Seaplane dips into world of Canadian wildlife

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This was published 9 years ago

Seaplane dips into world of Canadian wildlife

By David Reyne
A mother bear keeps an eye on proceedings while her cubs keep their distance.

A mother bear keeps an eye on proceedings while her cubs keep their distance.Credit: Edward Savage

Is it just me, or does everybody find seaplanes somewhat unreliable looking, as if they've just sputtered in from World War II? To make matters slightly less comfortable, the one I'm about to board is painted the colour of a roadworks witch's hat.

I pull the buckle of my seat belt tight. There's a sentence in the passenger safety card that begins: "In most water accidents, seaplanes come to rest upside down."

The flight from Campbell River on Canada's Vancouver Island, to Knight Inlet takes about 30 glorious minutes. We lift effortlessly from the surface of Discovery Passage, climb over glassy bays and around snow capped peaks.

Floating home: The Knight Inlet Lodge provides guests with a chance to tell their wildlife-spotting takes while keeping them safe from the inlet's other residents.

Floating home: The Knight Inlet Lodge provides guests with a chance to tell their wildlife-spotting takes while keeping them safe from the inlet's other residents.

The landscape below is so impenetrable even Monty Python's legendary lumberjack would require all available limbs to cling to the mountainside rendering him unable to consume his "buttered scones for tea".

A vast expanse of water dwarfed by a defiant granite range and licked by the tongue of a glacier, appears. Thick wilderness reaches right to the water's edge.

We touch down with all the delicacy of a seductive finger dragged across a lover's cheek and skim toward the floating Knight Inlet Lodge.

Bears taking a dip in the inlet.

Bears taking a dip in the inlet.

Although we've arrived at one of the planet's premier wildlife watching destinations, I'm hardly expecting to encounter the towering grizzly standing on the lodge's deck, gnashing his teeth. Is it the colour of the plane that's made him this angry? And then I realise, he's the handiwork of some creative lumberjack who's carved him from wood.

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My bags are whisked away to my room as I'm steered to an urn of hot chocolate and a tray of freshly baked scones. They're kidding, right? That lumberjack song is now stuck on repeat in my head.

I take one of the lodge's kayaks and paddle off across the mirrored surface of the inlet, perfectly alone … except, that is, for two black bears standing at the water's edge wondering if the swim to my craft is worth the taste of middle-aged tourist. As it's abundantly clear that I'm not top of the food chain here, I hurriedly calculate the distance between the bears and me, and the lodge and me, and figure that unless one of these colossal beasts has mastered the art of the Australian crawl, I'm probably safe.

Something breaks the surface and disappears causing my imagination to race to an inevitable conclusion. Since there's a mere centimetre or two of plastic kayak between the flesh of my arse and what must surely be the razor sharp incisors of a killer whale spotted here just four days ago, I get the paddle working like a windmill in a gale, and dart for safety.

A lavish feast is laid out. Because we're so isolated, I'm tempted to ask where it all comes from but, realising we're hemmed in by woods crawling with the weird wildlife Canada is famous for, I dare not.

After lunch I'm bundled into a small boat to search for grizzlies. Almost immediately, 300 kilos of a glorious example of the species appears standing in the shallows, so close I can smell him.

We move on towards a plain of lush grass split by a river that has wound its way through a densely treed valley. I'm told the forest is alive with cougar, deer, wolf and otter. Surely where there's otter, there's beaver and since the beaver is a slow-witted rodent known to bite off its own testicles or stand beneath its own falling trees, I'm determined to catch one in the act.

A head rises from the grass. It's huge, gorgeous… and blonde. She's the Marilyn Monroe of the grizzly world. She considers us for a moment, ambles into the river and swims to the other side. It's as if I've wandered into some Disney movie. As I rub disbelief from my eyes, a deer with three young in tow, leaps from the grass and bounds into the forest.

Even the lodge has a chocolate box quality about it. Clad in western cedar and protected from snowfall by a long pitched roof, it's home to a rowdy dinner as guests enthusiastically relate their tall tales of wildlife sightings. In a thick South American accent, the gentleman opposite insists that the bear he saw was "about 800 kilo". I politely suggest he means 800 pound. "Yes pound", he replies, "that grizzly pound you to pieces."

I manage a hibernation style sleep and wake to a most unusual sight. Our plane is tied to the lodge.

We grind our way to the middle of the inlet, the prop rises to a roar and we skate forward. One last look at the insanely beautiful surroundings reveals a grizzly and her two cubs who seem genuinely startled to see us go … or perhaps they're simply gobsmacked that anyone would consider painting a plane neon orange.

David Reyne travelled as a presenter of Getaway, courtesy of Scenic Tours.

FLY

Air Canada from Sydney to Vancouver and then Vancouver Island Air seaplane from Campbell River on Vancouver Island to Knight Inlet. www.vancouverislandair.com

STAY

Knight Inlet Lodge, www.grizzlytours.com

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