Vancouver Island

Not only is Tofino Canada's top surfing destination, but it's also home to the country's coolest youth hostel. Despite the rain -- the area averages 120 inches annually -- this community on Vancouver Island is a hit with backpackers. Yvette Latta, 29, of New Zealand, was heading to Whistler two months ago when a friend suggested she visit Tofino. She's still there, working behind the desk at the Whalers on the Point Guest House. Tofino, which was one of Capt.

I'm surrounded by white-blue ocean and deep-green headlands. The only sound is the booming roar of the Pacific. Frothy waves, mighty with the power of the deep sea, crash the shoreline. A cluster of delicate sandpipers flies in formation a few feet away. I step over huge tubular chunks of seaweed, weird octopus hunks of slimy green kelp that I've never seen before, not on the Atlantic coast, not in the Caribbean. This is in fact a place unlike any I've visited before. Isolated. Wild with nature.

A spectacular array of totem poles greeted me as I stepped from the bus at Thunderbird Park, a prime tourist attraction in downtown Victoria. Not far away, at the Royal British Columbia Museum, I found another collection -- among them some of the world's oldest known totem poles. It was my first encounter with this fascinating world of aboriginal culture and art.

FRIDAY HARBOR, Wash. - Two dozen hardy travelers were clustered near me on the top deck of a 114-foot ferry, most of us shivering under cloudy skies as a colorful mosaic of water and land slid by the vessel, the Victoria Clipper III. We were sailing through the San Juan Islands, an archipelago of hundreds of isles between mainland Canada, Vancouver Island and Washington state's northwestern coast. As we cruised north from Seattle, rolling hills were replaced by dark green forests and rocky bluffs that overlooked fiord-like inlets.

A new indoor market in downtown Victoria, Canada , will open in the spring, making Vancouver Island's abundant produce available year-round. The Victoria Public Market at the Hudson will be home to goods produced by bakers, butchers, fishermen and florists, among others. Victoria, the capital of British Columbia, is at the southern tip of Vancouver Island. It's about 60 miles from Vancouver and about a three-hour (or less) ferry ride from Seattle. The new market will be in what was once the Hudson's Bay department store.

Scientists caring for an orphaned orca captured in Puget Sound are awaiting results from another set of medical tests before deciding when to move her to her home off British Columbia. The Canadian government has said it will not allow the orca to be brought to Johnstone Strait near Vancouver Island if she has any communicable diseases. The orca is being treated at the National Marine Fisheries Service in Manchester, west of Seattle.

Canada has detained a ship believed to have been trying to smuggle nearly 80 migrants to its Pacific coast, police said. A merchant vessel named Ocean Lady was intercepted off Vancouver Island, and the people on board said they were trying to reach Canada, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said. The origin of the vessel and nationalities of the 76 people were not immediately known. The ship was escorted to a dock near Victoria, British Columbia, where authorities will interview the passengers and crew, police said.

My wife and I spent 12 days in British Columbia (Vancouver Island mostly). In that time, we found the Canadians we dealt with, beginning with the passport and customs officials and the staffs of motels, restaurants, markets, shops, etc., to be unfailingly courteous, helpful, patient and friendly. On our return trip . . . the very first U.S. staff person with whom we dealt was surly, uncommunicative and generally unpleasant. That is when I realized I was home. This is unfortunate, as it is often the very first experience foreign travelers have with the U.S. Charles Vorsanger Pasadena

An attempt from Manchester to return an orphaned killer whale to her home waters off Vancouver Island in Canada was put off for a day when the boat donated for the task could not get up to speed. Officials of Vancouver Aquarium in British Columbia said another attempt will be made early today. The 2-year-old orca remains in her pen and reportedly is fine.