Category: Canada 2008

Today was Kokanee Glacier day! Well, I didn’t actually see the glacier but we were pretty close. We headed off just down the road to the beginning of the 16km gravel track that goes up.. and up and up and up… and up some more into the mountains where there are different lakes and walks to explore (at this point we’re at 5249 ft). At this point I would’ve appreciated being in my trusty old Defender rather than a very low, very bumpy “minivan” (people carrier) but it wasn’t too bad in the end and we got up without too much worry.

At this point Aid and Meld went off for the long walk, up to near the glacier, whilst Rosie, B and I opted for the shorter walk around Gibson Lake, a 3km walk which was very pretty, lots of little waterways running down to the lake, walking partially through the trees and partially through a jungley undergrowth but always overlooking the amazing and huge mountains, with us not being *too* far away from the snowy peaks.

One of the nice things about the Town and Country (the car this is) is that all the back seats completly fold away under the floor very quickly and easily, so we collapsed the middle seats and had a rather nice little picnic in the middle of the car away from all the mosquitos and other bugs, which was nice! Followed by an hour or so of lounging around in the sun and listening to music (which I’ve missed!) before the other two came back from their hike.

We trundled slowly back down the gravely “road” and back the hotel for some chilling out on the grass, and making ourselves pretty for going out tonight… back to the same place that we loved so much a couple of nights ago! I’m hungry!

I’m writing this on day 8, so my memory is already hazy.. the days go quickly but seem like a million years ago by the next. I can’t believe I’ve already been here a week; in a way, it seems like 5 minutes, but equally in another way it seems like months.

Today we went on a trip to nearby Kaslo, a funny little town with old style buildings and a proper old steam boat to see.

We stopped off and had lunch by the lake, unfortunately the sun wasn’t on our side so it was pretty chilly but still a good view!

Rosie and I went on a walk around the lake whilst the others toured the boat. We met back up for a wander around the shops, and to observe the town.

On the way back we visited Ainsworth Hot Springs; where Aid, B, and myself avoided getting in and instead opted for observing/laughing at Rosie and Meld. The sign indicated 37 degrees, a touch warm for me anyway!

We stopped by a creek too on the way back; I have a fascination with water, and waterfalls, and there are tonnes around here because of the mountains, so it keeps me happy just watching the water flow.

Next up, a trip to Walmart, my first visit to the giant supermarket which was… big… like a Tesco Extra only bigger. We were there looking at the electrical stuff (Aid and I) and clothes (Rosie and B) for about 30-60 minutes, we didn’t even get on to the food!

Back to Safeway for a lasagne, garlic bread, and more Smirnoff Ice in cans. At this point I will thank the so many people that have pointed out I like to talk about food a lot; I didn’t get to this size by eating nothing 😉 One of my aims of the holiday was to experience the food too, so I’m afraid I will witter on about that. (okay, I’m just a fatty.)

It was HOT in the room this morning, which meant I was awake and grumbly at 7am… not to mention people kept phoning me which was rather irratating.

After a well needed shower we headed down the laundromat for a well needed washing session! After an hour or so everything is clean and dry and we head down to the supermarket to pick up some lunch. I indulged in a proper toasted sandwich (Turkey and Havarti, mmmm) and a big box of proper chewy choclate cookies 😀 I’m going to be twice the size when I come back, but I don’t care… everything here tastes SO GOOD.

Moving on, we headed back out to catch the 102 year old Streetcar tram that trundles through a bit of the town, which was pretty cool. It even heads straight through the car park of Walmart, with cars flying around infront of it with no care of the fact there was a tram headed right for them. (Also amusingly oblivious: A cyclist trying to catch up with it, and a man with headphones walking down the track) After we’d been in a loop (must’ve been about 15 minutes) we stopped to talk to the nice driver guy… An old guy, the type who loves people to be interested in what they do. He explained what all the different levers and pedals did, and that it had 4x 50 horsepower electric engines.

We paid a quick visit by the visitor center to get some local information (and bear bells!) and had a walk around the town, visiting some shops on the way. Today I’m wearing my Spiderpig t-shirt and no less than 3 people either commented or had a conversation with me about how cool it was… Everyone is so amazingly friendly, it’s so fantastic. I purchased a rather cool keyring sized leatherman which doesn’t comprimise on functionality, mainly because it’s very useful and small and the cost; the leatherman stuff has the same money value in the UK or US/Canada… So $30 would’ve been £30 in the UK, so it was a bargin really.

On the way back we stopped to get some tea, after deciding to eat in for once; two HUGE pizzas (like, the size of a car tyre for $10 each), my favourite San Pellegrino Limonata lemonade (90p a can from Benugo at home; £2.50 for 6 here) and some Ben & Jerry’s Chunky Monkey ice cream later, my mouth is watering already… I’m writing pre-dinner today!

Some pretty impressive freight trains come through here, one a day. You can hear the horns from our motel; the track passes by about 1km away. Today when Aidan and I heard it we thought, why not, and jumped in the car to go down to the track (which you stand right next to, no barriers or any of that wussy crap!) and take some pictures. It was pretty damn impressive, huge trains (and very long, although this one was only probably 20-30 wagons long) very loud horns and very bright lights.

Tired again, as usual, and time for food, cans of Smirnoff Ice, and sleep.

The difference between Vancouver and Osoyoos is just amazing… We’ve been through so many different landscapes, ending up in the deserty mountains.

As we take off today, it doesn’t take long before we change again. Now we have hills instead of mountains and everything is really grassy.

It’s very hot this morning, sun blazing and 28 or something degrees. Up and down through the hills it gets warmer and cooler but the sun is very hot! Thank god for aircon.

We stopped off next to a nice river for lunch. I had purchased a rather tasty cheese straw (60 cents) and some cookies ($3 with a 2 cent rebate because I used a plastic box from the bakery instead of the bag! “I’ve never seen that before, that’s clever!” remarked the cashier) earlier in the day so that was tasty.

We stopped off a couple more times to Nelson, particuarly in Christina were some fantastic falls which we explored.

At the end of our 260km journey we reach the hotel which is luckily a bit bigger than the night before but still not in the same league as Vancouver, but at least it has a wall in between the double beds!

We’ve come out to a nice little bar and grill in Nelson town for tea, a victorian building, very friendly staff as ever (tonight’s Canadian of the Day: “scuse my reach” which is common) and huge helpings.. A starter Nachos was more than enough for all 5 of us! It was delicious too, and amazingly the cheapest yet.

We’ve settled down to watch the news and fall asleep after another long day travelling.

Heheh, Osoyoos.

We’re on the road today after some delicious Holiday Inn Express sausage patties and cheesy omlette om nom nom.

Armed with the TomTom with Canadian maps we set off at just past 10am (we didn’t meet Aidan’s optimistic 9am start time!) with a 500km drive ahead of us, through some amazing views of little towns, mountains and trees. It’s still quite cloudy over here but you still get fantastic countryside views, with the tip of the mountains going into the clouds… And not to worry, the forecast for Osoyuss is 33 degrees and sunny!

We went up to about 3000 feet on a small detour to look at the view and the pictures are the only things to describe how amazing it is (Todays pictures here). Chipmunks running right up to your hand and feeding off it, and birds that were doing the same. We saw some other exciting wildlife too. Nothing could beat the fantastic views of the mountains though. You could see right into the U.S.

For the next 250kms it turned more and more deserty, more dust, and less and less people! We’ve ended up at a small hotel which is completly the opposite of our luxurious Holiday Inn stay; one bedroom with two double beds, and a kitchen/diner.

We had lunch at a place conveniently placed over the road, and now I’m sitting out the front of our place overlooking… A petrol station.. in order to use the free wireless 😉

Goodnight!

Today we embarked up the huge Grouse Mountain… An absolutely amazing view after going up a rather fun cable car, drifting up over the huge trees.

We spent most of the day there, watching fun things like a lumberjack show and grizzly bears 😀 they were rather cute, splashing around in the water.

The pictures are better here, available here

After that we went on a fun in-car trip around Downtown Vancouver, which was an odd experience, it was like nothing I’d ever seen before. We went to Chinatown too which was eye opening… The number of homeless people everywhere, it was like a different world.

The Vancouver fireworks, which I’m told used to be a quiet affair a few years ago, were on tonight… And even 4 hours before they were due to start the beach was packed! People everywhere, with their food and chairs ready for the wait. We decided not to bother in the end, with so many people everywhere. Got a glimpse of them on TV though, they looked pretty amazing

Also on the TV was Pemberton Festival, which Last.fm are sponsering, and it looked pretty damn dusty! We were pretty close and had the oppurtunity of free tickets but it was very hot and they said anyone with allergies had a hell of a time, so I’m glad we didn’t bother!

For tea we headed out to Boston pizza, which was awesome, tasty platter for start, proper pizza and brownie for dessert. And glad to be back at the hotel at the end of another tiring day!

10pm to 8pm with no interruptions until Rosie woke me up. Rude! But I probably would’ve slept hours more without.

Ian and Sally, Aidan’s family were coming over from the island to go out for the day and we settled on going to Kitsilano Beach for a nice wander round the outside to Granville Island to the Public Market which had loads of amazing fresh food and every genre you could think of. Rosie and I ended up at the mexican and I had a fantastic soft taco, which we enjoyed outside looking over to the high rises of downtown Vancouver.

We then came over to Steveston had a wander and am now sitting outside “Totally Juiced” enjoying the free wifi to finally write my ramblings!

We had a wander around the shops, and had a nice early tea in Steveston. Back at the hotel nice and early as we’re all very tired! Bit of catching up with the web, Aid sorting out the pictures and watching High School Musical! Oh dear.

I’m trying to remember what I did on my 26 hour day but failing miserably!

Having never been on a plane (that I actually remember) it was a pretty exciting experience (which I’m sure sounds totally lame but hey). Very odd suddenly rising up off of the land… We had Aidan’s GPS set up (with an ingenious use of the belt clip on the window blind) so I was amazed as we blasted off to 250mph and then we left it running the whole journey, so we actually have a Google Earth export of the entire path we took (especially for my Dad!) as well as Geocoded photos as we went over the amazing views of Iceland and Greenland. It’s especially random when you think you’re going to go over Canada and see loads of things and towns everywhere.. But in actual fact you’re passing over a huge, empty expanse.

The actual plane ride was pretty fun. I had my iPod with a couple of films but in the end just listened to music and being very surprised by the constant supply of food and drink being provided in my direction!

We touched down and picked up the car, a Chrysler Town and Country which is absolutely HUGE! 7 very comfortable seats, aircon controls for the front (driver and passenger) and separate in the back, it’s like a tank. No need to even mention it’s a V8 auto.

It took me about 10 minutes of being in Canada to already be fascinated by the talking and the absolutely amazing views. Every direction is beautiful trees, mountains and on the plane you see these huge beautiful lakes.

We went straight to pick up Rosie and B from the Ferry, and then we went to Tim Hortons for lunch, my first experience interacting with a Canadian without assistance 😉 Which I didn’t do too badly, manage to order myself some lunch! The woman wasn’t too impressed with my complete confusion though (It was 1pm but of course I’d been up for 16 hours already)! Still trying to get used to the odd “we’ll give you a price but feel free to try and calculate the extra 12% or whatever on top of that price *confusion*!

After this we went to the beach and had a wander round, purchased an amazing Ben and Jerrys ice cream.. Like the “half baked” we have at home (Chocolate Fudge Brownie and Cookie Dough) only in ice cream bar form, way cool (people are teaching me Canadian woo!)

Time for the hotel, we pull up to this Holiday Inn Express slightly set off the road, looks brand new (turns out it’s only been open 3 months). It’s totally amazing how nice the Canadians are.. The woman explained where everything was, offered us freshly baked cookies, asked us how our flight was etc. at which point we went to the room… A fantastic 2 bedroom suite with a 28″ TV in each room, two huge beds, two bathrooms, kitchen with dishwasher, aircon in each room, but unfortunately no view of anything other than the car park!

After lounging around for a while we went just across the road to The Old Spaghetti Factory where again had amazing service.. the people are just so nice (at this point I’m still laughing at all the Canadianisms “For Sure!” the girl waiter said after every question). $12 buys you a “complete meal” as they put it.. A salad with your choice of dressing (delicious), garlic bread (delicious), Lasagne for me (delicious!) and then ice cream for desert (also delicious!) not bad for £7! At this point we were mostly falling asleep at the table.. Only 9pm local time but we’d been awake for 26 hours (and I’d only had 2 hours sleep the night before!) so back to the hotel for sleep, in a very comfy, absolutely huge king size bed in a lovely and beautifully air conditioned room, bliss.

Well, nothing much interesting to write about so far. This whole experience is very new and odd.. the cool xray machines, huge planes landing right next to you and stuff like that. Sitting waiting for boarding now, it still hasn’t really occured to me I’m going to Canada, and I still have totally no idea what to expect.

When we got to the duty free section a guy outside Dixons was demonstrating this rather fancy new printer doohicky, the Polaroid Pogo. It’s a battery powered, very light very small device that you can bluetooth pictures and it prints them out instantly. I’ve seen things like the Canon Selphy before but this thing really is tiny, and it’s about £100, which is a pretty good price point considering. Very decent quality prints too, considering it prints them in about 30 seconds.

Anyway, more boring blog posts to come 🙂