Not the island's finest hour. According to the chap running the boat, the waves and wind were very high and, with the rain on top, visibility was negligible. So, the closest we got to an orca was either the skeleton in the Whale Museum or the statue by the "This way for whale watching!" sign in the National Park. Neither of which was wholly satisfactory...
Not that we're feeling victimised but we were amused by the forecast page which shows the US mainly clear of rain save for the itty-btty top left hand corner in green [rain] for us!
So, we headed to the southern and northern tips of the island where respectively were the US and British bases in the 1850s when we chaps were protecting Her Majesty's and the Hudson Bay Company's interests and trying to snaffle the best deal for management around the 49th parallel. The Special Relationship was apparently nearly struck down in its infancy when a trigger-happy local took umbrage at a HBC pig foraging on "his" land (the Brits didn't restrain said porker : we reckoned it our territory to start with so he could root about where he liked) and, when the local shot the pig, he was threatened with the clink. Governments got cross and battleships were massed, but diplomatic sense eventually prevailed...
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