WWOOF

Trip Start Apr 10, 2005

Trip End Dec 20, 2005

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Flag of Canada Nelson, British Columbia, Canada
Tuesday, July 12, 2005

We spent another fantastic week in Vancouver hiking and exploring the many parks close to the city. We finally spotted a rare sighting of 2 Greater Sandhill Cranes while hiking in Burns Bog (thanks Don! you da' bird man!) in Delta, BC. We also managed to hike the Grouse Grind twice, and the second time around, we discovered when we returned to the car, that we had left the keys to the steering wheel lock at Kev's apartment, a 3hr bus ride there and back from the mountain. Dumb. Oh yeah, we also forgot to mention our other car woes, Sam ripped out the stuffing of the driver and passenger seats during a thunderstorm and our car window was smashed in downtown Vancouver, Karin's wallet being the casualty. The thief had used Karin's credit cards to get a taxi to McDonald's and then to the liquor store to round out his wild night out on Big Macs and Beer.

Well, all signs were telling us to get out of Vancouver, so off we went (with delicious baked goods from Leah *yum*) for our first volunteer experience with "Willing Workers On Organic Farms (WWOOF)" to Nelson, BC. We were pleasantly surprised to find that Nelson is home to a lot of young backpacking transients

01 Vancouver

. Everyone was hitch hiking and the air of the town was very earthy, hippie and open, and yes very "weedy" too ;). It was gorgeous and hot to boot, which is why we haven't written in so long, we've just been too damn happy and busy to find an internet cafe.

Our WWOOF hosts were a young family that just finished building their 2 level straw bale home. We spent about 9 days helping with landscaping and got to meet such wonderful people. It's one thing we've been so pleased about the WWOOFing experience, is being able to get settled down for a few days and really get to know the local people, explore the local area that we would have otherwise driven past trying to get somewhere else. We met a lot of Quebec'ers and French people at this particular place, and it was unusual that the language around the place was predominantly French. It was great, we got to practice our listening skills, rocked out to some cool Quebec tunes and met some awesome Quebec'ers (that's you Natacha!). Another highlight was being able to play with our hosts' kids, 2 year old Yael and 6 month old Seth, adorable little boys. It sure did make us teary for you baby Tori!

We also toured the local Waldorf school that was also specifically designed and built with straw bales and again, we were so impressed with the style and soundness of the building. It just so happened that Nelson and the surrounding areas nearby was a hot spot for straw bale building projects. Lucky us! After a tearful goodbye to our hosts, we left to go to our next WWOOF hosts up in the Slocan Valley. There we would learn about farming and gardening, yippee!