Hawaii was pretty warm and as we waited at the airport to fly to Canada, one of the last things we did was to eat some ice cream to cool us down. This was in an airport with not too many walls and it was in the evening! 30°C was normal during the days, dropping at night.
You can imagine our shock when we touched down in Vancouver, Canada, amid snow and cold! It was very cold and damp but we were picked up by an old friend from uni, Ivan. We had planned to stay with him for a couple of days and we met Kelsey, his fiancée. First on our agenda was clothes shopping as our Tibetan thermals weren't cutting it! Waterproof boots and ski jackets later, we could feel our feet again.
Something we didn't realise, but Vancouver has amazing food. Because of the influx of Asians, there is a lot of delicious Asian food! And Ivan and Kelsey made sure we sampled the best places! We enjoyed amazing sushi and even had maple pancakes on Shrove Tuesday! Delicious!
Vancouver is a city that spends most of its time in a rain cloud and looking a bit grey, but we managed to see it on a clear day and there is a beautiful mountain backdrop!
But it does rain! And when we went to Stanley park, we got soaked! But Vancouver is known as the warmest and wettest part of Canada, so we decided to head east to drier climates! We hopped on a train and enjoyed an amazing 20 hour journey winding through the Rockies amongst blizzards and thick snow! It all looked lovely from the inside of the train. Until we had to get out!
Jasper was -10°C when we arrived and by evening had dropped to -17°C. Did we mention we were used to hot sun and beaches?! We were staying in this little log cabin buried in several feet of snow and it kept snowing solidly for over 48 hours! So, we thought we would do as the locals do, and go cross country skiing! Very good fun but fairly tiring! We weren't very good and definitely had a few wobbles!
So after our day skiing, where we saw a wild wolf, we thought we would go for a little walk as it had nearly stopped snowing! But as we were walking along the road, we bumped into a heard of about 40 wild elk! And after we showed them who was boss by winning the staring contest, they let us continue our wander!
One of the highlights of the Rockies has to be taking UNESCO's top inland road trip in the world, through the icefields parkway down to Banff! There are mountains everywhere! As in literally everywhere! And where there aren't mountains, there are glaciers or frozen waterfalls, lakes and rivers!
We love Banff though. Set in the bow valley, and enjoying spectacular scenery, there are so many amazing things to do. We hiked through a canyon and found at the end of it a frozen waterfall with ice climbers scaling the icy heights, we went snowshoeing at lake Louise and built a snowman on a frozen lake, we went husky dog sledding through Banff and Yoho national parks and went snowmobiling into the high alipine, with even enough time to enjoy a BBQ in the snow! Oh, we didn't even mention relaxing in the hot springs with a mountain view or summiting sulphur mountain for spectacular views over Banff and the whole valley!
But let's get back to the snowmobiling. We were sharing one machine which is amazing because the whole objective for the person driving is to try and throw the passenger off! But it all started out badly for Gill as pretty early on, she ran into the person in front and jammed the snowmobile into the back of theirs! All good. But when we had one snowmobile each and were racing around in the deep snow, Gill managed to roll it! So after digging it out whilst standing in waist deep snow, we were underway again both on the same machine. We then had a very near miss with a tree as Gill sped down a hill and only just made the turn in time. Up high on the mountain, we stopped and had a delicious BBQ with smores whilst relaxing in the snow and sunshine! The next bit was scarier though. Gill again was driving and we were zooming along the mountain edge with a good 150 metre near vertical drop on one side and the path was only just over the width of the machine. So zooming along and Gill succeeds in the challenge. But not only did she manage to throw me off, but also herself as we hit a bump a little too quickly and we were both cleanly flung from the snowmobile towards the edge. As we were on snow it was a soft landing and both our immediate thoughts were have we totally wrecked the snowmobile (and our remaining bank balance!) by letting it plunge over the cliff! But it was OK, it has just rolled to a stop as thankfully we were on the straight and Gills quick reflexes hit the "cut the engine" button as she was falling! We quickly caught up with the others in our group and tried to pretend nothing had happened but we were caught out as we were covered in snow!! Very funny and the only injury was a hole in my trousers! Naturally, my driving was faultless...
Just before we headed away from the Rockies, we went to Calgary and went to the Olympic park from 1988. We saw the cool runnings bobsleigh run and sat in the sled they used in the filming of the Disney film! We also climbed to the top of the Calgary tower and watched the sun set over the Rockies in the distance. Stunning.
We had so many amazing experiences here in the Rockies and western Canada that actually we could write a lot more but I'm sure you would all get bored! We would definitely love to come back but we still have a lot more of Canada to see. We're still going east!
You can imagine our shock when we touched down in Vancouver, Canada, amid snow and cold! It was very cold and damp but we were picked up by an old friend from uni, Ivan. We had planned to stay with him for a couple of days and we met Kelsey, his fiancée. First on our agenda was clothes shopping as our Tibetan thermals weren't cutting it! Waterproof boots and ski jackets later, we could feel our feet again.
Something we didn't realise, but Vancouver has amazing food. Because of the influx of Asians, there is a lot of delicious Asian food! And Ivan and Kelsey made sure we sampled the best places! We enjoyed amazing sushi and even had maple pancakes on Shrove Tuesday! Delicious!
Vancouver is a city that spends most of its time in a rain cloud and looking a bit grey, but we managed to see it on a clear day and there is a beautiful mountain backdrop!
But it does rain! And when we went to Stanley park, we got soaked! But Vancouver is known as the warmest and wettest part of Canada, so we decided to head east to drier climates! We hopped on a train and enjoyed an amazing 20 hour journey winding through the Rockies amongst blizzards and thick snow! It all looked lovely from the inside of the train. Until we had to get out!
Jasper was -10°C when we arrived and by evening had dropped to -17°C. Did we mention we were used to hot sun and beaches?! We were staying in this little log cabin buried in several feet of snow and it kept snowing solidly for over 48 hours! So, we thought we would do as the locals do, and go cross country skiing! Very good fun but fairly tiring! We weren't very good and definitely had a few wobbles!
So after our day skiing, where we saw a wild wolf, we thought we would go for a little walk as it had nearly stopped snowing! But as we were walking along the road, we bumped into a heard of about 40 wild elk! And after we showed them who was boss by winning the staring contest, they let us continue our wander!
One of the highlights of the Rockies has to be taking UNESCO's top inland road trip in the world, through the icefields parkway down to Banff! There are mountains everywhere! As in literally everywhere! And where there aren't mountains, there are glaciers or frozen waterfalls, lakes and rivers!
We love Banff though. Set in the bow valley, and enjoying spectacular scenery, there are so many amazing things to do. We hiked through a canyon and found at the end of it a frozen waterfall with ice climbers scaling the icy heights, we went snowshoeing at lake Louise and built a snowman on a frozen lake, we went husky dog sledding through Banff and Yoho national parks and went snowmobiling into the high alipine, with even enough time to enjoy a BBQ in the snow! Oh, we didn't even mention relaxing in the hot springs with a mountain view or summiting sulphur mountain for spectacular views over Banff and the whole valley!
But let's get back to the snowmobiling. We were sharing one machine which is amazing because the whole objective for the person driving is to try and throw the passenger off! But it all started out badly for Gill as pretty early on, she ran into the person in front and jammed the snowmobile into the back of theirs! All good. But when we had one snowmobile each and were racing around in the deep snow, Gill managed to roll it! So after digging it out whilst standing in waist deep snow, we were underway again both on the same machine. We then had a very near miss with a tree as Gill sped down a hill and only just made the turn in time. Up high on the mountain, we stopped and had a delicious BBQ with smores whilst relaxing in the snow and sunshine! The next bit was scarier though. Gill again was driving and we were zooming along the mountain edge with a good 150 metre near vertical drop on one side and the path was only just over the width of the machine. So zooming along and Gill succeeds in the challenge. But not only did she manage to throw me off, but also herself as we hit a bump a little too quickly and we were both cleanly flung from the snowmobile towards the edge. As we were on snow it was a soft landing and both our immediate thoughts were have we totally wrecked the snowmobile (and our remaining bank balance!) by letting it plunge over the cliff! But it was OK, it has just rolled to a stop as thankfully we were on the straight and Gills quick reflexes hit the "cut the engine" button as she was falling! We quickly caught up with the others in our group and tried to pretend nothing had happened but we were caught out as we were covered in snow!! Very funny and the only injury was a hole in my trousers! Naturally, my driving was faultless...
Just before we headed away from the Rockies, we went to Calgary and went to the Olympic park from 1988. We saw the cool runnings bobsleigh run and sat in the sled they used in the filming of the Disney film! We also climbed to the top of the Calgary tower and watched the sun set over the Rockies in the distance. Stunning.
We had so many amazing experiences here in the Rockies and western Canada that actually we could write a lot more but I'm sure you would all get bored! We would definitely love to come back but we still have a lot more of Canada to see. We're still going east!
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