Thursday 27 March 2014

Hale Tales on Canada's West Coast

Yesterday my yoga practice took place on a big and beautiful beach nearly as far west as one could go in Canada. I thought it was a good time to start Hale Tales up again.

Hale Tales is my blog to document adventures I have living and working in beautiful and interesting places.

I hope the stories in the blog will entertain and give you a glimpse into some beautiful and pristine places.

 
The place I am living and working is a small community of about 800 people on an island called Flores Island. To get here, you take a ferry from Vancouver over to Vancouver Island. From Nanaimo, you drive west across Vancouver Island until you reach the small fishing turned tourist town of Tofino. This is where the road ends, but to get to Flores Island you get on a boat and drive for 40 minutes through ocean pristine enough to be a UNESCO biosphere preserve until you reach Flores Island.

If you were on a boat yesterday afternoon and looked very carefully at one particular beach on the island, you might see two women doing yoga.

The sun felt glorious on my bare arms and the sound of surf, the lush rainforest behind , snow capped mountains of Strathcona Park in the far distance and several bald eagles circling above made it yoga video worthy.

So you would think anyway. If it weren't for the dogs who were also on the beach (one belonging to each yogi and one following us from the village.

Picture both yogis covered in wet sand (in a messy-sand-smeared-on-face-and-everything-else way, not a provocative one).

Now imagine three dogs (husky, husky pup and pug-terrier mix) tearing around the beach, chasing each other, barking, occasionally resting on the yoga mats and stealing articles of clothing belonging to the yogis.

Yoga mats became soggy with water, making for even more wet, soggy sand saturated clothing. We did a range of poses with meditation to start and end it.

Although all involved (humans and dogs) loved every second of it, we burst into laughter imagining what our yoga video would be like.



The walk home from the beach served to seal off our practice further and the entire experience was relaxing, grounding, playful and really fun.

Some highlights of my time here have been the community seafood feasts, the wonderful people and the expansive and uncrowded beaches.

To read a bit more about where I'm at, feel free to check out this article about some longboarding that came to my workplace last year and I was lucky enough to be a part of. Very cool to still see longboards cruising around here. http://www.axsgear.com/blog/longboard-headline-news/ahousaht-first-longboard-nation/

A bit about me if you don't know me. I am a sister, a daughter, an owner of a hyper-beyond-belief husky, a runner, yogi, avid reader, bike rider and big fan of unique people, places, and things. Despite my work taking me to the far reaches of this immensely huge and stunningly beautiful country, I am very close to my family and they are the most important part of my life.

Hope you enjoyed the sandy, doggy and yoga inspired post today. Thanks for reading and hope you come by to check out more Hale Tales again.

Warm Regards from Flores Island,

Haley






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