Jasper

Our Trans-Canadian adventure began on Friday night (4/5/12) when we boarded Via Rail 002, “The Canadian” from Vancouver. The train runs all the way to Toronto but we had sensibly decided to break the journey with a couple of stops so our first leg was only (!) 19 hours to Jasper in Alberta. We had dinner before getting on the train so we settled ourselves into our economy seats looking enviously at the people heading to their sleepers. Luckily the train wasn’t too full so we could each have a couple of seats to ourselves and lie down to sleep until we reached Kamloops at 6am when a whole tour group got on and took over the front carriage. The train lady had warned us that the whole tour group were going to have breakfast so if we wanted a place, we had to get there at 6.30am. Seeing as she had woken me up to move at 5am, that wasn’t too much of a problem so we wobbled through 5 carriages to the dining car and had a very nice breakfast with a random couple traveling from Vancouver to Toronto in a sleeper. We weren’t scheduled to arrive in Jasper until 4.30pm so we spent the day looking out the window at the terrain changing from wide river valleys and rolling hills to proper snow capped mountains as we approached the British Columbia/Alberta border. The train stops now and again in tiny towns to change engineers or refuel and it’s nice to get off and get some fresh air if only for 10 minutes.  It’s quite relaxing to not really have anything to do the whole day and no internet or tv to be a distraction - I have read a lot, sorted all my photos and written all these blog posts!

We arrived in Jasper a little bit late, and we were immediately pleased that we had decided to break our journey there as it is a jaw droppingly beautiful place.

The town is in the Jasper National Park, and sits in the valley of the Athabasca River surrounded by mountain ranges. They had a bumper snow year so there was still a lot of snow on all the mountain tops which made it even more beautiful. We stayed in a little guesthouse in Jasper town centre - the owners of the house have converted their basement into two guest suites with a living area and separate bedroom. It was perfect for our needs and had a small kitchen so we could make breakfast for ourselves which saves a few pennies. Chris was ready for a beer so we had dinner at Jasper Brewing Company and Chris couldn’t decide which beer to choose so he had the tasting flight!

We woke to a perfect blue sky sunny day (finally!) so we decided that it was perfect weather to go on the Jasper Tramway (cable car) up to the viewpoint on Whistlers Mountain. The views were spectacular and we kept our eyes peeled for a bear that had been spotted a few minutes before underneath the tramway line but he didn’t make an appearance for us :-( We had a coffee at the top before heading back down. In summer there is a hiking trail to the summit, but it was still a good couple of metres covered in snow so the trail was closed.

After lunch, we went for a cheeky walk. Which turned into a 15km hike as the weather was perfect and sunset was at 9pm so we had plenty of daylight left. I’m still not quite used to the long days after so long in Syndey! We walked up to Old Fort Point for some amazing views of the town and the ridiculously blue lakes, and then headed around Beauvert Lake and along the river before crossing over the bridge and back to town along a path just under the railway line.

We saw a whole bunch of wildlife including squirrels, chipmunks (ground squirrels), marmots, elk and mountain sheep. I think my constant chattering and singing to warn the bears that we were there worked as we didn’t see one - although it would have been amazing to see one, I am not quite sure I would have reacted appropriately i.e. not run away screaming like a crazy girl! It was quite tiring always being on the alert and Chris constantly sucking on Jolly Ranchers with their fake fruit aroma  potentially attracting them didn’t help my paranoia :-)

We were positively knackered after all that walking so we filled up on pizza (and poutine...) and chilled out in our room using the free wifi to make plans for our next train journeys.

We have always had fun days when we have hired bikes, so the next day we picked up some swanky mountain bikes (mine was brand new!) and stowed our luggage with the bike people so we could enjoy the whole day out on the bikes. We cycled up to Patricia and Pyramid Lakes - about 7km from town mostly uphill. All the lakes and rivers in Canada are so clear - Chris actually walked into the water by mistake at Patricia Lake as the rocks looked them same underwater!

The blue lakes are fed from the Columbia ice fields so are glacial water which reflects the light in such a way to look very very blue. We continued cycling to Pyramid Island with some more spectacular views of the mountains. We cycled about 20km over the course of the day again trying to keep making noise to let the bears know we were there - mountain bikers are particularly susceptible to bear encounters as you move so much faster and almost silently going downhill. Must have worked again as we still didn’t see a bear!

Our legs and bottoms were feeling it by the time we got back to the town so we had a late lunch and a quick shop for some train food supplies (mmm raspberry and white chocolate scone....) before dropping the bikes off, picking up our bags and heading to the station to reluctantly say goodbye to Jasper. Next stop Winnipeg!

British Columbia Roadtrip

The journey to Vancouver Island takes about an hour and a half and the views of the islands were lovely even with the grey overcast weather - I can imagine how pretty it would be on a blue sky day.

We arrived in Victoria in the late afternoon so stocked up with camping groceries in Save on Foods - foreign supermarkets are always interesting but we had fun scooping up bags of cereals, sweets, nuts and trail mix from the bulk buy bins - perfect for getting lots of bits and pieces like we needed for a few days camping. We pitched our tent in the Goldstream Provinical Park campground which is only 15km from Victoria but feels like the proper wilderness - I was quite scared of bears but luckily the rain dripping from the trees onto the tent disguised any rustling noises which would have freaked me out!

Goldstream Provinical Park is home to Mt Finlayson - one of the highest points on southern Vancouver Island and has great views down to Victoria. So after a saucepan of oatmeal (save on the washing up...), we set off to clamber up to the top. It was quite a scramble and definitely broke my new shoes in, but the views from the top were well worth it and we saw a few eagles circling on the thermals.

The walk had taken a bit longer than we thought and as it just started to rain as we got to the bottom, we jumped back in the car to Victoria city centre and headed straight for a late lunch at Red Fish Blue Fish - a take away in a shipping container on the harbourfront which serves the tastiest fish and chips, fish tacos and other fish related sandwiches etc. It lived up to it’s rave reviews :-) We ambled around Victoria city centre for the rest of the afternoon - it’s a lovely little town with a lot of old buildings from colonial times and the parliament house and the Fairmont Hotel are beautiful examples. As it was Sunday, not much was open so we just headed back to the campsite to sit by the fire and keep and eye out for bears :-)

We decided to make the next day a long driving day so that we could stay 2 nights on the west coast of the island. We stopped in a few little towns on the way - Cowichan Bay is a gorgeous little fishing village just north of Victoria but unfortunately all the shops etc don’t open on Mondays so we just had a coffee and butter tart (drool) at Zoe’s cafe before heading onwards.

We then stopped in Cheminaus to stretch our legs - after the demise of the logging industry in the area, the Cheminaus population decided to turn their little town into a tourist attraction and did so by painting murals depicting life on the island on the buildings across town.

We had a quick lunch in Nanaimo before driving across the island to Tofino on the rugged windswept west coast. The drive over the island is amazing and there was still a lot of snow on the tops of the mountains and patches on the ground in some shady parts. We decided not to stop for photo ops on the way there in the hope that the weather would be better on the way back! We found a nice campsite right above Mackenzie Beach so plonked our tent on a site overlooking the beach for a couple of nights. We popped into Tofino village for dinner at a waterfront pub where I continued to munch through British Columbia’s seafood and fish supply with some sockeye salmon yumyum.

Tofino is the place to go for whale and wildlife spotting, so we booked ourselves on a boat trip and spent the afternoon bobbing around in the inlet and on the ocean looking for wildlife. We headed up the coast through the inlet and paused by a couple of river mouths to look for bears - one person thought he saw one through his telephoto camera lens but by the time we had got in position, he had disappeared into the forest. We continued to scan the beaches and found a few sealions perched on a rock who promptly slid off into the water as we got closer. Further north, we came across a group of sea otters chilling out in the waves - they were less bothered by our boat and just carried on floating with their feet poking out of the water.

Our actual destination for the boat trip was to Hot Springs Cove. A 20 minute walk along a boardwalk leads to some natural pools filled with water from the hot springs. On a cold wintery day, a soak in the 40C water was just what was needed. It began to rain quite heavily while we were soaking so we had cold water dripping on our heads as we lay in the hot water :-) Once our fingers had turned to prunes, we got changed and had a quick snack under the watchful eye of a cute little blue bird (not a bluebird) who was clearly waiting for us to leave so he could eat our crumbs.

We returned to Tofino via the open ocean which had about a 3m swell so it was quite choppy. We were on the lookout for whales (mostly grey whales but sometimes humpbacks) but unfortunately didn’t see any but it is a bit early in the year at the moment. We did stop by a little island which had a large population of seals, sealions and eagles and watched them bask in the late afternoon sun for a while.

It was gone 8pm by the time we got back to the campsite so we had a quick dinner of past and scallops we had bought from the supermarket in Tofino (probably the poshest campsite dinner we’ve ever had) and warmed our feet by the fire.

That night was definitely the coldest night we’d had (car said 6C on our drive back from Tofino brrrrr) and my lightweight sleeping bag hadn’t done a very good job on keeping my feet warm so we went for a little walk along the beach to warm up and to let the tent dry as much as possible before packing it away. And that was the end of the stress-free part of the day as we ran over a pothole about 5 minutes after leaving the campsite and got a flat tyre :-( Luckily the car had a spare so Chris popped that on and we did a slow drive back across the island to the bigger towns to search for a replacement tyre. We did stop at a few points on the drive back as the weather had brightened a bit, and we saw a black bear on an embankment, but unfortunately it wasn’t a point where we could stop to take photos.

After trying a few garages and a coffee spilling incident, we gave up on our tyre hunting and checked into a resort hotel just north of Nanaimo. After 4 nights camping and a stressful tyre day, it was just what we needed. The hotel had an indoor pool and hot tub but we headed straight to the outdoor hot tub overlooking the bay. The water bubbled our cares away and we then treated ourselves to a posh meal in the hotel restaurant where I had some very very tasty crab fresh out of the bay.

We finally found a replacement tyre the following morning in Nanaimo in a very friendly garage - they even left a carnation for me as ‘the lady of the car’ :-) We had missed the early ferry so we had a bit of time to kill in Nanaimo before heading to the ferry terminal to catch the boat to Horseshoe Bay. The weather again was a bit grey and drizzly so the views weren’t as good as can be so we found some seats and relaxed for the hour and a half journey back to the mainland. Horseshoe Bay is just northwest of Vancouver and on the road to Whistler so we bimbled up the Sea to Sky Highway stopping at Shannon Falls on the way.

We arrived in Whistler in the late afternoon so headed straight to our accommodation for the night. After checking the weather report and seeing minimum temperatures of -8C, we didn’t fancy camping (and our tent was dry....) so we booked into a yurt at a big RV park just north of Whistler village. The yurt was lovely and cosy and it was nice to be ‘camping’ but warm :-) We went for dinner in the village and it was very odd to be in a ski resort in the shoulder season - a couple of lifts and a few runs were still open so there were a few people still in their ski/snowboard gear but it was very quiet. Being there in the off season meant there were some really good deals to be had - most of the shops had really good discounts on their winter wear (if only we had room...) and some of the top restaurants had prix fixe menus for $19-$39 when one course would cost you over $20 in the peak seasons. We ended up in a posh italian restaurant on their $10 pasta night and the servings were enormous and very very tasty. We rolled back to the yurt and had a lovely warm sleep not disturbed by bears :-)

The following day, we only had the morning to spend in Whistler as we had to drop the hire car back in Vancouver by 5pm. So we had a wander around and checked out the olympic rings and new parts of the village added since we came in 2006. It is such a lovely place and it was a shame that we didn’t have more time there due to the whole tyre debacle. We’ll definitely be back though :-)

The weather had perked up a bit on the journey back so we stopped at a few veiwpoints to take some snaps.

We said goodbye to our hire car (and it’s new tyre) and jumped on the skytrain to Pacific Central Station to embark on our next leg of our adventures!

Vancouver

Our first day in Vancouver is a bit of a hazy blur to be honest. We landed at 6am after very little sleep on the flight, and unfortunately we couldn’t check into our room at the hotel until 3pm. The shops and museums etc didn’t open till 10am so we left our bags at reception and found ourselves a table and some caffeine at the nearest coffee shop for a very slow breakfast. We managed to idle away the day bimbling around the waterfront and the shops in the city and for a few coffee stops to keep us going.

It eventually reached 3pm and we headed back to the hotel for a well needed nanna nap :-) We headed out for dinner a bit feeling a bit more alive and walked up to the oldest part of Vancouver, Gastown. There’s lots of old houses and warehouse buildings with small alleys now occupied by funky shops and restaurants. We decided on a bar/restaurant called the Chill Winston which had a large range of food from small plates to share tapas style to big dishes of pork belly or duck confit. We decided on a few medium sized things to share and had our first poutine (chips covered in gravy sprinkled with cheese curds... drool) of what I am sure will be many!

After a long refreshing sleep, we had a quick breakfast in the hotel (well, the Irish pub next to the hotel - smell of beer at breakfast time is not pleasant...) and I made use of the waffle iron to have a freshly cooked waffle smothered in maple syrup yum. To burn off some of the excess calories we’d been eating, we decided to hire bikes and go for a cycle around Stanley Park - one of the biggest city parks in the world.

The park is located on the tip of the north western part of the city and there is a dedicated cycle path all the way around the outside on the seawall. It is a great way to see the whole park and it is pretty much completely flat. We stopped for a very tasty lunch at The Teahouse which is in an old cottage in the park grounds. We decided to extend our cycle trip around the waterfront around the south of the city and all the way past the Science Center to Granville Island. Granville Island is not really an island, but the old warehouses have been converted into theatres, funky shops and most famously, an indoor market where you can buy lots of different local products such as fruit and veg, fish and meat, bakery items and some arts and crafts. We treated ourselves to a huge punnet of blueberries and a some cakes to fuel the rest of our cycle journey.

We had cycled over 25km in 6 hours which meant our carb filled dinner was much needed - thanks to the good old Lonely Planet, we had a lovely dinner at Glowbal in Yaletown.

After picking up our hire car the following morning, we had a few hours to kill before the ferry to Vancouver Island so we stopped at Chris’ new favourite shop - Mountain Equipment Company in Southern Vancouver to get some camping essentials and for me to replace my very loved but worn out walking shoes. It was hard to drag Chris away from the plethora of outdoor goodies, but we had a ferry to catch!

Hawaii

Fiji or Hawaii? Hmmm.... Such a tough decision to make... In the end the flight prices determined that we would break our journey to Canada Hawaii! So we said goodbye to Australia and said a bleary eyed Aloha to Oahu after our 9.5 hour flight. Luckily we could check-in straight away so we had a quick refreshing shower before heading out for an All-American breakfast with the much required endless refills of coffee :-)

Waikiki beach is in the middle of being restored as the sand erosion is pretty bad - hence the really attractive dredger in the middle of the ocean and a lot of the beach area was fenced off, but we found a wee area for our towel, plonked ourselves down, smothered ourselves in sunscreen and spent a few hours lazing on the beach interspersed with dips in the unbelievably blue ocean.

We headed back to the hotel for a cheeky nap by the pool and then had our first (of many) cocktails at the pool bar as it had just ticked over into Happy Hour!

There are so many restaurants and bars in Waikiki, that our sleep deprived addled brains took a while to decide where to eat so we headed back down to the beach to watch the sunset and then headed to fill our faces at a bbq restaurant with all you can eat salad bar nomnomnom.

We booked onto a tour of Pearl Harbor the next day, so we had a brekkie of fresh pineapple and croissants in our room before joining our coach tour - we had booked the tour without really knowing what we were going to be doing and it ended up being much more of a coach tour (i.e. driving past places without getting off the bus and exploring) than we thought but we saw some places we wouldn't have otherwise such as the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific on a hill overlooking Honolulu and the old palace buildings where the Hawaiin kings and queens lived.

The bus driver was really informative about the history etc so although we felt like proper tourists, it was really worthwhile. We had signed up for the tour mostly to visit the Pearl Harbor visitor centre and the USS Arizona memorial. I realised when we were in Australia how little I knew about the Pacific War, and again I didn't really know much about Pearl Harbor (haven't even seen the film!). It was a really interesting place to visit and there are a couple of exhibitions about the history behind the attack and the actual details. Included in the visit is a short boat ride to the USS Arizona Memorial which sits like a bridge over the site where the sunken ship lies on the shallow harbour floor.

The over enthusiastic hotel travel desk girl who signed us up for the Pearl Harbor tour, had also convinced us to do a boat trip - although we didn’t take too much convincing when there was the chance to see dolphins, turtles and possibly whales. We didn’t ask quite enough questions so the hour and a half bus ride to get to the boat was an unexpected start to the day. The bus driver did his tour guide spiel to keep us entertained but there was a lot of cross over from the previous day’s tour. The boat trip left from the west coast of the island where they get the driest weather so we had a beautiful sunny afternoon on the boat. It was a very swanky catamaran and cruised along at quite a speed to head over to where the dolphins hang out.

The scenery along the west coast was wild, rugged extinct volcano slopes down to the coast - some of the valleys have been used for filming films and tv shows such as Jurassic Park and Lost. After about an hour and a half from the dock, we arrived at a bay to see a pod of spinner dolphins jumping about in the water - it was hard to get a good photo but it’s so peaceful watching them dance around in the waves.

We then headed over to a reef about 200m off shore and had an hour snorkelling - it was quite deep water so I kept diving down to get a closer look at the reef and saw all the usual tropical fishies including trigger fish whose Hawaiian name is humuhumunukunukuāpua. Try saying that after a few Mai Tais :-) We saw a few sea turtles too and I dived down to follow one until he disappeared under the reef. We tucked into a tasty lunch and some blue cocktails on the journey back to the dock.

That evening we treated ourselves to some posh cocktails in the beach bar at the Moana Surfrider - one of the posher hotels on Waikiki Beach. Most of the hotels have hawaiian music and dancing in the evenings to entertain the cocktail drinkers - there are a lot of resorts offering buffet dinner luaus with big music and dancing shows but they are pretty expensive, so the little shows in the hotels are a nice taster and it’s pretty nice to watch the sunset over the beach, Mai Tai in hand listening to the cheerful Hawaiian music.

We had dinner at Tiki’s Grill and Bar - I had very tasty Macadamia crusted swordfish and Chris had Japanese style short rib nomnomnom.

We managed to not get signed up to another tour so we took ourselves on the public bus to Kailua on the North Eastern cost of the island. The road goes up an over a mountain pass and there were some great views down to Kailua from the top. After a bit of a hike from the bus stop, we reached Kailua beach and it was worth every minute of the journey - perfect white sand and the bluest ocean framed by palm trees.

After jostling to find a space for our towels on Waikiki, there were hardly any people on Kailua beach. The beach is a popular spot for kite- and wind-surfing and watching the people learning to kite-surf is very entertaining :-) We were also entertained by a couple having their wedding pictures taken - the things the photographer was getting them to do were funny and reminded us of our photographer at our wedding - “little bit kiss now!” :-) We wiled away a few hours lazing on the beach with a break for lunch from the deli (macadamia flavoured coffee mmmm) where some cheeky birds kept us entertained.

Chris was on a hunt for some new sunglasses so we thought we’d have a look in the duty free mall in Waikiki. It was a scary experience. The whole place was lit like the beauty section in a department store and the perfume in the air made my eyes water. The whole place was aimed at the rich Japanese and Chinese tourists on a mission to save money on the lastest Dior or Chloe handbag and also designed to be really hard to leave - we circled the whole place before we could find an exit. And they didn’t have the right sunglasses. We were in need of a cocktail after that experience so we headed to the Halekulani resort for some more posh cocktails, free kettle chips and Hawaiian musicians and dancers. Chris thinks he saw William Baldwin also enjoying the drinks and show - our little brush with fame (if it was actually him...) :-)

I had wanted to eat at Roy’s since reading the recommendation in the Lonely Planet, but we hadn’t been able to get a table the previous couple of nights so we sensibly made a reservation for our final night. It was a lovely last dinner in Hawaii and it was worth the wait for the chocolate souffle alone... I’m drooling thinking about it now :-)

Our flight to Canada left in the evening, so we spent the whole of the next day chilling on the beach after filling our faces with a proper American breakfast at Eggs n Things - a very popular spot judging by the queue to order.

To burn off some of the pancakes and syrup, I hired a surfboard for an hour. After a long paddle out, the waves were perfect for a beginner and I actually managed to stand up properly and be in control of the board until the wave died down. As there were so many surfers and quite far off the beach, there is no photographic evidence of my success! Chris had a little paddle but didn’t have enough time to catch a good wave before we had to return the board. It was a great end to a great trip to Hawaii.