Canadian travel journal part 2

Savona to Vancouver

We drove a little on the Trans-Canada Highway before veering off onto the lovely Highway 99, otherwise known as the Sea to Sky Highway. It was a very long and winding road, with lots of steep bits to go up and down and several hairy bits where there was just a single lane bridge to cross and you had to hope that anyone coming the other way realised that you were coming through and gave you the right of way. It was no surprise that cyclists had given this particular road a miss, and I’d hate to think what it must be like driving it in the dark, or in the snow or any bad weather conditions. But hey, there were only a few near-landslidy bits.

We passed through a couple of towns en-route – Lillooet, a big first nations community, looked pretty rundown, and Pemberton was tiny. We ventured into the museum there but only to go to the toilet.

The prettiest thing we passed was Lake Duffy. I don’t know what mountain was in the background but it made for a very nice photograph!




At about lunchtime we arrived in Whistler. For some reason I was expecting it to be less busy than when we went a couple of years ago in winter but I was very wrong. The Whistler summer season still seemed to be at its peak – the place was heaving. We didn’t spend too long there – just enough time to eat some lunch and take in some of the action at the Red Bull Elevation BMX dirt jumping competition.



It was a great atmosphere and some of the tricks these guys were getting up to were amazing and they were jumping so high – and that was just the practice session. Unfortunately we had to leave before the main competition as it had been delayed due to high winds.

The rest of the drive was pretty uneventful – passing by Squamish which is in a development blitz due to the Vancouver Olympics in 2010, and Brittania Beach which is still as desolate-looking as ever. We knew we were getting close to Vancouver once we hit the traffic jam. It didn’t take us as long as we thought it was going to and pretty soon we were driving over the great Lion’s Gate Bridge into our favourite city and it really did feel like we were coming home.

Vancouver day 1

We’d decided to get out of our comfort zone and stay somewhere other than downtown for once. Our B&B was located in Kitsilano, a beachside suburb that is still pretty central. I was very pleased with our room – it were reet lovely:



As soon as we’d dumped our bags Graham was on the phone to his business contact and had arranged to meet him in the coffee shop down the road, so I wandered off on my own for a couple of hours. I picked up a newspaper and a coffee and headed straight to Kits beach to get burnt in the late afternoon sun.


That is not my photo – you may have guessed!)

It was such a nice atmosphere being a Friday – all the young pretty things were on the beach playing volleyball and having barbecues. Being back in the place that I loved gave me a real cosy feeling and I just sat with a grin on my face answering in my head all those people who have ever asked me the question “Why do you want to live in Vancouver?” – come on, the place is beautiful, who wouldn’t want to live here?

I met with Graham again and we took an Aquabus over to Downtown.



That evening we visited one of our old haunts – a supposedly British pub in the West End that used to be called the Fox and Firkin but has now been renamed Soho Bar (these Canadians have got a lot to learn when it comes to what a British pub is like, I mean come on – all patrons sitting down, receiving waitress service and watching sport late on a Friday night?). We drank lots of honey beer and ate very good, very cheap food whilst we peeked at the view of English Bay at night through the window blind.

Vancouver day 2

We still had the car for one day so we drove to North Vancouver and went to Grouse Mountain. The cable car ride up to the top was a bit hairy, squished in with about 50 other people and swaying rather alarmingly a times.



It was also rather expensive, but once up there we spent the entire day being entertained. We expected it to be a bit chilly up there but it was really hot, and we both got very burnt after a few hours. First of all we went on a nature trail with a guide and learnt lots of interesting stuff about the animals and trees in the habitat, nearly all of which I have since forgotten. Then we came across a First Nations Feast House just in time for a performance from the Squamish and Lilloet divisions of the First Nations Youth Ambassadors. We sat in this feast house whilst they told us about their history and the work they are doing to help integrate the First Nations community with the rest of Canadian society and to highlight First Nations culture and history. Then they sang some traditional songs with dancing, inviting us all to join in with the last song, so we all paced around in a circle and did some strange gestures that represented gathering food and such like, followed by lots of smiles and shaking of hands.

After that we went for a little ride on one of the ski lifts – which took us down one side of the mountain and back up again – before heading to the lumberjack show. It was a very entertaining and very awe-inspiring show. It started off with a bloke pretending to be a stupid drunk tourist arsing around on top of this:




Which of course he fell off towards the end but he was on a wire. The main show was a competition between two fellas dressed in hillbilly costumes and dissing each other’s wife, family and logging skills. There were five rounds in which they did speed sawing, two-person sawing (with a girl each from the audience), wood carving (one of them made a baby seat which they then gave to the youngest member of the audience – a 2-week old baby), log rolling (running on a log in water trying to make the other fall off) and tree-climbing (climbing the poles in the picture above). The winner climbed his pole and came back down again in 10 seconds – that’s no lie, I have a video of it to prove it! And he wasn’t on a wire which made it even more unbelievable. The guy we were supporting, Willy, didn’t do the climbing that day as he had fallen off it the day before and hurt himself.

After all this excitement we went to find the orphaned bear cubs, but unfortunately it was too late and they had gone back into their den to sleep for the rest of the day. We left before dusk so didn’t get the chance to see them at all. However, we did see lots of wolves in the wolf enclosure and they were cool.



We also watched a falconry display whilst we were up there – I can’t remember now what type of birds they were. There were certainly at least 2 different hawks and an owl and they were showing off their hunting skills. Unfortunately one of the birds was chased off by the local ravens and went missing for 15 minutes so he missed his starring part in the show. Them ravens are tough little critters, and they are protected too since they play such a huge part in First Nation culture.

We went back down the mountain and drove back to downtown, spending a long time trying to figure out just where we were supposed to drop the hire car off. We then went for a walk to find out how progress was going on the building of our apartment. From this picture you can see that they don’t seem to have done too much!



There has been progress since the last time we saw it and we were assured by the developer that everything is very much on schedule for its 2007 completion. Apparently once they have built the structure of a tower they can fill in the levels at a rate of 1 floor a day. At the moment they are still in the process of building the Costco supermarket and the parking levels that will be underneath the towers.