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Today the Bella Coola weather gods must have been napping, as the sun broke over the mountains and pushed the clouds out of the valleys and onto the peaks. This was the day we had been waiting for!

Suddenly keyed on a breath of fair weather, we ate breakfast as we packed lunches, got our gear together, and piled into the boat before 9am to head out the inlet and down the South Bentick channel to the hot springs that had been on everyone’s top sites to visit in Bella Coola.

Slow day in Bella Coola.  I awoke anticipating a morning push to get out onto the boat and out to the hot springs we’ve heard so much about—something like an hour away in our 30hp inflatable.  However, the constant drizzle on my tent gave me the morning weather report: rain.

Rain can be a great excuse to do one’s late late taxes, so I worked through most of the afternoon at the café downtown, sampling the lunch menu of paninis and following that with desserts of chocolate muffins and a nanaimo bar.  Mmmm. Taxes never tasted so good.  The Café showed itself as one of the hubs of local activity, so I sat and observed the local exchanges, a bit of rumor and gossip, the talkers and the quiet ones come in to enjoy a bit of coffee and a snack.

The end of 60 miles of dirt road, down a 4000 foot mountain, and nestled on a fjord to the ocean that is more than 50 miles inland and surrounded by glacial peaks rising directly from sea level into clouds miles high…this is Bella Coola.

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M and I have just finished our four-month journey through South America, where our trusty Dell Latitude X1 performed miserably—crashing due to high elevation only 2 weeks into our trip (Thankfully after some of M’s important work was finished and backed up).

A USB-key version of Slax (I believe v.5.0.8) connected us to our blogs and email and kept our photos moving onto DVD during the 6 weeks in the altiplano of Peru and Bolivia (journeys on Titicaca and the Uyuni Salar).

When you have one flat tire on a trip, it’s an annoyance. Two is something of a story, deserving mention at dinner-parties and among friends. Three flat tires is a streak of bad luck, but can be washed down with a good bottle of wine and some hearty laughter. Flat tires in higher numbers indicate some underlying sinister forces, a curse perhaps, or karma working its path