You are currently browsing the category archive for the ‘Canada’ category.
Vancouver’s a nice enough city. Taking off in a seaplane and viewing it from the air was definitely a highlight. Apart from a few no-go zones (streets where drug addicts tend to hang out) the city centre is very safe, clean and welcoming. Stanley Park is one of the more green, relaxing locales. So, too, is Grouse Mountain, from where more dizzying views of Vancouver can be had.
Whistler is a ski resort oozing with style. It’s essentially a community of cool twenty and thirty somethings who spend their days on the slopes (or off season – biking, rock climbing and sky diving) and their nights in the firelit chalet bars. There’s also a big Gondola which will take you closer to the peaks. This comes recommended. As does hiking around once you’re at the top.
The town of Clearwater is in the backwoods of British Columbia. If the phrase ‘middle of no where’ applies to anywhere, it applies to here. You’d have to drive for hours along flowing freeways to reach it. The town itself is more of an outpost than a conurbation. Like many settlements in Canada, there isn’t really much get excited about. But who said the quiet life was a bad thing?
If I had to pick out my favourite day of our trip to Canada, it would probably be this one. It all started modestly enough, as we emerged from our motel in the little trucker town of Hinton, half way between Vancouver and Edmonton. A few miles outside of town, however, the feeling of reticence quickly became one of invigoration, as we jumped in a Helicopter bound for the Rockies!
You’re regularly given instructions in Canada on how to survive a Bear encounter, but as yet I haven’t seen one. I have seen a lot of gondola’s though. In fact, it’s become the prevailing theme of the trip so far - ride a worryingly steep gondola to a lookout peak and have something to eat in an oddball mountain restaurant while starting out at the daunting views beneath.
