Wildlife vacations to Vancouver Island

Vancouver Island is a hyperbole of an island. This oversized platter of temperate rainforest, mountains, salmon rivers, craggy coastlines and beaches leaves people simultaneously breathless and babbling. And wildlife vacations to Vancouver Island are the exclamation mark on top of a triple-underlined adventure.

You might be startled out of sleep by the sound of humpbacks snorting off the starboard side; kayak coastlines where bears browse clam-packed beaches and wolves lurk at the treeline; hear an eagle screech through the mossy, misty rainforests of Pacific Rim National Park; witness salmon streaming from the island to the mainland via the orca-packed gauntlet of Johnstone Strait.

But it might just be the enthusiasm of your tour guides that steals the show. Their love for this intertidal landscape and the creatures in it is heart-stealingly honest. Go on an organised tour, and you’ll be matched up with the best of the best: biologists, ecologists and conservationists who can teach you about the stupendous recovery of humpbacks since whaling was banned, and the struggle of malnourished orcas.

Read on to find out how you can kayak with orcas, sail whale waters and meet bears on their terms on a Vancouver Island wildlife vacation.

The Pacific Rim National Park Reserve lazes for 130km along the center-west coastline of Vancouver Island. Centuries-old First Nation trading routes inspire the whale-view West Coast Trail, which strings together wild beaches and a serrated coastline once notorious for its shipwrecks. Other trails dive deep into the bear rainforests, where wooden boardwalks zigzag between giant red cedars and hemlocks strung with moss and lichen.

Most wildlife vacations to Vancouver Island put you up in a wooden lodge or campsite near surfer town Tofino. From here, your guide will show you the best hiking and kayaking routes for wildlife viewing. They’ll also put you in touch with the best whale watching companies – or show you the secret cove where you might spy humpbacks from the beach.

There’s nothing quite like sitting at eye-level with an orca as it cuts past your kayak on its way to its feeding grounds. To the cetaceans, you’re as inconsequential as a gull on the wave, so you’ll get to see the whales behaving just as they would without your gaze on them. Most kayaking trips head for the calm waters of the Inside Passage, where orcas hunt salmon every summer, or towards the south, where orcas travel between the Canadian Gulf and USA’s San Juan Islands.

But it’s not just about the filmstar fins. Black bears wander down to tide pools, supremely unbothered by you watching from your kayak. And a paddle into one of the thousands of coves chipped out of the coast reveals peacock-blue starfish, giant jellyfish and – if you’re lucky – flicker-fast wolves. Children are born with skis on their feet and a paddle in their hand in British Columbia, so your guide will effortlessly reveal the most sheltered passages and campsites, depending on the whims of the tides and weather.

The Inside Passage has a reputation that precedes it – a historic sheltered trading route that squeezes between Vancouver Island and mainland British Columbia. The Johnstone Strait and Blackfish Sound sit at the north end of Vancouver Island, a bottleneck of ocean that doubles as one of the best places to find orcas and humpbacks in the world.

Here, hundreds of whales and orcas gather to feast and fluke, bubble and breach. It’s also the stomping ground of handsome Pacific white-sided dolphins, Dall’s porpoises, seals and sea lions, supersized sea otters and bald eagles. Approach the Inside Passage the traditional way – on a classic schooner, for instance – and you’ll dock in calm bays where landlubbers like black bears pad along the coast at twilight.