12 July 2007

Well its been a while

But now back at a keyboard after a 3 week holiday with Lynne on the northwestern coast of the continent. Lynne is back in kiwi and I am back at Keno.

We have a lot of photos and so I will try to select a few from along the way .... to illustrate the journey:

Started in Vancouver 11 - 13 June ...

and the weather was brilliant so we enjoyed walking from our downtown hotel and seeing the central part of the city that we couldn't see on our last visit. We bought a new lightweight tent and basic camping set for the upcoming expedition and found a good restraurant on the waterfront. The wine selection however has not improved for any kind of chardonnay.

Met up with some old flatmates in Helen who laughs as much as ever, and John with his new wife Andrea who still sings as beautifully as ever.

A lot of effort went into trying to arrange logistics for the next step of the trip that was planned to be a drive north along the coast to a kayaking destination and eventually we arrived at a plan that involved a rental car that had to be returned to Vancouver and a kayak hire from a place near Powell River. The penalty for not returning the car to Vancouver was as much as $3000 with one company - not a tourist friendly place if you want to not return a car from whence it came.

14 - 17 June :

Road and two ferry crossings took us to Okeover Inlet near Lund, north of Powell River to a campsite for the inaugural tent erection. Had forgotten how lush and green and fresh smelling the forests are in this part of the world when the sun is shining. We were adjacent to a small kayak rental outfit that we had learned about and so a visit to them the next morning confirmed that kayaks were available and so while these were being prepared we drove to Lund for coffee, sticky buns and to get some camping groceries.

By noon we were on the waters of Desolation Sound on our way to find a campsite - the big difference to paddling in NZ is that there are no sandy beaches just a steep rocky shore where the forest and the bears come right to high tide line.

A big island was selected for a campsite and as we watched over lunch and progressively hauled the boats up the rocks, we learned about the 8m tides, and ended up with a little island and the tent just above waterline. The kayaking was good and we probably should have stayed longer but good enough for a first visit to get the lay of the land.

We rediscovered hummingbirds at the Laughing Oyster Restaurant but no local oysters.

This leg of the journey ended up back in Vancouver in a more budget hotel near the Gastown that we used to frequent long ago, where we repacked for the ferry journey north.

... to be continued ...