Vancouver

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Well we’ve made it. Its 5.20am on a Sunday morning, there is no public transport running, haven’t slept for 24hrs and taxi’s are as scarce as hens teeth. When we finally get a taxi we arrive into our hostel via the seedy morning streets of Downtown Vancouver and I could be mistaken that I am back in Amsterdam. We are staying on the outskirts of Gastown. One of the oldest areas of Downtown Vancouver and being on the edge of Gastown means we are on the edge of the seedy side as well. Two blocks to our right we are told not to go down that street at all day or night.

Anyway, the hostel is pretty good and after a power sleep we are up and ready for food and to attack the sights of yet another city. Downtown Vancouver is pretty easy to get around it is based on a standard grid pattern and we are just a 5 minute walk to the main Quay’s and streets of Vancouver. A quick walk around the harbour and we find the Information centre and get ourselves info’d up for the next week and find out where a cinema is so we can zone out for a little while. We ended up watching Matt Damon’s Informant, very entertaining.

Today we are off to the longest suspension bridge in British Colombia or something like that. I lost most of the details at Capilano Suspension bridge. It is about 136m long and sways like anything when people are walking on it. It is not fun in anyway. We caught the free shuttle up there and I paid the CAD26 entry to walk across something that I already know is going to make my need to change my underwear sometime soon.

The bridge is every bit as bad as I imagined. It swayed shook and there were lots of people on it making it buck a little too. My knees were shacking and couldn’t get across fast enough. Tried to take a photo of Jay left in my wake behind be but that required me to go back onto the bridge and no photo is worth that. Besides, I got to cross it again to get to the other side.

On the wrong side of the bridge there is a bit of a nature walk to look at the old growth forests and a tree-top walk - oh goodie....more bridges. So once that was done it was time for the 150m dash from one side of a bridge to another and don’t think about looking down, it’s about a 400m drop or something. Safely on the other side we chill out for a bit and then bus up to Grouse Mountain.

Grouse Mountain is where the city folk ski after school. Just 30 minutes from Downtown it has enough runs for an afternoon ski or cheap weekend skiing. During spring - autumn they have nature walks, lumberjack shows and there are 2 grizzly bears that were orphaned that live up here full time. During winter they have a shelter that they sleep in and it is also our only chance to see a grizzly on this trip. I can fully recommend Grouse Mountain for anyone heading to Vancouver. It was a really good day out and better value for money than the suspension bridge.

Tonight we head to the Ice Hockey. All seats have a great view of all going on down in the Rink. There are only 4 guys plus a goalie per team on the ice at any one time but each side has a team of about 15 or so on the bench. The game we are watching is Calgary Flames vs. Vancouver Canucks it is a bit of a rivalry match and quite spirited. With 3 terms of about 20 minutes each plus extra time the end of the game finishes as a draw. Here is the good bit, in ice hockey there is no such thing as a draw so the game goes to time on. At the end of time on we still had a draw so penalty shoot outs were next on the card. This too ended with the scores still tied and now we were down to sudden death and yay the Canucks, they came thru with the winning goal. It was such an awesome game to watch.

Tuesday we decide to hire bikes and ride around Stanley Park. Stanley Park is bigger than Central Park New York and not as structured in that there are still thick forests growing throughout. We cycle around the perimeter then cut back to one of the lakes encountering some mean looking raccoons along the way. Stopping for a photo shoot we continued to the lakes edge and took a rest and took in the view. After a quick break we then headed uphill to find beaver lake (unfortunately we only saw the dam not the beaver). The afternoon was spent just exploring the downtown area more.

Woohoo. I am off to see some Orcas (killer whales if you want to call them that) today and it’s an early start. My tour leaves from Granville island and I get there early (I need to allow for lost time) and to have a look around Granville. It’s not hard as you can walk the whole island in under 5 minutes if you take your time.

Okay the boat cruise. There are 20 of us on the boat and as we head south towards Victoria Island we are given a briefing on what we are likely to encounter today and how we can make it easier for everybody when we do see stuff when we shout out directions. On our 2 ½ hour journey we see the shy harbour dolphin that normally is a solitary mammal having a bit of a convention as we came across a pod of about 50 feeding and we are told that this is very rare. We see a few sea lines pop their heads out of the water and lots of birds. Everyone on the boat is searching the water looking for a big black dorsal fin or something black and white coming up for air but there is nothing no matter how much we are willing there to be something.

As the boat starts to slow down and we are told that to keep our eyes open I see some orcas breaching of to the left and we head that way and wait. As we wait the first of the pod comes through they are playful and breaching and tail slapping the water. They identify Orcas by the white patch on their skin behind the dorsal, and our guide is excited as it seems all 3 pods of the southern waters have come together as one and we are so lucky. In all we had about 40 - 50 whales go past us and has made the day so worthwhile. The sheer size but gentleness of them is amazing and although we tried to keep the regulated 100m away it seemed like they were checking us out as well as groups or 4 or 5 would come up fairly close and go under the boat as well.

After our designated 1 hour of viewing we saw a few Seals sunning themselves on rocks and suddenly it was time to head home. I had booked on a 3-5 hour tour and finally made it back to the hostel 7 hours later it was a long day but we have dinner with friends so it’s a quick change and off to catch up with some people we met in Italy.

We spend Thursday doing a bit of shopping and just mooching around on one of the beaches for the afternoon. Friday we headed down to Granville Island so Jay could have a look and then walked around the central Downtown area for the last time before heading to Mexico.

Vancouver is a great city to wander around as a tourist, it is easy to negotiate and plenty to do. Unfortunately we could have done with another couple of days here so we could head out to Whistler, never mind we’ll do it next visit.

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