Day 16-19 - Vancouver

Sorry that this has taken so long to post - I've been a busy boy.

Tuesday was a very quiet day as the weather had 'turned'. I spent it mostly in the hostel, although I got out a bit around the city centre. I was supposed to go on a free hostel tour to UBC but it got cancelled - I ended up going to the UBC Museum of Anthropology - it's free on Tuesdays and I tacked on the back of a tour where I learned a lot about First Nations totem poles and the ideas that go into constructing them. The museum itself is awesome - they've got everything. Rogers have suddenly decided to stop accepting international (i.e. non-Canadian) credit cards so I now have to go to 7-11's and buy topup cards the manual way. Not fun, especially when you're trying to meet someone on a large campus and don't have any contact with them.

Wednesday was to be my last free day in Vancouver, so I went off with my camera on the Skytrain network, taking pictures of interesting bits of the network (Broadway-Nanaimo, Joyce-Patterson and 22nd St-New Westminster are the best bits). Went to New Westminster and checked out the quays there - would be better on a better day as I could have walked around more. Ended up coming straight back, cooking dinner, going to the net cafe and then going to see the Spain fireworks - they were awesome but I still thought China's was better as they kept up the momentum the whole way through and not just at the end.

Thursday was set aside for Whistler - however both Daniel and I proved totally unequal to the task of waking up at 7:00 - we managed closer to 10:00. Having missed the 11:00 Greyhound to Whistler, we wandered around the Cambie Bridge and eastern False Creek areas and took nifty pictures of Science World before enjoying a Jugo Juice (kind of like Java Juice) and then finally catching the 12:30. It takes about 2 hours to get to Whistler. The Whistler Village is all hype and no substance - it's basically a heap of expensive tourist oriented pubs and shops, but there is a free shuttle from the back to a walk trail called Lost Lake. It was nice getting into forest again and seeing lots of wildlife - I counted 5 things (including a couple of chipmunks, which were really cute) but couldn't identify most of them due to a lack of acquaintance with the wildlife up here. We were going to take the ski lift to Whistler Mountain (which was snow-free) but it cost $23, which seemed exorbitant to our tiny budgets ($31 return bus ticket, $23 per night accommodation, $7 for food etc) so we didn't do it. The view going back to Vancouver along Sea & Sky Highway was amazing - even better than Whistler in my opinion. It would probably be better to visit in March than in July/August though.

Friday was our Victoria day. We tried to wake up at 5:30am - again without success. We got out at 8am and Daniel wanted me to see the Queen Elizabeth Park. However, by the time we got there it was pelting with rain and we were sort of running between things and photographing gardens and then running to the next one. From the point we left there to the time we arrived in Victoria 137km away, it took us 7 hours.

9:20am - Boarded 15 (after 15 min wait) to end of Cambie St
10:08am - Boarded 100 (after 20 min wait in rain) to Airport Station
10:28am - Boarded 620 (after 10 min wait) to Tsawwassen ferry. It missed the on-the-hour ferry by just a few minutes.
12:00pm - Boarded ferry to Swartz Bay.
2:15pm - Poor visibility slowed us down so the normally 1.5 hour ferry took 2.25 hours.
2:30pm - Boarded 70 to Victoria.
3:55pm - Arrived in Victoria after seeing just about every street on the Saanich Peninsula.

I'd gotten into the sort of mood where I was just pissed off with everything and had no patience or motivation - Victoria was interesting but not that interesting, and very touristy. A lot of the "old charm" struck me as being for the tourists' benefit, and everywhere you looked or tried to go, hordes of people fresh off Pacific Coach Lines or Gray Line buses were blocking your way. Daniel and I retreated to the safety of Beacon Hill Park, some 500m south of downtown, which was indeed much nicer - forests, lakes, ducks and a rare (native) black squirrel which I actually managed to photograph (Daniel had been teasing me for days about my low hit rate for photographing wildlife).

After checking that out and walking along the beach on the south end of the park (which looked a bit like the far northern Perth suburbs if not for the offshore mountains in Washington state) we were exhausted and needed food and drink, and we ended up finding the Siam Thai restaurant in Fort Street near the harbour, which turned out to be surprisingly good.

We left at 7:30pm and I ended up talking to a family from Montreal who ended up giving me a lift back to Burrard Street from the ferry - which saved me time, money and hassle (Daniel was with friends by this point as he won't be seeing them for a few weeks).

On Saturday, it was Erik's City and Canyon Tour - a special one held to mark the grand finale of the HSBC Celebration of Light fireworks. This tour was thoroughly awesome - for just $9.99, we travelled on every mode of public transport, walked for over 9km in total in both city and forest environments, saw city landmarks and secrets, rainforests, waterways and even a couple of coffee shops, and had a great, very mixed group with a lively and interesting tour guide who clearly has a passion not only for Vancouver but for sharing his love and passion with anyone he can. Over 6,000 people have taken this tour since he started it 10 years ago after retiring. At the end we saw the grand finale - I'm not sure yet who won, but all three countries put on brilliant shows. After that, we went back to Erik's apartment and had icecream, talked and eventually said our goodbyes.

We were meant to go to Lake Louise on Sunday morning, but due to mishaps on both Daniel's part and mine (namely, leaving important items behind when leaving establishments) we were forced to delay by one day. More later...

(A better update will be provided when I have more time and am not so tired)