Contiki Day 4 - Kamloops to Jasper

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So this ended up best day of tour so far. Ok so its early days. Today we traveled out of British Columbia and into Alberta.

The morning started off with an included breakfast at Denny's (Denny's became a lifesaver on my various travels around USA and Canada. Open 24 hrs - love it). The breakfast included bacon, pancakes, scrambled egg and sausage. I remember I only ate half of it but unsure if that is because I wasn't hungry or if because it was bad. We headed into Jasper with a few stops along the way. One of them was wells gray park where there is a life size statue of a moose. Let me tell you those things are huge.! Think Clydesdale horse big. If i ran into it is would breath into my face while looking down on me. There's also a taxidermist with stuffed bears and coyotes.

Another stop was at another gorgeous glacier lake for photos. Along the way some people saw bears. When we saw bears we were supposed to yell bear but generally by the time people waited to make sure it was a bear then it was already gone. James often used to wake us by screaming "bear" or "moose" and everyone would jump up from even the deepest sleeps.

We stopped at Mount Robson (highest peak in north America) and has lunch there. Buffalo burger was recommended and was really good.

Todays Jasper optional was white water rafting down the Fraser river. I think almost everyone choose to do it. Our guides picked us up in Mini bus from where we had lunch and we drove to a place where we were fitted with wetsuits, booties, life jackets and helmets. We then drover for about another hour to the water. We ran through the safety spill, boats were organised and in jumped everyone. We had 2 guides in our boat. One was a lady in training and the other an experience guide. The lady took up down grade 2 rapids and the experienced guide took us through grade 3 rapids. After only a few rapids we pulled to shore and got out because of a waterfall. As a team we carry the raft about 200 m and then by a pulley like system the guides lower the raft below the waterfall and we all jump in and continue on our merry little ways. When you jump back in its straight into rapids and some strong rowing to get away from the falls. A lot of the trip you get taken down the river backwards (in calm water) because the view of Mount Robinson is behind us. It was good fun. We were probably on the water about an hour and a half. It was much much easier then Tully River in Cairns which I was quite surprised about. There was optional swimming at the end but the water is glacier water and pretty dam cold. We then got driven back to shower and change and then dropped back at our hotel.

The hotel did not have a lift only stairs. However the rafters were lucky ones. The non rafters had the job of carrying all the rafters bags up the hotel stairs... poor buggers. Dinner was walk about (nothing planned).

Cat and I showered and washed our hair and then had a walk around Jasper. We had Dinner and A & W and then stopped at an alco store to get some cheap drinks. The boy at the store checked our ID and was like "wow you guys are from Australia you cam all this way you guys are crazy". We were amused as was he.

Tonight was our Canada Day party (red and white party). Canada Day is actually 1 July but we celebrated a night early at the 2nd July is a big day. We bought ourselves some Canada tattoos in store and I just work a white singlet.

Our hangout was the bar in the hotel, which is actually the town bar (and nightclub on weekends). Drinks were the cheapest so far and we had a big night involving many cheap drinks, fuse ball, buck hunter and pool.

In Jasper is a bear statue of a goofy looking bear - Jasper the bear. James decided to put out a competition for the funniest and raunchiest pictures with Jasper. After plenty of drinks people started making there was out there to have a go. One group nearly got arrested and were verbally warned for being a little.. how should we put it... naked! Some locals came out and started talking to us. Jarrod asked to ride some girls bike and she was getting pretty nervous as he was riding and I think she had some second thoughts letting him. There was more drinking, more hanging with locals and with others on tour. Cat and I went to bed about 5:30 am.

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Photos

Seton lake
Seton Lake