Surf Vacation in Tofino, BC

Our Tofino Surf Story

From Santa Cruz to Tofino, BC in 6 Days

submitted

Surfing in Canada? I know it’s hard to believe, but I read about surfing in Tofino, BC in a surfing magazine and immediately thought: “How bad could it be – there’s farther places that we could travel that might not have good waves, right?”

Vancouver Island sits on BC’s west coast like a big awkward provincial appendage. It’s a massive island: 12,076 square miles with over 2100 miles of coast.  It’s also surprisingly varied in its topography. The northern most point that prickly pear cacti grow is just off the east side of Vancouver Island, while the west coast’s places like Tofino receive somewhere on the order of 3 meters of rain per year (3 yards!).

Our first thoughts about heading up to Tofino from Santa Cruz, California was that the water temperature up in Canada must be cold – icy cold. But with a little research in a surfing guide book informed us that the water was actually about the same temperature as our home water: between 44 and 52 degrees Fahrenheit.  So we packed up our 4-5-6 mm wetsuits and headed up the coast for a winter surfing trip in Tofino, BC.

Ok, I don’t think that I have alluded to this fact yet, but you should know this about the clan that piled in my ’86 Dodge Ram short-box van: We’re idiots. Planning isn’t on our priority list of things to do. If it doesn’t involve making sure there’s cold beer in the fridge, we’re not exactly long term thinkers. So it was no surprise to any of us that we arrived in Tofino with no thoughts of where we should stay.

The weather on arrival was indicative of a typical Tofino winter day: raining with signs of more rain. Luckily, though, the wind wasn’t as fierce as it can be this time of year. But let me get back to the idiot-factor. Instead of finding a place to stay for the night, as any somewhat wise van-full of vagabonds would do, we took advantage of the last two hours of daylight by gearing up in our wetsuits and trying our hand at the local beach break on Chesterman’s Beach.

The surf was mediocre (although we saw hints of greatness) and much too brief. It gets dark early in the winter in Tofino. Located at 42 degrees, Tofino is far enough north to end your surfing session at 3:30 on a cloudy mid-December day.

So it was as we finished up our session and headed back to the van that we realized the now-obvious mistake: wet and stinky wetsuits, cold and shivering bodies, and absolutely no clue where to dry off and get warm.

It was then that we all sprang into action mode, jumped into the van and got our stuff together. We headed into downtown Tofino, picked up a copy of the local free magazine (Tofino Time), and called the first B and B that we could find. To our surprise the place was empty, and at that point we didn’t care how much it cost – it was warm, cozy and most importantly, it was dry.

Our next three days of surfing in Tofino showed us good to mediocre surfing conditions. We all had a blast talking with the unbelievably friendly locals (go to the legion in Tofino for a good time, and make sure to stop in at the Maquinna Pub for a drunken party). On our beach break scale of 1 to 5 we gave Tofino’s surfing scene a 4. There hundreds are much better beach breaks from LA south to the tip of Baja, but the friendly crowds and the quirky fact of surfing in Canada increased the score from a 3.5 to a 4.

I’ll spare you the details of our border crossing on the way home (word of advice: don’t crack jokes at the border guards) and of our flat tire in Tillamook, Oregon. I’ll just leave you with one line of inspiration: Surfing in Tofino, BC is well worth the trip – no matter how far you have to go to get there.