Vancouver (45-50)

Vancouver's setting is beautiful and reminded me very much of a mix between Sydney and a very large version of Hobart with the mountain behind the city. Vancouver is built on and around water with many, many islands and I've been told you can be sitting on a beach getting a suntan while looking up at Grouse Mountain covered with snow.

Frankly, I've seen Mt Wellington in Hobart covered with snow and can't imagine what it would be like to strip down to swimmers on a beach whilst looking at the view. I suppose if I was wearing an 8mm thick wetsuit under my swimmers....

The comparison between the settings of Hobart and Vancouver, other than size is interesting.

Vancouver                                                           Hobart
Grouse Mountain – 1230 metres                            Mt Wellington – 1270 metres
About 15 mins from the city                                   About 15 mins from the city
Latitude = 49° N                                                     Latitude = 42° S
Setting-Salish Sea, Burrard Inlet, Georgia Straits    River Derwent
Population Vancouver Regional~2.6 Million           Woops – stop here

Tassie’s total population is about 500,000 so the scale is what I first meant about Hobart being a much smaller version - Grouse Mountain also has 26 ski runs and 4 chairlifts.

I mentioned in the Kelowna blog about selecting a campground as close to the city of Vancouver as possible, without the need to negotiate the city centre with the full rig. In hindsight, we would have been better not to have selected that particular campsite. The chosen campground turned out to be nowhere near as good as we’d expected after reading their description of their park.

It had a lot of permanent tenants who weren’t approaching retirement (I know appearances are deceiving however, their looks and abodes caused us to lock everything and even put semi-important items into both our safes), water-sodden grass sites about as level as my elbow, road construction beside the campground that had been ongoing since January this year and turned out to be 24/7, no internet, a 30 amp connection that tripped for no apparent reason even in dead of night (I leapt out of bed around 2.15 am one day, alarmed that someone might have deliberately turned off our power and was waiting for me as I exited the van to reset the breaker or reconnect power) etc.

Naturally, we saw none of the above when booking at the nice looking reception office at the campground entrance and thus paid for a 7 night stay. I chastised myself for the next six nights, well, 7 really!! I thought about moving but read their non-negotiable campground rules – once connected to their services, no refunds at all and that would have caused us to throw away over $350. Unfortunately, that set the scene for us and I discussed that feeling with Grace the next morning at breakfast. It’s the old “first impression” thing that put us on alert from the moment we arrived.

The following day we wanted to explore the local shopping centre to buy groceries and seek out an internet café. There was a large Walmart complex only about 15 minutes away with many shops, sort of like a Westpoint shopping centre in Sydney. To our surprise there wasn’t an internet café, however, there was a food court with many outlets and a Starbucks (with no seating inside) that offered limited wifi connections in the common seating area in the mall.

If you were able to get a table in the right location you could get a “poor to good” signal at best. I carried the laptop inside Starbucks one day and found an excellent signal there. The problem I faced was no seating and no area to rest the laptop, so I bought a coffee and stood back from the counter trying to balance both the laptop and coffee at the same time. A little dangerous but very effective – I uploaded about 170 photos of Yellowstone and Mammoth Springs to the slideshow on the blog before my battery expired. I did try again following that success, but failed to receive that same signal strength or continuity again. As the signal strength improved, it dropped out, time and again – very frustrating indeed.

On the way to the shopping mall we noticed a Chevrolet dealer, and as we had already driven just over 5000 miles (8215 kms to be exact), decided to book a service. It was a relatively straight forward service involving an oil and filter change, brake inspection, etc. However, I was surprised at how quick and cheap the service was – they said I could wait and they would take about 45 minutes at a total cost of $74.00. I thought there would be a catch of some sort but the keys were handed back, service done, computer reset, in that time and for that amount!

We’d read about Grouse Mountain which sits on the north side of Vancouver so set out about finding our way to the city via public transport and discovered they have a great Sky Train system – the track runs above road level. The nearest Park and Ride station beside a train stop was only about 20 minutes drive from the campground, so off we went on Wednesday, another beautiful sunny day.

The Sky Train was very good and it took us about 40 minutes to arrive in the city. The last stop was called Waterfont and as the name implies, the train station was within the same building that had boats departing for various locations near and around Vancouver. The passenger ferry we needed to catch was the Seabus and this crossed Burrard Inlet to North Vancouver.

Once on the ferry and travelling towards Lonsdale Quay (the ferry terminal on the north shore), there are great views back over Vancouver’s city centre. It’s only a trip of about 15 minutes and once at the quay, you find a very efficient bus terminal with 8 different buses going to various destinations, all timed to coincide with the ferry's arrival. Ours was in Bay number 8 and that took us to a gondola station located at the base of Grouse Mountain.

From memory the gondola ride wasn’t too cheap, about $140 or so but a necessity if you wish to get to the top to see the views. So pay we did and the views on the ride up were terrific. Despite some white haze in the distance the day was quite clear and you could see snow capped mountains far off towards the horizon, the gondola driver said about 100 kilometres away.

When at the gondola’s top station you can find a couple of gift shops, a “Theatre in the Sky”, a restaurant, a café and surprisingly (to us), a chair lift to the summit that’s included in the price of the gondola ride. The theatre was showing 2 films, a documentary about 2 young, orphaned grizzly bears that were reared about 10 years ago in an attempt to save them, and another on the history of Grouse Mountain.

We watched both films and are very pleased we did because the two, now 10 year old grizzly bears live nearby to the building in which we were sitting and are one of the special features of Grouse Mountain. Outside we went and saw quite a crowd of people surrounding a viewing platform about 200 metres from where we were. No doubt, that was the location of the grizzlies, however about an equal distance to the left was the base station for the chair lift, and that had no people waiting in queue.

Each of the chairs on the lift will only carry four people, so we broke into two groups – Meryla went with me and Grace, Chantelle and Rochelle took a chair in front of us. I could see Grace hanging on very tightly to the frame of the chair lift and so was I! About half way up when there was a drop of 40 metres or so, I heard Grace getting a little agitated with the girls and found out later Rochelle was trying to rock the chair lift – frankly, I would have been the same because I’m not really good with heights either.

The top of the mountain has a walking path up to a wind powered generator, and almost at the top of the generator’s mast, there’s a viewing pod with 360° views and a section of glass floor to allow you to gaze past your feet at the ground, some 60 metres below.

They’ve named it “The Eye of the Wind” and their caption is “Stand inside and be blown away”. I have to say, if I was to go there and stand on the glass floor, there’d be more wind inside the pod than outside, however, when re-reading their slogan, perhaps that’s what they mean?

Needless to say, we didn’t partake in that adventure. I did offer to take photos of anyone else in the family who wanted to venture up there, and there was only one taker, Rochelle of course! Unfortunately, no one would go with her so she missed out.

There were a number of exciting and adventurous sporting opportunities offered when at the top. A paragliding take off point was prominent with a warning to walkers not to go beyond a certain marked place, as the drop needed for the gliders dropped away very quickly. No-one was there today, perhaps because it was a week day but they would have been great to watch.

Another opportunity offered was zip lines, deep gorges traversed by steel cables, onto which is attached a pulley complete with webbing as your seat. You needed to wear a helmet, but if I was required to do that, I’d probably need a nappy as well! Apparently you paid at the top main gondola kiosk area for these zip lines thrills and there were four or five different zip line trips that came as a package.

They appeared to be well organised and safe as instructors were there guiding you at each end of the zip line. We watched and chatted to one of the instructors, a girl from Homebush in Sydney and she absolutely loved her job. She sent her last person down, who very gingerly leant back following instructions and was then released – courtesy of Newton’s Law, achieving what seemed to be a ridiculous speed and looking more like a troubled spider on her back with arms and legs spread, hopefully about to remember how to slow down gracefully at the end.

Our instructor was cleared by someone on a walkie talkie and bade farewell, clipped on to the line and made an enormous leap complete with a long “Yeeehaaaa” as she rocketed down the line, bent so far back that she was in a U shape holding her ankles and spinning like a top. Perhaps impressive for some, but utterly terrifying for me!

We strolled back down to the grizzlies where the number of people had diminished, watched them playing in the water for a while and then decided it was time to head back to the Sierra. It had been another long and interesting day by the time we arrived home, as we had travelled by car, foot, skytrain, boat, bus, gondola, chairlift, foot and then repeated the entire sequence in reverse.

The balance of our time in Vancouver was spent with schoolwork and travelling to and from the local mall in an attempt to post some of these blogs, to retrieve and respond to emails, for Grace to upload photos to Facebook and for Meryla to do schoolwork – most of which were attempts in vain to connect.

Friday's weather looked good as well so we headed back into the city to try to get to Stanley Park, a large and interesting looking area very close to the city centre. As we were approaching the park, we walked by an area where lots of seaplanes were active, mainly taking tourists out for a look over the city. Right beside that was a push bike rental shop and, as bad as it sounds, I'd never taught Rochelle to ride unassisted on a 2 wheeler.

So, that's what we did over the next 2 hours - until both my back couldn't take any more bending and, by good fortune (for me), the bike chain came off. We hired a bike for Chantelle as well and Meryla enjoyed moving around various seats in an attempt to stay in the sun and read another book (sorry Lisa - there's a competition between Lisa and Meryla to see how many books they can read in a given time). Rochelle quickly found her balance but as the concrete path was very busy, we stayed on the more difficult, but softer wet grass. We didn't make it to Stanley Park, and it didn't matter!

Grace wanted to meet with Therency, a lady she went to school with, who now lived in Vancouver and whom she hadn't seen for 19 years. They had been communicating for quite a while and Friday evening was the time set and agreed. We met at Granville Island and what a fabulous place that turned out to be. Lots of small roads with equally quaint shops selling all types of "homemade" wares - the sort of place you could spend half a day or more walking about and exploring. Therency was lovely and we all had an early dinner in a hotel on the water's edge beside a small marina, before trecking back home in the dark.

All in all, other than a number of highlights we were quite disappointed with our time in Vancouver, not because it wasn’t beautiful, it certainly is, it was just a series of incidents that left us feeling flat. The signs at the Park and Ride advised us not to leave valuables in the car as thieves were active. So, somewhat apprehensively we had left the locked Sierra, taken all valuables from our locked car and headed for the city.

We were very surprised at the number of homeless or poor people (or people needing money for drugs) who approached us for money as we walked about the city, particularly near the Waterfront station. Almost as soon as we stepped off the Sky train we were asked for money and he turned out to be the first of about 8 through the day.

We'd like to return again one day, perhaps with "new eyes" to see if we can experience "another" Vancouver than we saw this time. Maybe it's just that we've been travelling for almost 2 months and we are burning the candle at both ends, maybe not? To make matters worse, unexplicably Grace's SD card on her camera lost all of her photos from Grouse Mountain and quite a number of other shots. However, everything turned out well because nothing was stolen, nothing was broken and we didn’t get hurt.

We were due to leave on Sunday and on Saturday morning the entire park lost power. After about three hours we made a decision to leave a day early and started to pack just as the power returned. As our 7th night was free, we stayed this night and left on Sunday morning to travel across the border to Seattle.