Lodge, perched on a rocky point overlooking MacKenzie Beach, was the ideal setting for our weekend away. I had told myself before leaving Victoria that for me, this weekend would be all about relaxation and perfecting the art of the lazy afternoon – there would be no running, I wouldn’t even attempt to go near a surfboard (although to be honest, the fact that I completely screwed up my shoulder while climbing actually decided this one for me), and anything resembling an actual hike was strictly out of the question. Acceptable activities included ambling down the beach with a camera in one hand and a few sea shells in the other, sitting out on the deck soaking up the sun with a glass of pink wine within reach, and sinking so deep into the corner of one of the lodge’s many plush, overstuffed couches that I was convinced I may never want to get up again.
And then there was dinner – four girls packed into our cabin’s tiny kitchen, roasting salmon, making risotto without any recipe to reference, chopping, manoeuvring hot frying pans and cutting boards with knives around one another, and somehow, miraculously, coordinating the end result so that everything finished cooking at just the right moment and (more importantly) was delicious in the way that only food you’ve prepared on a vacation with your closest friends can be.
Almost too soon, it was time to pack up the car and head back home. A little sand in the trunk, a little smoke from the beach fire in our hair, and the kind of impromptu sing-along to some of the worst (best?) top-40 songs that only a road trip can inspire – before we knew it, we were nearing the outskirts of Victoria, caught up in the rest of the end-of-weekend traffic making its way back into the city. And before this trip had fully come to and end, we were already talking about our next weekend getaway.
More pictures from the weekend here. The benefit of being the one with the camera in hand is that I get to take photos of everyone else without appearing in very many photos myself.
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