The Canadian Rockies
Trip Start
May 27, 2007
1
2
27
Trip End
Dec 23, 2007
All over,
British Columbia,
Canada
Sunday, June 17, 2007
Our first stop was Vancouver briefly so we could all get some Canadian money... all except me as my card refused to work in the ATMs. Only slightly worried as I had american travellers cheques that could be changed the following day when the banks opened. A message from my Mama revealed that the bank thought my card had been stolen so refused the transaction!
Our first night was in a campground in the middle of nowhere and gave the Aussie boys a shock as they had not realised we would be camping!!! They survived but think they will be checking future tours more carefully to avoid camping again!
After a few days I realised that I actually remember quite a lot of my GCSE German as I could follow the conversations of the Swiss and Germans and actually reply to them in German!!! This meant that I was the only person who actually understood everyone on the tour as the other Europeans had a lot of trouble understanding the Aussie boys... :)
The route we took went through Jasper, Banff, Vancouver and various small towns in between. We had such bad weather for the first few days that we were pretty much restricted to a few short walks to some waterfalls and a lot of the optional activities were cancelled due to the bad weather. I discoved that my hiking boots are starting to disintegrate on the inside and have now binned them. My trainers should survive most walks as I should have drier weather from now on (fingers crossed) and, if not, I'm sure I can survive in flip flops - I managed to do a bit of rock climbing in them!!! It certainly makes my pack lighter and less bulky without my boots...
As the weather was so bad and people were beginning to get very cold after a few days we felt a trip to Miette hot springs was in order. All the boys decided to rent swim suits froim the 1920's and they looked absolutely stunning!
We had a few nights out: our first in Jasper where we found ourselves in a club full of rude boys with their baseball caps and trousers around their knees! Was the only club in town so had no choice but to stay if we wanted to be out... Kerstin (Swiss girl) managed to get in the way of a fight and had a glass/bottle hit her face and cut it open by her eye... a short trip to hospital and some butterfly tape later (docs wanted to put in a stitch but would cost $400) we were headed back to our campsite. Kerstin was ok... just a sore head and a black eye the next day along with a small cut.
Jeremy (Aussie) was very drunk that night and decided it would be fun to keep trying to trip me up - that was until he managed to cut my foot (as usual I was wearing flip flops) and got a slap across the back of the head!
Our next night out in Banff was much more successful... no fights, no flying glass and everyone had a good night. Kerstin managed to survive by getting very very drunk on Jegermeister!
On the way to Banff we stopped at The Athabasca Glacier and most of the group decided to do a hike up the glacier. The tour guide was a real character and explained the movements of the glacier using a mars bar!
We made another stop to walk to Peyto Lake but the main path was snowed over and the 4 of us who weer wearing flip flops soon discovered that they are really not appropriate footwear for walking through 2' deep snow! We started to make a pile of snowballs to launch at the returning group when a german couple told us that we could walk up the road and not through the snow to a viewpoint... we abandoned our snowballs and walk up to the viewpoint which provided a stunning view of the lake.
We took a day trip to Calgary to visit the Olympic centre and see the city. Personally I was not taken by Calgary at all and was happy to only have a few hours there.
A few of us decided that we would rent canoes on Emerald lake the following day as it was during a rare period of sunshine... all was good for about 30 mins while we paddled leisurely to the other side of the lake. Very quickly we found ourselves in very heavy rain with a long paddle back to the other side... we looked like drowned rats by the time we got back to
where we had rented the canoes!!!
Our campsite in Golden was really cool... garden trampoline, volleyball court, games room, free canoes and much more all to ourselves. We got most of the group to play a game of volleyball and a suprising amount of skill was shown (may have just been luck!). This was our base for whitewater rafting on the kicking horse river which was absolutely brilliant. The lower canyon with all the major rapids was closed as the water level was too high, but this meant that the rapids in the middle canyon were level 4/5. It was only about 80-90 mins long but exhilarating none the less! Returning to the camp site we found a group of RAF boys on a cycling holiday. Most of my group had gone far another hike but my shins were not having it so I stayed and chatted to the boys and managed to get dinner out of them which was much better than the dinners I had been eating to date!
Our last stop in Canada was Vancouver. Did the tourist thing and saw various gardens and markets and took the seabus across to North Vancouver. A few of us decided to go out for a few drinks and have a bit of a dance... I returned to the camp site at about 3pm and phoned home (I had always planned on phoning home upon return to the campsite... it was not just a drunk decision!). I didn't have any numbers though as I did not have a sim card in my phone yet so called peoples mobile numbers that I knew to get landline numbers for them and others. I also didn't have a pen or paper so had to breathe on the glass of the phone booth and write in the condensation! On more than 1 occasion I had to rewrite the number and got it wrong before i had the chance to dial!!! I eventually ran out of money on my phone card and gave up on trying to call people...
When we left Vancouver for Seattle, we went via Surrey (the wrong direction) to drop of Sjieuwka (pronouced Shooka) and spent about an hour trying to find the house she was staying at... no-one paid much attention to our suggestion to kick her off the bus at a petrol station for her family to come and pick her up (very sensible if you ask me as they will know the area whereas we had to eventually ask a post women where to go as the street names and house numbers were in no particular order!). We also had to drop off the Swiss girls at the ferry for vancouver Island. These diversions meant we got caught in rush hour traffic and we eventually arrived back in Seattle at about 6pm when we had planned on being back for between 2 and 3!
My impression of the rockies is that there is a lot of waterfall, lakes and it rains a lot!!!
I have a link to Janet's (German girl) photos for people's perusal: http://tenaj.magix.net. don't be too confused that the site is in German... you want to chose Canada/America 2007 on the left hand side (both albums). Still trying to get my photo's uploaded... I hate apple macs!
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=28783&l=f4450&id=562300227
