Long Tall Sally...

She's built for speed, She's got everything that we need, Oh Baby!

That was effectively what was going through my head when we arrived at Hertz to pick up our rental car. Now this is no ordinary rental car, this is a 2008, jet black, convertible, 4.6 Lt, V6, Ford Mustang GT (hereafter called Sally). There was a queue of about 15 people waiting to be served when we turned up, however they were members of what Mike and I have come to call 'pleb class'. However as Mike has a Gold membership with them he waltzed past them to our own desk where the guy added me to the insurance for no extra cost and handed us the keys and let us free with Sally.

We stopped off in Stanley park so that we could have a play with all the buttons and work out how to tame this beast, then we were on our way. Driving over the Vancouver suspension bridge with the roof down, listening to the noise of that engine was a very cool experience (no seriously, it was cold!!!) but one that was well worth it. To quote Chris Evans ''it's one of the only cars that sounds like it does in the movies'' and for those of you that have seen Gone in 60 Seconds (the new one) will know that the Mustang sounds like no other car on the road.

Although we had a great car and not too far to go for our ferry we hadn't counted on the pure lack of any logic on the road system. We drove around following all the signs to the ferry only end up driving past the exit terminal twice with a wall between us and it! To eventually get to it we had to drive away from it on the motorway for about 3 exits and then come off, go through some road works and then drive all the way back. This left us missing our reservation by 5 minutes, and they have obviously never heard of the word 'flexibility' here and said tough, we would have to wait 2:30 hours for the next one. Fortunately, however, Horse Shoe Bay was a rather pleasant little place, so we decided to get out of Sally and make lunch down by the marina.

After we'd had a walk around and Mike had polished off a mammoth ice cream (it may have been only 2 scoops but it was more like 4 UK scoops!), we headed back to Sally and our waiting vessel. The ferry to Vancouver Island was rather jolly, great views of the mountains surrounding the bay and thankfully not nearly as rough as the whale watching trip we had had in NZ (well Mike was far more pleased about this than me :P). When we reached the island we had a short but enjoyable drive south down the cost to a town called Nainamo and onto our next hostel. A nice little place, although I have never had so much of an issue getting hold of alcohol! I went over to the local supermarket only to find that they didn't sell any and that I had to find a liquor store, following the directions I had been given by one of the staff didn't help at all, in fact rather than finding the two bottle shops that were supposed to be in front of me there was in fact a Church (maybe the guy was trying to tell me something...)

I was not to be defeated, so I set out on my own (Mike was blogging by now) to find a liquor store, in true Top Gear fashion 'How hard can it be?'. I ended up running hither and thither fort about half and our until I spotted some bright neon lights down a back ally, in retrospect, writing this now, going down a back ally at night, in an unfamiliar town, towards an neon lit store was probably not my most wise decision ever :/. Still my curiosity paid off and I wandered into what must be the only liquor store in the whole town, I looked through the cooler and picked out a local larger bizarrely named Dead Frog. Still, we are determined to drink only local beers on this trip so I went with it.

The next day we had a wander around the town's harbor and then hit the road again and headed again to the south, this time with Victoria as our eventual destination. After a long day of driving around (mainly just for the fun of driving) we went and found the next hostel and struggled to work out how the parking worked in Victoria (utterly confusing). That night we decided to head out and grab a few beers, we found a place called 'Swans' which had been mentioned by the staff, little did we know that our previous observations about Canadian women would be made abundantly clear.

We were to be served for the night by one of the most stunning women I have ever seen, let alone meet. What was going to be a couple of beers turned into the two of us staying at the pub until three or so in the morning, well some of us had rather more to drink than others (cough..Mike.....cough.....!). We had a really good night out and went out the following night to attempt the same, although this time we headed to a club where a guy we had met the night before worked as a bouncer. We weren't there nearly as long this time but long enough for us to get up and dance the night away and for me to get rather drunk, and forget to pick up my card from behind the bar when we eventually headed off. Mike had stopped drinking a few hours ago by this point and drove us back to the club (being stopped by a police patrol on the way, well you try driving through the bizarre one way system in Victoria when you are used to UK driving!!) which was an interesting experience, although not one that we want to experience again any time soon.

Well this post is beginning to become rather epic in size so I won't go into full detail of our escapades during the days in Victoria, we have enjoyed it but still look forward to blasting Sally over the long roads in the US.