Month: December 2013

Didn’t sleep well.  Missing home and family a bit, and very sad for the missing kittenface.  It wasn’t raining though, so thats a start.  I feel like it rains a lot here in Winter.   Not even proper rain, but often just grey and drizzly.   Time to go to the rockies I think, where it will be cold, but at least we’ll have snow, and wilderness.

We went with the Hostel over to the Lynn Canyon Park area, where they have a suspension bridge over a very pretty canyon.  There is a small area of woodland kept around it, so you can walk over the bridge, and then up and down the river, without much indication that there is a major city nearby.   Except for the people, always seems to be a lot of people at all the parks we have been to, I think simply because they’re near cities, and popular.  I guess it didn’t help either, that around 40 people from the hostel were there 🙂

The main suspension bridge is across quite a deep gorge, 50 metres deep.  There didn’t seem to be a limit to the number of people who were allowed on the bridge at once, so it was a bit of a nervous walk for me, with well over 20 people making the bridge sway.

The waterfalls were pretty, and there was a slight woodland mist writhing through the trees.

We wandered up the river to 30 foot pool.  Perhaps that is how big it is?  It is a area of spread out calm water, before the river moves off over rocks.  It is very clear, you can see to the bottom, and is a forest green colour.    If you look upstream, the canyon before the pool is very deep, and there is a waterfall feeding it.

We walked up the stairs, back around to the bridge, then down to the twin falls area.  This was pretty amazing, with a couple of falls, and a mass of water being chuted down between rocks, to fall in a frothy mass of white at the base.  Massive tree trunks were lying on the rocks to the far side of the falls, where they had been moved in high water, then settled.

The whole area was lovely, it made me think of typical canada woods that you see on tv, all pretty trees, rocks, and flowing river.  Many of the trees were covered in a thick layer of draping moss, bright green in the gloom.

We got to ride a ferry and some buses, we are definitely figuring out how to ride the buses, with the immense help of google maps on my phone.

We awoke at a decent hour, showered, ate, and moved our stuff to our new room (we had to move back into shared dorms), and headed off through town.   We had recently learned that once you purchase a bus ticket, you can use it for an hour and a half, so you can hop on and off buses, which is great.  We bussed down to Stanley Park, this time to go to the aquarium.   Now, the aquarium, you say, its just fish, and we’ve seen fish before.. But nope, this aquarium is pretty cool.
They were really quite busy, it was a Friday, but it is the holiday period, so no idea how busy they usually are.  There were quite a lot of people.  They have shows running every half hour, on various interest points in the aquarium.   We walked straight into the sea otters talk, and it turns out the otters we saw the other day are not even a little bit big enough to be sea otters, so they must have been river otters.  Still cute, but not quite as awsum.   I think the west coast of Vancouver island is a good place to see sea otters.   They have three at the Aquarium.  They are quite large, can apparently weigh up to 45kg.   They have an amazing amount of hair on them, and even when in water, the layer of hair closest to the skin is still dry.  They use hair (unlike other sea mammals, who use a layer of fat – blubber) to keep warm in the freezing and wet.  The one we saw was super cute, the trainers were feeding him heaps, he would grab each bit and then lie on his back, floating around like a little raft, and eat his food.  He uses his huge  paddle like back feet to keep up the right way, but he made it look super easy just to lie there.

After the otters, we wandered for a bit, then went to visit the seals.  They were doing training, and made them jump up and down, and give kisses for food.  I unfortunately didn’t get any pics of the kisses, but they were cute!

My favourite part of the aquarium were the Beluga Whales.  I didn’t even have a clue they were there, but they are amazing and pretty, and very very white!  They are weirdly lumpy, but quite agile for their size.  They can wiggle their forehead bump, and can make quite a lot of noises.  It is hard to take pics of beluga with our little camera, most of them came out very white.

 

The other parts we saw were the beluga show, where we got splashed, the Dolphin show, where they jumped amazingly high, and the seal show, where they were super cute.

I was a bit sad about the dolphins in the small enclosure, but it turns out most of the animals they have in the aquarium are rescues, have been hand raised, or for whatever reason, can’t actually be released back into the wild, as they would likely not be able to look after themselves. One of the dolphins had pretty much no pectoral fins, as she had lost them in a fishing net.   The keepers had to teach many of the animals how to properly act like they should.

The aquarium also had a couple of snakes, including an anaconda, which is a constrictor, and was in the process of constricting and eating its food while we walked past.   There was an amazon section, warm and humid, that has sloths and monkeys, and a big section on frogs of the area.  The other section was the British Columbia area, where they had tanks made up in the type of fish and plants you would find in particular areas around Vancouver.  There were a lot of cool anenome and starfish, and they had a whole jellyfish exhibition, which was neat.

We must have spent about 6 hours there before we decided we had seen enough, and made our way home.  We had a lovely view of a waterfront and pretty lights.

 

 

Tuesday we sorted out our food for Christmas, then joined some hostel friends for a visit to the Christmas market.  That was very festive, with heaps of stalls, with many toys and creations from Germany, Austria, and a few from closer.  There was hot cider and mulled wine, and many great foods.  We tried a German pretzel and some candies.  There was a carousel, and a man playing the accordion, and a lady accompanying him on the cowbell.   It was a pleasant evening, and set the mood for Christmas.

 

We spent the rest of the day when we weren’t eating or visiting the market, skyping family in NZ/Aus.  It was lovely to talk to everyone, but very weird, as it was Christmas Day for them.  I felt a bit sad at first, but it was great to talk to everyone, and it made the 24th seem like xmas to us, so we had xmas day the same time as everyone else.

the 25th was a very relaxed day.  We ate food, watched movies: ‘Die Hard’ at the backpackers, and then we went out after dinner to see ‘Catching Fire’ at the theatre.  There were quite a lot of people at the theatre, and a lot of people at the backpackers restaurant, all making xmas in whatever way they could.
I found the most delishus cider, an apple and ginger one.  Excellent.

 

Boxing day was all about sales, we bought many things, including a snowboard, bindings, snowboard pants, waterproof overpants, and delshuz amazing down jackets… never thought I would own a puffer jacket, but it is amazing, like a snuggly sleeping bag I can wear in public!  Yay!

 

First day in Vancouver that has been sunny, and apparently 9 degrees c outside!   Tropical!  We are going out for another tour, this time in the sun (it has been drizzling since we arrived).

We walked down to Stanley Park, through the christmas park, and then walked around the sea wall.

It must have been about 20km by the time we got home, but it was pretty fun.   Lots of pretty views, of the different parts of Vancouver, and the mountains behind.  At one point we saw otters, which made me very excited (I had spent much of the day on San Juan looking out for these little guys).  There were three of them, and we saw them first swimming.  They would dive down, their little tails sticking up in the air until they disappeared.  They surfaced, and swam to the nearest rock, where they proceeded to place their crab on the rock, and then eat it.  All of it.  Didn’t take long, and they didn’t seem to care about the shells or the fact that the crabs were still alive.  They also fought each other over the crabs, and one was just rubbing himself on the weed on the rock.  Maybe he wanted to smell like crab.  At the time I thought they were sea otters, but after meeting sea otters at the aquarium, I deicided they were river otters, as they didn’t seem big enough for sea otters.  ALso, they got out of the water a lot.

There were heaps of large ships waiting in the harbour, perhaps for the right time to come in?  I counted at least 10 just waiting.  The sun was low in the sky, nearly setting at about 4pm, and we finished our walk and made our way back to the hostel.

After a quick nap and dinner, we joined a couple of the other hostellers to go out to the christmas market, but that unfortunately had a line that stretched (literally) halfway around the block, so we went back to the park instead.   At the park, we got to visit the Christmas area, where they had a squillion lights, scenes and decorations set up, and they had a cute little xmas train, that takes you on a 10min ride around a track, through even more squillion lights and scenes.  It was so bright, and very very pretty… if I had to compare it to anything… In Rotorua on Xmas eve, we would get the list of houses participating in the christmas lights trail, and we would drive around and visit them all.  That was pretty cool.   This was like all those houses, plus every other house decorated in Rotorua, all in one small area.  They even had a 6m tall reindeer.   Hot chocolate and apple juice and gingerbread and all sorts. ‘

 

After a restful sleep, we woke and wandered over to the main house, over frosty ground.   We ate a lovely breakfast of eggs, and then relaxed inside a bit.  Jess’ parents let us borrow the car for the day, so we did a bit of exploring around San Juan, went to the whale museum, which is all about the wildlife in the area.   There are three main pods of orca that hang out around here during summer, and you can usually see them from the shore, as they chase Salmon who are spawning from a river nearby.  These orca are quite specific, they only like the best salmon, king salmon, which mostly come from the Fraser River nearby.  To find this out, they analyse orca poo, and can determine that is pretty much what they eat.  Fussy things.

They keep track of all the individual orca in the area, and identify them by their dorsal fin and markings.

After the museum we wandered around the dock, town, then headed out to English camp, where there was an English army base, which existed during the time before they decided if the island belonged to the Americans or English.  Took them a while to figure out.  There was a nice walk through some forest, and a view from the top of the hill, where you could see many of the bays around, and all the way over to Canada.

 

We then wandered along the water looking for seals and otters, but didn’t manage to find any.  Found a couple of deer in the field, and then a couple of deer on the road on the way home.  Silly deer.

It is now very chilly, the internet tells me about 1 degree c,with a slight chance of snow overnight, but we are snuggled inside, and dinner is cooking!  It is lovely to be staying at a friends’ home, and dinner was delishuz, and included an experimental dessert of avocado mousse  🙂

 

10pm – headed off to get stuff to do teeth, but it has been snowing!  Of course, then only thing to do is jump in the hot tub in the dark, surrounded by pines, and softly falling snow.  Epic.

 

Tuesday we woke, went for a run along the Embacardero, checked out the sea lions for the last time (they were being naughty today, jumping up on the boat docks while the workers weren’t looking), and headed back to the hostel to get breakfast and pack our bags.
The weather had settled down apparently, while it was still sunny, the temperature was up to about 10-12 degrees, so very pleasant.  We packed our stuff, and headed towards the airport, via the mission, where we stopped at El Toro Taqueria to get a burrito… so delishu!  Full of all yummy things, and very huge.  Enough food for a meal and a half.

We hopped on a plane (after security, who made us take off our shoes, and walk through a scanner thing) to Seattle, where it was definitely colder.  We stayed at the Green Tortoise there, which was good.

In the evening we wandered down the waterfront, even though most things were closed, we rode the ferris wheel, where we had a pretty view of the city.

 

Wednesday morning they had pancake mix ready to go, so we ate pancakes.  We wandered around the Seattle Pike Place Market for a while, which was very interesting.  It was started around 1907, and has been operating since then.

It was the location of the first Starbucks, before it became on every street corner.  Starbucks was named for a sailor in Moby dick.  It is the location of the oldest existing Starbucks, and is only allowed in the market because it has been there since it started, and is a part of the history of the place.  They are in the same location, and have kept the same logo, which is slightly different from the logo they use today.

The market is run as a trust, and they are careful about who they let in.  They like people who make and sell their own crafts, and people just starting up.  A section of the market is for crafters, and they turn up each morning, and decide on spots depending on who is there, and whoever has seniority gets pick of the best spots.  It means the market is different every day.  Pretty neat.  You are only allowed a section in that part of the market if you are selling your own stuff you have made.
One of the funding things for the market was to sell tiles, and they would print your name (or any name you wrote down) on the tile, so when you walk through the market, many of the tiles have names on.

Then packed up all our things and traipsed up to the bus stop, where we caught a shuttle from Seattle up to Anacortes, and then jumped on a Ferry boat, and trundled over to Friday Harbour.  It was very pretty, all calm waters dark islands and low cloud.
Arriving in Friday Harbour, we got picked up by Dale’s friend Jess; her family is letting us stay in their lovely home on San Juan Island.  She drove us around the island a bit, saw a fox, an eagle, some deer, and a sunset through a cloudy looming sky.  It is quite chilly, about 4 degrees C, but we have a lovely little cabin.  The grass was frosted over as we went to bed.

 

We had to get up super early for our 1 day Yosemite tour.  People had said the worst thing about the Yosemite tour was that it was too short, but we didn’t have time to do longer, so I figured one day was better than none.

We got picked up by our tour guide, Mark, at the lovely hour of 6.20am.  Heading over the rbidge, and out of the city, most people seemed to nap until we stopped a couple of hours later for breakfast.

We arrived into Yosemite about 10.30ish, and started with the view straight up the valley.  It was snowy on the ground, sunny skies, and the view was quite magnificent.  The main thing you could see was El Capitan, a massive bluff that is about a kilometer high, and probably a couple of kilometers square; I’m not sure if it is the largest granite rockface on earth, but it is pretty big.  People apparently love to climb it in summer, and on our way back out of the valley today, we saw some people climing it.  Crazy people, who are trying to get frostbite.  It would have been pretty amazing hanging from the cliff, but I don’t think I would do it 😉

After the viewpoint, we headed down into the valley, where we stopped at a couple of viewpoints, then were allowed to wander as we wanted, so we visited the falls, and had a wander through the trees and snow.   We saw a deer – apparently not afraid of people, as it just wandered by near us, as are protected in the park, a fluffy grey squirrel, and a tiny cute chipmunk.   And a lot of crows.

 

 

After all that, we piled back into the car to check out El Capitan from the base, still pretty huge, and thats when we saw the clmbers, barely able to make them our from where we were standing.

Then, a nice drive  out of the canyon, and across the plains back into the city.  A stop at treasure island, for a look across to San Fran skyline, which was pretty, and we saw a family of raccoon going around raiding the rubbish bins.

 

The views were amazing, the sheer rock faces, and crazy waterfalls, the snow and wildlife.  the whole day was tiring, but definitely worth it.  If we had the time, a couple of days there would be ideal, but I think if we went back, we would want to do the walks around the park, you can walk to the top of the bluff, and then along it, and that would be great.

The tour was with Extranomical, and cost a bit, but it was the full day, and the tour guide, Mark, was incredibly knowledgeable about the history of the whole area, he talked for most of the drive  (4 hours each way), and it was all pretty interesting.