Next Stop Canada

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Next stop...Canada
Arriving in Canada, we were greeted with snow. Little houses with snow covered pine trees lined the streets of Vancouver, snow falling heavily upon them, like a picturesque scene from a movie. We meet friends in Vancouver and stayed in North Vancouver. Coming from the sub tropical climate of Queensland Australia where the temperate on average is between 20-28 degrees. Rugged up quite literally to the eyeballs, we could not believe how cold it was there.

For Christmas we joined our friends in Sechelt Sunshine Coast, British Columbia, bordered by the waters of Trail Bay and Sechelt Inlet. Sechelt is a small community of breathe taking beauty and spectacular scenery. We stayed on a house boat surrounded by snow capped mountains and an ice cold lake. No need for a fridge, to keep our beers cold we kept them on the veranda.

Hiring a rent a car, we set off to whistler, the drive up was better than expected, as the road use to be one all one lane along the cliff face, the road had been widen and was a much safer drive. Whistler is stunning resort town surrounded by mountains, frozen lakes and thick white snow. On the way back from whistler we nearly had a car crash, driving down the mountain a lady decided to stop in the middle of the road, it was just lucky that we stopped just in time and so did the other cars behind us.

Adam and I made our own way to the Canadian Rockies from Vancouver this is a ten hour drive, we made it as far as Revelstoke, British Columbia as the sun went down and the snow fall become heavy. We stopped at a hotel, venturing out into the snow, it is so heavy that it comes up above knee and we guessed that our car would be buried by sunlight.

The car was not buried and we managed to wipe the snow off and set out to Banff, were we visited Lake Louise and the house built from ice. We took a Gondola ride up to the top of Sulphur Mountain; I am terrified of heights, so the 2,200 meters High Mountain made me freak out. At the top minus 15 degrees winds hit us and took our breath away. We went to the other extreme at the Sulphur Mountain Thermal Hot Springs, where the water comes out of the ground at forty degrees. It was a surreal experience to be sitting in boiling hot water, on a mountain surrounded by snow in zero degree altitude. The shift in temperate obviously did not agree with me and I decided to make a scene and pass out in front of a huge crowd.

Bow falls is one memory that stays clear in my mind about the trip to the Rockies, the whole lake and the falls frozen,
except for some rushing water that flowed beneath the ice, whiteness surrounded us and the eerie silence of solitude.
The drive back from Banff to Vancouver was wild; sliding on ice down huge mountains is scary enough, what happens when you can’t see out the front window, because there is no water in your wind screen wipers. Cars and trucks flew past flicking rocks and mud onto our window, and there is nowhere to pull over. When we finally found somewhere to pull over, we searched for water to use for our wind screen wipers. It was only when Adam noticed someone else pouring something into his car and asked him for some water, that we were told that if we put water into the car it would freeze and cause all sorts of problems. He sold us some anti freeze and we were soon on our way. It could have been disastrous.

Our last days in Canada were spent staying in a quaint bed and breakfast that was built is 1912, in Kitsilano. We loved Canada and its spectacular natural beauty; however we were looking forward to the new adventures of the next country.

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Photos

The Totem Poles
Downtown Vancouver