A beautiful snow covered city
Trip Start
Aug 26, 2005
1
75
126
Trip End
May 26, 2008
Montreal, Canada
Monday, January 15, 2007
The border was super easy. Where you going? How long will you be there? What will you do there? Will you go back to the USA? And that was it. BANG.. thats the sound it makes when you get a stamp in your passport. The Old guy with the long Grey hair wasn't so lucky, holding up the bus for an hour as he explained why he was carrying enough instruments to keep a 7 piece band busy. Just a jam session with some friends he said. The authorities thought not, and fired questions at him. He didn't say the right stuff to help himself but eventually he was let through.
Another 5 hours and I was in Montreal. And damn was it cold. My hostel was only a few blocks from the bus station, so i decided to walk... bad idea. I saw a digital clock on a building which told me the temp was -10C brrrrrrrr
A few small flakes of snow were falling and seemed to get bigger as i made my way down the cold icy streets.
I checked in and crashed for a few hours and when i woke, it was a winter wonderland outside. A few feet of fresh dry powder had fallen in just a few hours and I'm sitting here now with a view of the courtyard where the 2 guys from the hostel are trying hard to scrape the snow off the steps.. its getting heavier by the second and I'm going to open the door right now and make my first snowball.
woohoo
later.
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Montreal with a bit of snow is a beautiful city. A group of us from the hostel donned our warmest clothes and took a walk to 'Mount Real' Montreal or the royal Mountain. Its a huge hill that provides amazing views of the town. We walked through the knee deep snow. freezing our toes off and hiking up some 600 stairs to the top. We admired the view and ran towards the ice skating rink.
more soon...
The hostel 'Le sous bois' turned out to be quiet the party house. Thanks to a tight little group of 2 Swedish, a few Americans, a lone Canadian, The French, and the English, and of course, me, the Smurf Australian. We developed a reputation for ourselves and people from far and wide were joining the late night/all night pajama parties in the hostel.
I planned on staying in Montreal for a few days, you know, like 2 or 3. Ive been planning to leave every day for the last 4, but this place is just unreal. So now its been 7 days and I'm finally heading out.
Comments
Snowy Snowy Montreal
Hello! It's Megan from Kansas. We met in the hostel in Montreal. I got your very large United States addressed email a few days ago and came here to check out your entries. It was awesome spending a bit of time with you playing in the snow and what not. Your stories about Bolivia really stuck with me and when I got home I researched the Parque Ambue (that is what it's called, yes?) It sounds wonderful and I'm considering making it the destination of my 'sabbatical' from university. Just need to muster the courage I suppose. It's either there or farming in Greece. All the same, it's great be able to read about your travels and I hope you continue to keep in touch!
-Megan (eskimono@gmail.com)
Re: Snowy Snowy Montreal
Hey Megan, hows it going?
Canada was fun wasnt it! Top place.
The guy that runs the Animal Refuge is called Juan Carlos. The park that I worked at was in a town called Villa Tunari and the park was called Inti Wara Yasi.
They have another park in Santa Cruz, about 2 hours or more from Villa Tunari, which is called Ambue or something like that.
They were in the process of moving all the animals from Inti Wara to Ambue, so maybe in a few years, Inti wara Yasi wont be there, who knows?
They need all the help they can get, whether its cleaning monkey poo, cuttin fruit and vegetables, to tickling techones or walking a big cat. They would love your help and you would love it there.
Let me know how it goes.
Murray