Ucluelet is just south of tofino on the same peninsula-ish weird thing. Sacha's place is kind of in between and off to the side. For those of you looking for a more precise explanation, read a map out loud and pretend it's me.
Ukee, as it's to be referred to from now on, is a pretty amazing spot. Its like Tofino, only less touristed and expensive. We nabbed a spot on the Wild Pacific Trail and slept there a couple nights whilst we traveled the surrounding area. We walked the trail once after we got our fishing licenses, trying to catch fish and crab, with no success. The trail thereafter became the spot for our morning run and our home base for culinary experiments.
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We did a lot around the area, but the definite highlights include oysters and crab. The shellfish out here is stupid, and when you catch it yourself, super fresh. Oysters we bought from the wonderful folks at Fishfull Thinking, a wacky little fish processing plant, small scale but super amazing people and super welcoming even though we came by almost at close. The largest dungeness crab I've ever seen in my life garaunteed. 5 lbs. Ridiculous, this this dwarfed it's buddies in the tank. Other crabs included in this production were the 6 we caught off the government dock downtown. 6 in one hour. Insanity and the easiest meal I've ever purveyed for myself. We made bisque with the shells, busted out the meat and made a crab and gooseneck barnacle spaghetti. It was pretty phenomenal, and the local bear population thought so too. Not only did this guy come a-snoopin' once, but I woke up the next morning watching him saunter around the parking lot nonchalantly like it was no big deal he was a bear who could kill me in my immediate vicinity. To be perfectly honest he was terrified of us, understandably I know, we are some fearsome dudes. I almost ate him.
Cool having a bear experience I guess. We also had an oyster experience. The lady at Fishfull gave us a dozen of the biggest freshest monstrosities that call themselves bivalves. They were huge and so fresh the stood out of the shell. I opened 10 of them with my beater chef's knife, and broke about an inch off the tip on the eleventh. I recommend investing in a shucker for all those who plan to do their own pacific bay oysters. I invested in a screwdriver because I'm crafty like that and can use it to fix our van door, which has been uppity of late.
We also skipped over the bay to port albion, which is a native reserve and has a wild pack of seal-hating dogs. Or just life hating dogs, I couldn't really tell, but they chase everything. Almost caught an otter. We just hit the dock to do some unsuccessful fishing, and basically these dogs were sprinting around and jumping in the water whenever they saw a seal. The seals, for what I'm sure was good entertainment and nothing else, would pop up and bark and dive right when the dogs almost had them, thus keeping both parties relatively occupied. I didn't take pictures, but I wish I had. We got joined by this little native guy named Robert who promptly announced to us that his dad was in jail and that he liked fishing. He showed us a few pretty useful tricks.
After port albion we broke camp and bounced inland, tearing back across to the east coast just as the weather started to turn. Quote of the day goes to the BC liquor store cashier in Ukee who told us that "ukee isn't a fishing town with a drinking problem, its a drinking town with a fishing problem".
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