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Picture yourself taking in
the sights and smells of a nature preserve while making small
talk with the friendly owner of an RV. When the conversation
turns to San Diego, the RV owner says, “It’s got a great zoo,
but it’s very expensive. We went to Sea World, too. Cost an arm
and a leg.” If this weren’t small talk, you might respond with
a description of the impressive urinary feats of that zoo’s
mountain tapir or bemoan the stanky slime-water that the orcas
spray on the kids seated in the front row of the Sea World
killer whale show. Instead, you say, “The Wild Animal Park is
nice,” which merits an “I wish we had time to go to the Wild
Animal Park.” The conversation then briefly veers towards hip
replacement surgeries, before abruptly ending with a round of
cordial “Good trips.”
In my experience, most
people outside of Southern California typically sum up San
Diego—AKA America’s Finest City—either with the phrase, “It’s
got a great zoo,” or “I’ve heard it’s got a great zoo.” To be
fair, most tourist cities get distilled to a few key sights, and
the downtown urban renewal may soon change the nation’s
perception of the town. With a bit more exposure by Hollywood,
along the lines of Anchorman or Traffic, San
Diego may even shed its zoocentric image. Well, perhaps those
two movies aren’t the best showcase for America’s Finest City,
but you get the point.
My feelings about the San
Diego Zoo are a mixture of admiration for its role as a research
and breeding center, tempered by the uneasy feeling that it is
also a prison for all but the dimmest animals (the Madagascar
cockroach probably doesn’t suffer from wanderlust). I feel
somewhat better at the Wild Animal Park, where most of the
animals get to roam in large paddocks. Antelopes mill about
without fear of lion or hyena, which is OK for the antelopes,
but even if you squint and block out the electric fences with
your thumb, it still is just a zoo. As for Sea World, that
place is a travesty that can be summed up by this: in the wild,
killer whales have roughly the same life expectancy as humans.
At an aquatic park, they’re lucky if they reach 40.
Like San Diego,
out-of-towners sum up Victoria, British Columbia, with a
phrase: “It’s got beautiful English gardens.” English gardens
and zoos: these are kindred spirits, the former for
octogenarians and the latter for the kiddies. I’ve been known
to plant a border of annuals or weed around the roses, and I
know my way around Kew Gardens, the famous attractions near
London. Still, the thought of a town defined by beautiful
English gardens didn’t move my soul.
Luckily, my wife heard the
expanded scouting report on Victoria, which is, “It’s got
beautiful sunken English gardens.” Sunken-ness makes a world of
difference. Few people are intrigued by a “quaint little church
house,” for instance. A “quaint little sunken church house,”
though is another matter. Who sunk it? Did they escape? What
did they do with the dirt? Was the Pope involved? These are
the types of thoughts that “sunken” evokes. Sunken tourist
sites may ultimately disappoint, but they sure sound more
interesting than their above-ground counterparts, all other
things being equal.
The sunken area at Butchart
Gardens, near Victoria, certainly didn’t disappoint. It was
stunning and impressive (plus the Dining Room served the best
beet carpaccio). It’s not a stretch to call Butchart the San
Diego Zoo of English gardens. I admit that if I were in my
teens and prone to swearing, I may have described it with an
expression that included the verb “to blow,” since even sunken
gardens aren’t for teenage boys. They still are gardens, after
all. Also, I was a little sad to find that the Pope didn’t have
a black hand in the sinking. The
gardens—built in a spent quarry by cheap labor—were helped along
with a dash of exploitation, though.
We augmented our Victoria
experience by paying nearly twice the price of a San Diego Zoo
admission to go whale watching. The name of the whale watching
company, Prince of Whales, made us wary, but they boasted speedy
zodiac boats with underwater microphones and a success rate of
over 90%. I was a little worried that we’d be subjected to a
“Jungle Boat Cruise” style commentary, but we got a
knowledgeable marine biologist as our tour guide/captain. We
spent over three hours speeding through the San Juan and Gulf
Islands at 30 knots, bouncing off wakes and taking in the
scenery.
I tried to daydream that I
was Jacques Cousteau with my lovely wife Simone at my side,
zipping along the living sea, en route to a rendezvous with the
Calypso, where we would catalogue the mating sounds of the
orca. Instead, my daydream was curtailed by my intense
concentration on the water directly in front of the boat, in
what proved to be an unnecessary attempt to keep from being
seasick.
When we reached the orcas,
they were passing through a strait between two islands. We were
lucky because two pods had joined up and the males were
displaying frisky mating behavior. Our guide positioned us in
line with the pods and killed the engine. About 40 orcas passed
under and around our boat, frequently breaching and performing
rolls.
After they passed, we moved
a couple of miles in front of their path and watched them pass
by again. My favorite moment was when we saw the distinctive
serrated dorsal fin of the matriarch of one of the pods, a 94
year old named “Granny,” first photographed at 6 months of age
in 1911. (Incidentally, the orca population in the
BC/Washington area is endangered, thanks in large part to Sea
World and other similar marine theme parks. In the 1970s, these
parks pulled a significant number of young male orcas out of the
population, causing a breeding imbalance—just another reason to
forsake Sea World and its ilk for the real thing.)
Chasing after orcas in a
zodiac is perhaps not categorically different for riding a tram
at the Wild Animal Park, but at least the animals are free to
come and go. This was a rare instance of an overpriced tourist
experience that left me fully satisfied. Victoria, of course,
boasts more than fine gardens and orca tours. There are
impressive 19th century buildings, many restaurants and shops, a
picturesque harbor and a notable museum. If Victoria ever comes
up in a conversation with a RV owner, I’ll have plenty of small
talk fodder.
Copyright Jeff Lewis, 2004. |
