Trip Statistics Some statistics of our little trip to Canada for no particular reason. * We had a total of 30 days including the flight. * Total distance with car: 5324 km (4474 km Prince Rupert - Vancouver including the trip to Seattle) and 850 km (from Victoria via Tofino to Port Hardy on Vancouver Island). * By boat: 543 km (503 km inside passage from Port Hardy to Prince Rupert, 40 km from Tsawassen terminal, Vancouver, to Swartzbay, Vancouver Island) * We took in total 3323 pictures (Ton 2726 and Cisca 597), boy we can bore you to death. * [View Full Entry]

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Various Vancouver The end is near. The last whole day in Vancouver began with a breakfast somewhere down in Robson street, I don't remember the name of the place. We had scrambled eggs, sausages, baked potatoes and toast, which is quite normal if you are Canadian but to our standards quite bizarre. Nonetheless, it provided the necessary energy to cope with the plans we had to rummage about Vancouver. And boy did we do Vancouver. Gastown, where it all began with some nice old buildings dating back to late 1800 and cobblestone streets. From Gastown we went exploring Vancouver's Chinatown and [View Full Entry]

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The end of our little trip is near. We are now back in Vancouver. Thursday, we picked Adrian and Brenda up from the ferry terminal at Tsawassen. We invited them over to join us and spend together with us the last couple of days in Vancouver. Brenda got us a real good deal on a 4 star hotel in downtown Vancouver, the Listel hotel. Really luxurious. Check it out, www.thelistelhotel.com. Apart from that, everything is in walking distance, Stanley Park, Chinatown, Gastown and the lively center. Before we went to the hotel we visited the campus of the University of Columbia, [View Full Entry]

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It was an interesting visit to the Nk'Mip Desert and Heritage Centre. Developed by the Osoyoos Indian Band provides a guided tour of showing their cultural heritage and how they used the vegetation of this desert like area. There is also a sort of reconstructed village and nice metal statues of indian statues. We left Osoyoos to drive to Buckley a little town near Seattle where my cousin Grace (Greetje) lives. The landscape changed from desert into a more "normal" scenery again with spruce trees. Traffic became also more heavy. We arrived at their residence early in the evening and the [View Full Entry]

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Today, september 19th, we did a wine tasting tour around Oliver and Osoyoos. The area here is practically a desert, it rains here less than 200mm per year. Apart from that the conditions apparently are really very good for viniculture. We went to vineyards with the significant names, "See Ya Later Ranch", "Tinhorn Creek Vineyards" and "Nk'Mip Cellars". There are dozens others but you simply cannot do them all. We had some terrific wine tastings, bought a few bottles and enjoyed the surroundings by driving a back road. The last vineyard is owned by the Osoyoos Indian Band, there is also [View Full Entry]

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Friday september 18th. We are now in the wine area in the Okanaga valley. Great. We are now on our way to my cousin Grace, she -and her husband Bert-, lives in the neighbourhood of Seattle. So we have to cross the border with the USA, I hope that we will not have too much hassle. Sunday we will be heading there. Yesterday we had a rest day in Revelstoke, it provided a relief to be there. We walked through the center of the town to sniff the typical atmosphere. Today we arrived at Oliver in wine country! This is a [View Full Entry]

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Today, thursday september 17th it rains, no, it pours. Last night is has been raining continuously. The weather forecast for today isn't so bad, it is supposed to get sunny again in the afternoon. However, as far as the weather concerns we can't complain. Actually we don't mind having a bit of rain because we are having a break after all the travelling and hiking in the Rockies. Today we'll have a relaxed day, doing a bit of reading and planning ahead for the remainder of our trip. We are now in Revelstoke. Yesterday we left the Kicking Horse Canyon B&B [View Full Entry]

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This day (tuesday 15th) we first had to do some errants as we were out of almost everything and you gotta eat. So, we went to the local supermarket "Sobeys" in Golden. Our muscles surprisingly didn't ache that much so we felt good enough to do some less streneous hikes. We drove back to Yoho National park to Emerald Lake and had a nice relaxed walk around it. The first half part we walked through rain forest and there were some spectecular mirror views on the lake. The lake gets it color from light reflecting off the fine glacial rock particles. [View Full Entry]

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We did a serious hike at Lake Louise in Banff national park. The lady at the information centre thought that we looked tough and proposed to us a nice but long hike. Actually it was a combination of two hikes. We began by walking to the tea house at Lake Agnes, this was a steep climb with an elevation gain of 385m. We had tea with scones and continued with a side trip to a rock (Big Beehive) with an additional elevation gain of 135m. Then we went down an esimated 400m and went up again 250m to the second tea [View Full Entry]

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The past few days we've been cut off from civilization. No internet. So here is an update what we've been doing since the arrival in the Kiska Inn B&B in Dead Man's Flats. Banff and around was on our todo list. The first thing we did was to take the gondola up sulphur mountain (2281m) which gives a nice view on Banff and on several other summits of mountains. The upper terminal looks like something from an old James Bond movie (quote Lonely Planet) and has the expected restaurant with awful coffee. I made a panorama photo using my tripod and [View Full Entry]

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