Saturday 26 August 2000

Our trip started well. The train we were due to catch from Reading to Gatwick broke down before even leaving the station, and no replacement was put on. The next one - an hour later - was delayed all the way, and panic was starting to set in by the time we arrived nearly two hours late. No need to worry though; our flight was delayed by five hours, so we had plenty of time to sample the delights of Gatwick's catering with our free food vouchers.

Boring eleven hour flight with bland but acceptable food.

Sunday 27 August 2000

Slept as well as expected after a 24-hour journey with an 8 hour time difference. Walked down to the harbour, had bagels for breakfast in the harbourside food court, and got on a trolleybus tour of Vancouver as the best way of seeing as much as possible in a single day.

(I've just noticed that the FrontPage spellchecker has objected to my spelling of centre and harbour. Must remember to ask for my money back when we get home).

Vancouver is quite a pleasant city in a stunning setting. The best bit is Stanley Park, named after Lord Stanley of Preston - a former governor of British Columbia - who generously donated the 1000 acre park to the city in perpetuity, which slightly begs the question of how he came by it in the first place. The harbour overlooked by the park has its own Little Mermaid statue ...

... not unlike Copenhagen, but with enormous heaps of sulphur, borax, potash etc. as a scenic backdrop. The park also contains a fine selection of First Nation totem poles, a rose garden, too many rollerbladers, a lake formed by the work of beavers, and a small cannon originating in Woolwich.

Visited the Space Park, which needs a day to itself, where they sold us popcorn and almost immediately prevented us from taking it into the auditorium. The visit included a presentation in which we were assured that a Canadian invented the telephone. Encarta informs us that Alexander Graham Bell was a Scot living in Boston, but perhaps the Canadians know something that we don't. Also went to: Sun Yat Sen's garden, a small incarnation of a traditional Chinese garden apparently visited by the man himself; various historic buildings dating from the 1880's (Vancouver only dates from around 1860 on); a steam driven clock; The Old Spaghetti Factory for dinner; and an Internet cafe to check our email. And so to bed.

Monday 28 August 2000

Up at 5.45am, which wasn't as much of a shock as it might have been as we were still jetlagged. Bus to North Vancouver station to catch the BC Rail train to Whistler at 7.00am. The carriage smelled overwhelmingly of old pancakes, as it had been used for that trip for a number of years and the only breakfast choices were pancakes or eggs of some sort. Still, at least it gave me the chance to try my first pancakes and maple syrup, which were very ordinary; maple syrup has a distinctive taste whose novelty wears off after about six mouthfuls. Give me Tate & Lyle's Golden Syrup any time.

The train trip is well worth while, as it follows the Fraser River up a most picturesque stretch of its path. Every so often there are log booms, consisting of huge numbers of logs strapped together and floated downstream to be collected and transported inland. There is also a large pulping mill, which continuously discharges steam and creates its own microclimate of low-level clouds...

Whistler itself is very similar to the complexes which surround Disney resorts: huge hotels, numerous fast food outlets, and tacky tourist gimmicks...

This is apparently the most desirable place in North America from which to ski, as the ski lifts start right from the centre of the village - you can walk out of your hotel more or less straight into a lift and up to the start of a run. We went up in the gondola to the ski area and walked onto Whistler Glacier; I then slid down on my bottom as I'd gone up in my sandals whose grip on the ice is less than perfect. This is not recommended as my shorts took some time to dry out. Down again into the village to watch the children in the entertainment area which includes bungee bouncing / acrobatics and a climbing wall.

Walked around Lost Lake - a definite misnomer, since we found it quite easily, as did all the other people walking round it. We did see a snake, but it was very small and legged it (or whatever the snake equivalent is) when it saw us. Went up the gondola again as our ticket covered the whole day and we wanted our money's worth with the intention of eating up there as the sun set, but it closed early so we came down and ate in an empty cafe decorated with '50s memorabilia.

 Gosh, this is gripping stuff. Perhaps I shan't go for the 2001 Booker Prize after all. I'll try and make it a bit more condensed from now on.

Tuesday 29 August 2000

Back onto BC Rail at some ungodly hour to continue our journey up the Fraser River, at times literally packed with salmon right at the end of their life cycle. They had turned from silver to a bright red which meant that they were about to snuff it after or even before spawning. Bad luck.

As we went inland, started to notice huge areas covered in black plastic which are in fact ginseng fields. Central British Columbia is, surprisingly, semi-arid desert (Kamloops only gets about 10" of rain per year) and is apparently eminently suitable for its cultivation. The root is worth about Ca$1,000 per pound, which can't be bad even though it takes about four years to grow.

Arrived at Kelly Lake in the middle of nowhere, and transferred to a coach which took us to Kamloops and our hotel for the night. Not semi-arid at all but raining; we were assured that it should have been 30° and dry as a bone. Walked to the Aberdeen Mall to book an onward ticket from Vancouver to Boston in a week's time, but very little luck as the local travel agent's phone line was down and all he could find were tickets at Ca$1,300 each - more than twice what it had cost us to fly from London to Vancouver. Oh well, never mind. Back to hotel and rang North West Airlines who quoted us US$1,100. Bugger. Rang our friend Geoff in Boston, who looked on www.travelocity.com and found and booked us tickets on Sun Country Air from Seattle to Boston for US$167. All we had to do was to get from Vancouver to Seattle by coach which is only a few hours drive. What a star.

Wednesday 30 August 2000

Joined the Rocky Mountaineer tour in Red Leaf (i.e. cattle) class, along with a large bunch of people who had been with it since Vancouver. It was actually very comfy, with huge seats and a complete extra lounge car for wandering about and slobbing out in. The food was a bit airline-like, being served in plastic trays, but good nonetheless. Route took us up the Thompson River with lots of top-quality scenery: Columbia Mountains, Pyramid Falls ...

...  Albreda Glacier, Mount Robson ...

...  Mount Fitzwilliam, Yellowhead Lake etc. etc.

Arrived at Jasper in the afternoon. We'd been under the impression that it was a serious sized place; in fact it's a pretty little tourist town with a population of about 5,000, somewhat augmented in the summer season. We were staying in the Jasper Park Lodge, a kind of up-market Butlins.

Chicken quesadillas (lit. little things made with cheese) for supper, and bed.

Thursday 31 August 2000

Did tourist bus tour of Jasper, including a ride up the gondola with great views. Plenty of good scenery, but nothing of enormous note except for two ladies becoming stuck in a cafe lavatory simultaneously which cheered us up no end. After lunch, saw our first elk in the woods trying to hide behind a tree ...

... watched the chipmunks storing food for the winter (very inefficiently: a time and motion study could increase the chipmunk population significantly), and walked round the lake. That's about it.

Friday 1 September 2000

Saw two female elk with young on the coach to Banff (we were on the coach, not the elk), but they legged it before I could get the camera out. Stopped at the Athabasca Glacier ...

... at the edge of the Columbia Icefield for a ride in a snowcoach ...

... onto the glacier itself. (An icefield is formed when a large area surrounded by mountains fills up with ice over a long period during which the snowfall exceeds the loss by melting. It then spawns glaciers in all directions. A snowcoach is a large bus designed for carrying tourists onto a glacier without killing them. They cost about Ca$700,000 each so it must be a profitable business). The weather was beautiful, but the ice was a little chilly for those of us wearing sandals. Lunch was at the glacier visitor centre, which had all the charm and culinary expertise of the Membury services on the M4.

Brief stop at Lake Louise, an overrated mountain resort with an enormous chateau ...

... featuring a gentleman dressed in lederhosen playing an alpenhorn and yodelling outside the front door to greet the guests. He must be desperate to avoid going on the dole.

On to Banff in the afternoon via various other scenic stuff. Stayed at the Banff Springs hotel, once the largest hotel in North America, which looks like a cross between a Swiss chateau and a Hammer movie ...

Saturday 2 September 2000

Rain all day, so trailed around Banff seeing tourist sights: the hot springs for which Banff originally became famous, Sleeping Buffalo mountain ...

... The Hoodoos (weathered rock formations believed by First Nation people to personify spirits of the dead) ...

... and a film about grizzly bears at the information centre - as close as we were ever to get to them. Unfortunately they're pretty rare now, due partly to their being shot by hunters and partly to their being run over as they scavenge for food discarded by tourists at the roadside. Swam in the hotel's outdoor pool in an outside temperature slightly above freezing; fortunately the pool is heated to the temperature of a hot bath.

Sunday 3 September 2000

An early morning swim in the wondrous pool, then rejoined the Rocky Mountaineer tour but in Gold Leaf class this time. There's actually less space than in Red Leaf, but the carriages have an observation dome which makes looking around marginally easier ...

... and the food is top-notch: cooked by the tour's own chef and served in the dining car by attentive waiters. It was also good to sit with different people at different mealtimes; we met a taxi driver and special needs teacher from Jersey, a retired couple from Sydney, a doctor and dental receptionist who had worked in Alaska for years but now lived in California (surprise), and a retired builder called J.R. (yes, people really are called J.R.) and his wife Marnie from Arizona. If we were to choose in future we'd probably go Red Leaf, but they both have their strong points: we got the best of all worlds by seeing them both.

Along the route there are strange dalek-shaped structures ...

... which I thought were used for breeding huge mutated killer bees to allow Canada to take over the world. Unfortunately, the reality that they're used to burn the waste wood left after logging is less interesting.

More amazing scenery, not shown here due to our 5Mb web site storage limit.

Back in Kamloops for the evening, including slightly tacky but fun tourist show at Two River Junction restaurant.

Monday 4 September 2000

The last day on the train, and a bit of an anticlimax as the scenery from Kamloops back to Vancouver is less overwhelming, although we saw an Osprey nest. Ospreys are a problem as they nest on telegraph poles and disrupt communications, so they're discouraged by putting bright pink plastic flamingos on top of critical poles. This probably demonstrates why ospreys don't rule the world.

Old favourite joke, courtesy of J.R.:

A Texan is showing a friend from Arizona round his ranch. He's boasting about its vast size, and says: "You know, if I were to get in my pickup and drive all day I still wouldn't get to the end of my property". His friend thought for a moment, and said: "I know what you mean. I used to have a pickup like that myself once".

Tuesday 5 September 2000

Got the shuttle bus from Vancouver to Seattle; supposed to be a four hour journey, but in fact about six. At the border we declared our two bananas as there are dire penalties for taking clandestine foodstuffs through, but they didn't seem too worried. Little did they know that they were stuffed with deadly anthrax spores, which even now we're introducing into the water supply ... hahahaha, soon the whole of North America will be in our power! Oops, sorry, don't know what came over me there.

Went up the Space Needle. Looked at Seattle. Came down again.

Visited the Music Experience in the same park as the Space Needle. This really needs a whole day to do it justice, but we only had about two hours, most of which was spent in the Jimi Hendrix area: apparently Seattle is his home city. The Music Experience is slightly marred by the huge contraption into which you have to strap yourself in order to guide yourself around, comprising a CD-ROM, small display screen, headphones, remote control and battery pack. It feels more like playing LaserQuest than anything else; what's more, mine broke down twice.

Overnight in Seattle city centre Travelodge motel. Expensive and scruffy. Off to Boston tomorrow.