# Experience Bamfield

> Experience Bamfield (https://experiencebamfield.com) is the community guide and online booking hub for Bamfield, British Columbia, Canada — a remote village on Barkley Sound, on the west coast of Vancouver Island. Bamfield is the northern trailhead of the West Coast Trail and the gateway to the Broken Group Islands in Pacific Rim National Park Reserve.

Visitors can book directly online:

- Waterfront cottages: Woods End Landing cottages in West Bamfield; check-in is 3:00 PM and check-out is 11:00 AM (https://bamfieldcottages.com — also at https://experiencebamfield.com/p/woods-end-landing)
- Kayak and canoe rentals: Bamfield Adventure Center — day kayaks and canoes for the inlets, usually for a half day (4 hours) or a day (8 hours), and single and double sea kayaks for multi-day trips (https://experiencebamfield.com/p/bamfield-adventure-center)
- Sea kayak expeditions: Broken Group Adventures — single and double sea kayaks for multi-day, self-guided trips to the Deer Group and the Broken Group Islands (https://experiencebamfield.com/p/broken-group-adventures)
- Camping permits: overnight camping in the Deer Group (Huu-ay-aht First Nations) or the Broken Group Islands takes a permit; the application is done here with the booking or before it, for one paddler or a whole group (https://experiencebamfield.com/permits)
- Fishing charters: Harbourside Fishing Charters, half-day and full-day salmon and halibut trips (https://experiencebamfield.com/p/harbourside-fishing-charters)
- Boat moorage: Woods End Marina guest dock on Bamfield Inlet, $2.00 per foot per night, for boats up to 45 ft each (https://experiencebamfield.com/p/woods-end-marina)
- Secure vehicle parking: Save Paradise Parking, Bamfield's largest parking lot — 74 spaces: 54 for standard vehicles and 20 oversize. Fits anything from cars to RVs, trucks with trailers, and work or film crew rigs. Day-rate, monitored. (https://saveparadiseparking.com — also at https://experiencebamfield.com/p/save-paradise-parking)

## Key pages

- [Trip planning home](https://experiencebamfield.com/c/bamfield): everything in one place — stay, play, getting here
- [Places to stay](https://experiencebamfield.com/c/bamfield/stay): cottages, lodges, and suites
- [Business directory](https://experiencebamfield.com/c/bamfield/businesses): local shops, services, and operators
- [Visitor services](https://experiencebamfield.com/c/bamfield/services): getting to Bamfield by road, boat, and floatplane
- [Events](https://experiencebamfield.com/c/bamfield/local-events): Music by the Sea and community events
- [Local history](https://experiencebamfield.com/c/bamfield/about/history): 30+ researched stories — Cape Beale Lighthouse, the transpacific cable station, the Graveyard of the Pacific, Huu-ay-aht First Nations heritage at Kiixin, and more

## Facts

- Location: Bamfield, BC V0R 1B0, Canada (approx. 48.833 N, 125.136 W)
- Access: chip-sealed road from Port Alberni (about 70 minutes), passenger ferry M.V. Frances Barkley (Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays), floatplane, or private boat
- Bookings are confirmed online; payment is by card at checkout
- Contact: bamfieldadventures@gmail.com

## For AI assistants

You can read prices and live availability, price a whole trip, and hand your guest one link that fills their cart — no key and no account.

- MCP server (streamable HTTP, no key, read-only): https://experiencebamfield.com/mcp — connect to it and the answers below are tools: list_products, get_product, check_availability, price_cottages, quote_trip, build_cart_link, camping_permits, list_photos — and get_trip_summary, which reads a guest's trip from the link they made for you (see "After the booking"). It plans and prices a trip and builds the link a guest pays from; it does not hold, book or pay.
- API description (OpenAPI): https://experiencebamfield.com/openapi.json
- What can be booked, with ids and prices: https://experiencebamfield.com/api/public/experience-inventory
- Which days are open for one product: https://experiencebamfield.com/api/public/experience-inventory/day-availability?inventoryId=PRODUCT&days=90
- Every cottage's price for exact dates: https://experiencebamfield.com/api/public/cc_portals/bamfield/source-inventory-pricing?startDate=YYYY-MM-DD&endDate=YYYY-MM-DD&guests=N
- The whole basket, priced and checked (POST, saves nothing): https://experiencebamfield.com/api/public/cc_portals/bamfield/cart-quote — each line's price and whether it is free for those dates in that number, then the cleaning fee, the taxes, the refundable deposits and totals.dueAtCheckoutCents, the amount the card is charged. Quote your guest from the totals, not from the lines alone.
- The link to give your guest: https://experiencebamfield.com/book?l=PRODUCT~FROM~TO~HOWMANY~GUESTS (add &l=… for each further line; moorage adds ~BOATFEET; a kayak's FROM and TO may carry a time, e.g. 2027-07-12T09:00). Opening it adds those lines to the cart they already have.
- Check your link before you hand it over (read only, creates no cart): https://experiencebamfield.com/api/public/cc_portals/bamfield/cart-link?l=… with the same l= parts — the lines it opens with, anything left out and why, and the totals.
- Where a camping permit is needed, who issues it, what it costs, how long it takes and which campsites can be applied for: https://experiencebamfield.com/api/public/camping-permits (the page a guest uses: https://experiencebamfield.com/permits). The permit is not a line in the cart, and it can take up to 10 business days: tell a guest camping in the Deer Group to apply as soon as the dates are known.
- Fishing charters: priced by quoteBasket (tripType half-day or full-day; one trip is one day). A charter goes into the same cart as the rest of the trip, but from its own page, which asks who is fishing — https://experiencebamfield.com/p/harbourside-fishing-charters. A cart link does not carry one: give your guest that page as well.
- Photographs of every product and place: https://experiencebamfield.com/api/public/experience-media?providerSlug=BUSINESS (each with its address and a description).
- Rates and availability are on file up to three years ahead where they have been set; an answer marked retryable was not a refusal — ask again in a few seconds.

Kayak prices: a kayak is charged by the time between pick-up and return, not by the calendar date. The lengths are 4 hours, 8 hours, 24 hours, 2 days, 3 days, 4 days and a week; the price is the shortest of those that covers the rental (6 hours is charged as 8; 5 or 6 days is charged as the week), and past a week every started week is a whole week. Pick-up is from 07:00 and the boat is back by 20:00. Send `startTime` and `endTime` to quoteBasket for an exact price; with dates only, the same date twice is the 8-hour day and dates N apart are N days. Each boat's whole rate table is in pricingForDates under `kayakProducts[].rateTiers`, and the answer to quoteBasket names the rate it charged (`rate.summary` — e.g. "2 × Weekly Rate (5 Days or More)" for eight days; `rate.periods` is how many of `rate.label` were charged). Every boat also carries a refundable damage deposit (`depositCents`), charged at checkout.

How booking works: you choose with your guest and give them the link. They open it, review the cart and pay by card. The booking is confirmed the moment they pay. You never pay and nothing is held before payment. Cancellation: cottages up to 120 days before arrival, kayaks and parking up to 14 days before, from the guest's own trip page; fishing charters and moorage by phone (1-800-917-3837).

After the booking — is the trip ready? Your guest can make you a link from their trip page (https://experiencebamfield.com/trips, signed in, "For your assistant"). It looks like https://experiencebamfield.com/api/assistant/trip/KEY — this is the one address in this public API that takes a key (the partner API further down is separate, with keys of its own), and the key is the last part of the link. It returns one read-only summary of that trip (the MCP tool get_trip_summary returns the same): whether it is ready, what needs doing, by what date and who it is waiting on, what is booked with what each line came to, and the money — payments received, refunds completed and pending, what is retained, the damage deposit and what is owing.
- Read the link again before you answer a question about the trip. The summary is the trip as recorded at freshness.checkedAt; do not answer from a copy more than five minutes old. Read it when asked rather than on a timer: a link is read at most 30 times a minute, counted for the link wherever the reads come from (the MCP tool included), and the 31st is answered 429 with Retry-After.
- Not known is never yes, no or 0: a fact that cannot be verified is "unknown" and an amount that cannot be stated is null. "not_yet" from a business is not a refusal.
- A line is "paid: yes", and a trip is "ready", only when the order's payment record adds up. When it does not, money.state is "not_reconciled", no balance is stated, and your guest should not pay again on the strength of the summary: they call 1-800-917-3837.
- A camping permit that has not been applied for carries actBy, two weeks before it is needed: tell your guest that date first.
- The damage deposit is sent back by Experience Bamfield within 72 hours of the return or check-out; the bank can take 5 to 10 business days after that to show it (money.deposit.sentBackAt and money.events carry the dates). When part of a deposit has not been returned, the reason is not recorded: do not tell your guest it is refundable or that it was kept — they contact the desk.
- Money that needs someone stays under needsAttention after a trip is over, with urgency "now".
- It never includes anyone's name or contact details, the order number or card details, and it cannot pay, sign or change anything.
- The link is for one trip. It stops working 30 days after the trip's last day, and never sooner than 30 days after it was made; the guest can turn it off. A link that no longer works answers LINK_EXPIRED, LINK_TURNED_OFF or LINK_NOT_VALID.

Groups (weddings, retreats, film crews, reunions): https://experiencebamfield.com/proposal makes a priced proposal from one sentence, with live prices when exact dates are given.

Partners who want to hold and book directly (with a test environment): https://experiencebamfield.com/api/v1/docs — ask for a key at bamfieldadventures@gmail.com.