Flyin' High

One of the things that The Innchanter's website warns you about is the unpredictability of the weather. Unforeseen and inclement rains or winds can easily prevent a guest's departure. When booking a stay, they remind you that it's best if you're ready to have to spend an extra night in case the weather changes. Unless you arrived on your own boat or kayak, you're pretty much limited to hitching a ride on the whale watching and hot springs tour boats or flying out on one of the small float planes.

Here it was time for us to return to the more hectic pace of the city and we woke up to a world of fog. There wasn't much chance that a single-prop Cessna was going to be able to negotiate a landing in our little neck of the woods.

All we could do was keep our fingers crossed that the skies would clear by noon. Although there was definitely movement on the fog issue, the fog was still with us come noon and we had to decide whether we were going to keep hoping or try and get on the first tour boat that was going to leave. Turns out that decision was made for us when a couple campers and government workers showed up on the dock with great bundles of gear. Two of the other guests were already going to take the boat and, all of a sudden, there was no room for us whether we wanted to leave or not.

We got a break when everything started clearing big time about an hour later. Tofino Air called The Innchanter to say that they'd were able to get out of the harbour and that they were on their way. Timing was moved back about an hour and a half, but we were still going to make our way down Island. Yippee.

I'd really been looking forward to the short flight. It's a rare occasion that I get to head up into the wild, blue yonder in such intimate circumstances.

It's only a 15-20 minute flight but, as you can see, it's a heckuva way to commute.

If you click on the one photo and look closely, you can even see some of the bathers soaking in the hot springs. It was neat to see an aerial shot of our little haven of relaxation.

We'd hoped to add another bottle of wine to The List during the short flight, but we were told by the pilot that he's been waiting years for the stewardess/trolley dolly to finally show up to work. The next bottle would have to wait until the evening.