Drifting around Vancouver
Arrived Vancouver a little bewildered and more than a little cold. The flight from Vegas took us through Dallas, which if we were earning air-miles would have been good, we're not, so it was inconvenient, anyway we arrived and faced the bitter-cold late winter air.

We expected to spend a day or so in Vancouver, so had nothing planned. For those of you who know me you'll realise spontaneous activity planning comes to me as easily as wearing dresses does to Susie. Off to the tourist office to gather some ideas. Apparently the weather in Canada has been dreadful this season, not enough snow (sounds like it landed in the UK?), therefore most of the resorts had closed a month early. Why don't you rent a car and drive to the Rockies for some hiking, or pop across to Vancouver island and go whale watching? Sounded like good ideas, so after a couple of days in the city that what we did.

Vancouver as a city is probably OK to live in, but it just isn't quite the place we expected. It has some interesting architecture and has an enormous park, but its a bit sleazy. Not sleazy in the Vegas kind of way, more trailer-park-trash sleazy. "Drifters" as they call homeless over here wait outside cafes requesting money for coffee, we must have been stopped by at least 50 in the first morning. Now all cities have this sort of thing, the difference with Vancouver is there is no segregation - sleazy shops exist next to boutiques - obvious drug dealing happens alongside up-market theatres. Given the fact that Canadians are reputedly the most polite people on earth perhaps its a taboo subject, I'll find out if the secret service politely wake me to inform me I'm going to be humanely put-to-sleep tonight.

On the subject of politeness we went to an ice hockey game, where the locals seemed to be more interested in shouting "let 'em go", meaning let them fight, than the hockey. After one particularly vicious brawl (on the rink - rather than the terraces UK style) I overheard "that's hockey for you". Seems people are the same the world over.

Collected our hire car - a monster capable of burning its own hole in the ozone layer (guess they're not too fussed about global warming), then headed off to Vancouver island. To our surprise, it is enormous. 4 hours driving and a 1.5 hour ferry ride and we arrived in Tofino, a tiny village at the end of the Pacific rim national park, only part of the way up the island. Tofino exists because of the whales; people eagerly shoot them from tiny ships. Only thing that has changed in the last 100 years is the weapon of choice has shifted from harpoons to digital cameras. Nice touch by one of our fellow passengers to entice the whales over by sharing her partially digested breakfast with them - these Canadians are sometimes too polite for their own good. Saw lots of Grey whales, sea eagles, otters and even a black bear, no moose yet.

After Tofino we headed back to the mainland, venturing east into the Rockies. The map we had made this journey look like a pop to the shops. It wasn't, I'll explain tomorrow, then we're off to New York.
- posted by Adrian @ 1:30:00 AM