kgiven

In the last few days of my trip Danielle and I travelled to Vancouver via ferry and bus. We spent the afternoon of the first day wandering around and checking out sunny Vancouver. Danielle has been to Vancouver hundreds of time and has never seen it not raining apart from the two days we spent there so we were very lucky. We went to GM place to pick up our Canucks tickets for this evening. We then headed off to meet up with another friend of mine for a drink before heading back to our hotel to get into our Canuck's supporters clothing. We then walked back to GM place and watched the Canucks end their losing streak, winning 4-3 in the last few seconds. It was a very exciting game. The game was the 242nd ... read more

On Wednesday Danielle and I left in the morning for a town called Tofino, on a peninsula sticking out into the Pacific Ocean. Tofino is on Vancouver Island but still takes 5 hours to get there. The weather wasn't brilliant but we stopped and did a hike on the way to view some large trees. There is lots of snow still about on parts of the drive but hardly any in Tofino. Tofino is a hippie/surfie town, even in winter. It was a lot smaller/less commercialised than we had thought. We stayed in a cottage overlooking the ocean. On the first day we just wandered around the town and found something to eat. On the second day we went on (another) hike in the rain, this time to Long beach. We then drove up the coast ... read more

Hi everyone Well Im safely back in Victoria after a brief (48hours) visit to Seattle. We took a very leaving late afternoon on Monday and arrived middle of the evening. We found our hotel and checked in and then went out for a bite to eat. The city was cold and mostly foggy, like much of the Pacific Northwest (that I've seen anyway). We checked out the trade centre (where the WTO riots of 1999 were centered). We went to sleep around midnight and then got up a few hours later to get ready to go out for Obama partying. We arrived early (to the Paramount theatre where there was live tv coverage of DC's events) and the line was only 100m long or so, 30 minutes later the line streched all the way around a ... read more

Yesterday Danielle and I went in search of a new down-jacket in downtown Victoria (failed) and had a look around the city. It was semi good weather (not raining and around 7 degrees) so it was a pretty good day, minus the parking ticket. This morning I woke up and Danielle and I headed to Nanaimo, Parksville (around 2 1/2 hours away on the east coast of the island) and then some caves along a 12km gravel road. We had a picnic lunch (inside the car with the heat roaring) before hiring some helmets with lights and then hiked to the caves. It was quite different from Victoria as the snow was still covering the ground, more like what I became used to in Aspen. The cave entrance was really small. Danielle and I both tested ... read more

Hi I have arrived safely in Victoria. Danielle and I spent a night in Vancouver before leaving the next day for Whistler. The drive was relatively miserable as it poured with rain the entire way but you could catch glimpses of the sea which I can nearly imagine as pretty on a good day. On arrival to the hotel we found our room had been upgraded which presented no problems to us. We then went and had lunch and was served by a New Zealander (the first of my trip). Whistler & the village is basically run by Australians, we only met one other Canadian while we were there. After searching for hours for an ATM which would accept Mastercard (Visa is an Olympic sponsor so the village basically only has Visa outlets), we finished our ... read more

Hi everyone I have arrived safely in Vancouver and Danielle picked me up from the airport last night. The flights were fine from Aspen= Denver and then onto Vancouver. Vancouver airport was a mess, I have no idea how they plan to host an Olympics one year from now. It's been raining since we arrived and there is snow on the side of the roads. We stayed at a nice hotel in downtown Vancouver last night. This morning we leave for Whistler. Apparently the roads are really bad at the moment so it may be a long drive. None of my cellphones work here but I have internet access most places we plan to go I think. We leave Whistler on Friday and then catch the ferry over onto Vancouver Island ... read more

Last night one of the girls in my room and I went out for Mexican which was really nice, and the giant american portion sizes filled me up nicely. Aspen has so many restauraunts and places to eat. Yesterday I wrote that it had snowed the entire day. Well today we woke up to beautiful clear skies, no (falling) snow and a temperature of around -25 celsius. I decided today to go to Snowmass which is about 12 miles away from Aspen. It took awhile to get there as there was an accident on the road. There is small village and a couple of shopping malls at Snowmass. I headed straight for the slopes after putting about 5 layers on. Snowmass is a harder mountain than Buttermilk so I only went about half way up the ... read more

Hi everyone Yesterday I went into town in the morning to purchase some snow boots and also took my camera for a walk. Then in the afternoon I went back to Buttermilk and skied a few (slightly) harder trails. Still no falls which is quite a miracle. Then yesterday evening I went to the world premiere of 'the ripple effect' which is a film about the Aspen community. It was really good but quite sad as one of the guys in it died during the filming period, so they dedicated the film to him. It was pretty cool to hang out with locals and not feel like such an outsider. I also managed to win a pair of ski socks, so it was really quite a productive evening. The evening before that, a group from the ... read more

This afternoon I managed to get the bus from Aspen to Buttermilk, and had a few runs down that mountain. It seemed to be really well set up, it wasn't too busy at all. There was probably a good twenty minutes where I didn't see anyone on the trails. It is really odd skiing around trees but they were well fenced off so it wasn't too much of a problem. It wasn't too cold today but there is ice everywhere. I really need crampons to walk around the town. Have managed to avoid falling over as of yet. ... read more