Destination of the week: British Columbia
Vancouver and Vancouver Island stand apart from the rest of British Columbia, the big-city outlook and bustling, cosmopolitan streets of Vancouver, Canada's third-largest metropolis, and Victoria, the provincial capital, dramatically at odds with the interior's small towns, remote villages and vast tracts of wilderness. And while Vancouver Island has scenery that occasionally matches that of the interior, its landscapes are generally more modest, the island's intimate and self-contained nature and relatively small extent creating a region that feels very different to the great continental land mass of which mainland British Columbia is a part.
In Vancouver you have one of the world's great scenic cities, its watery and mountain-ringed setting on a par with those of Sydney and Rio de Janeiro. Long after the many fine galleries and museums, notably the Museum of Anthropology, North America's finest collection of aboriginal art and artefacts, and the even better restaurants, have faded, the memory of the Coast Mountains rearing above the Burrard Inlet, or the beaches and semi-wilderness of Stanley Park, will probably linger. Vancouver is also a sophisticated and famously hedonistic city, having more in common with the West Coast ethos and outlook of San Francisco than, say, Toronto or Ottawa to the east.
125 km north of Vancouver is Whistler, a modern centre for skiing and boarding in winter, and hiking, in-line skating, golf and, above all, mountain biking, in the summer.
The so-called Sea to Sky Hwy (Hwy 99) to Whistler is the tempting of two obvious road excursions from Vancouver. The other is the 150-kilometre Sunshine Coast, distinguished by occasional stretches of fine coastal scenery, but experienced by most travellers only as far as Horseshoe Bay, one of several points of embarkation for ferries to Vancouver Island.
Most visitors to the island start in Victoria, easily reached by ferry or seaplane from Vancouver or nearby ferry terminals. Few break their journey en route between the cities, missing out on the Gulf Islands, an archipelago scattered across the Strait of Georgia between the mainland and Vancouver Island. If you have time, though, the islands' laid-back vibe, numerous small galleries, glorious seascapes and often bohemian population, make them great places in which to catch your breath for a few days.
Away from Victoria, Vancouver Island moves quickly from the gentle, pastoral country of the south to the jagged peaks of Strathcona Provincial Park and the ravishing landscapes of the Pacific Rim National Park, one of the region's undoubted highlights. Of the visitors that venture farther north, most are either fishermen or whale-watchers bound for Campbell River or Telegraph Cove respectively, or those intending to catch a ferry from Port Hardy along the Inside Passage or Discovery Passage to Prince Rupert or Bella Coola, two of western Canada's most stunning journeys.
For more information, visit Rough Guides