My trip to Canada, Its a long text, and right now it doesnt have any pictures in it, so make sure to bring some time!
It all started with me finishing my military service. Well, i took all the holidays i had left to get off one month early.
But as it always happends in situations like those… one week after i got my holiday confirmed i partly ruptured my posterior cruciate ligament.luckily 2 out of 3 doctors told me that my trip should be no problem as long as Im careful.
So i packed the good old Kizer backpack with some clothes, bought myself a new smaller camera-bag and went on the 12 hour flight to maple-country. First stop was vancouver, where i met with my girlfriend who was travelling around the world for the last 8 months and was now willing to spend 2 months in Canada with me. After some(equals LOTS) City-walking and some tent-buying we took the bus to Horseshoe Bay and the ferry to Nanaimo where we went on the bus to Parksville.
I got myself some hiking-shoes in a mall we stopped at and then we had a beautiful bus ride to parksville, with the probably most relaxed Bus-driver Ive ever seen.
quote: “we would like to go to parksville”-“Oh thats great! would you mind to pay for it though?”
Busdriver drops us at his favourite campsite. We just have to carry our 24 kilo Backpacks down the driveway.. about 1 km passing a lot of campers in their huge RVs, Pickups and whatever you call those combined RV-Pickups. Beautiful campsite! about a 2 minutes walk from the beach.”rented” some bikes at the local bikeshop… means we bought them for 50 bucks and sold them later for 25bucks… way to small bikes for the both of us, but, hey!
Rode to Quallicum Beach to have a look at the motorshow there. Awesome cars everywhere, although there where some that didnt really fit in there (BMW M5 from 2009 next to an oldtimer Ford Mustang from 18xx?)
Our next stop was surfers paradise tuff city. Having a hard time finding a place to stay for the night we decided to go for the beach and after some hiking, climbing a cursing we found ourselves a nice place on a cliff with view on the ocean.
Next day we went to a place called ‘Pooles Land’ – a ‘kind of’ campsite a local told us about while breakfast. The deal abpout this place is: work every day for one hour and you just pay 10 bucks per night. Mike Poole really is a funny guy and I recommend everyone to go there when your in the area. Dont be scared by the driveway, which kinda looks like a scrapyard.
I tried surfing, cause you cant go to tofino and dont surf at least once… and it only was once for me… not my kind of activity. But I discovered Longboarding! we we’re tired of walking and/or hitchiking the way between Tofino and Pooles Land (about 3km i think) so we bought longboards. After some time of rather stumbling and running than actual boarding it worked out just fine and theres few things that can hold up to going to Longbeach surfing the sidewalk and listening to Blumentopf – Fenster zum Berg.
——————————————————–
“Last edited on July 12th 2011 12:19”
So i will just try to bring this to an end.
So after finishing our stay in tofino we went to a place recommended by one of the girls we met in Pooles Land. The place is called Blue Jay Lake Farm and Francine and myself went to wwoof there. “Wwoofing” means: you get food and accomodation for your work on the farm. Blue Jay is on a small island in the north of Vancouver Island by the name of Cortes Island. You only get there by two ferries, one to Quadra Island, which you have to cross to get to the ferry to cortes.
It was a long journey, but damn… it was worth it. Blue Jay is just so hard to describe… you have to pass a 5km driveway to get into the valley the farm is in. There we met Henry, Scott, Liz and the other people of the farm whose names i sadly cant remember anymore.
And what a beautiful piece of Land that is! huge Lake, 3 seperate houses, fields and a barn.
Luckyly we hit the perfect time to travel to cortes. On the evening of our arrival, there was the Stache Party, which happends just once a year. Rule: every man must wear a mustache, if not he has to dress like a woman. Good start for our stay(maybe because i had a mustache). In addition to that it was the time wehre Strawberries were ripe and blueberries would just take a few more days. Which made our breakfasts and each an every day. We picked so much every day, we had to freeze part of it.
Every meal started with fetching some crop in the garden, so every day the freshest vegtables. Then doing some Hay, or spend some time in the trenches or preparing some crops for the local store.
The biggest event on Blue Jay was when Henry decided to take us on a boat-trip, which was just awesome.
So after 2 beautiful weeks in this paradise we decided to split up, Francine wanted to go to the Stampede in Calgary, which is a big Folk-Festival, while i wanted to skip that and go directly to canmore. Why Canmore?
Well its the perfect example of the Canadian attitude: The Boss of the Club where i work in Germany has a relative in Canmore and gave me her E-Mail address. So i wrote her an e-Mail asking if we could stay in her garden with our tent and maybe use her bath sometimes. Without knowing me, she offered us a room in her Basement, with an own bathroom. And to top things: when I arrived at her House (after some Longboarding through Banff and some almost smashing my cam while at it) she was at work but left me a key!
Canmore was great, the Nordic Centre there is unbelievable, trails over trails. And if your not into biking or just want to relax: take a walk down the river or go on a hike in the mountains surrounding this small town.
And again, good timing few days after ive been there, the 24hrs of adrenalin were held at the nordic centre… a 24hr mountainbike race, on a trail i didnt manage to finish once… the winner in the solo-class did 20 circles of 17km each in 23hrs.
ok gotta make things more shortly: Canmore: Biking, Hiking, drinking, partying, hitting mosquitos(A LOT)
I dont know if she will ever read this but: Katie, thank you so much. the time we spend at your place was one of my highligths during my canada trip! And i hope i will see you again some time!
Next stop: Shambhala!
We were looking for a ride to Nelson to start our route back to Vancouver which turned out to be Mark, a Yoga-Maniac driving a Yellow-Cab loaded with stickers of numerous festivals. He told us that he can take us there, but why we would go to Nelson if there was the biggest Festival of that area just a few kilometers away?
Festival was sold out, so we went to a gas station to look for some tickets, and were rather successfull, francine was able to get in with an “artist” (he said he is one, but in the end he was on no list…. luckily they let him and francine in) and we found an card for me… it was the most expensive ticket i ever bought, but DAMN, Shambhala is AMAZING!
Few days in Nelson after the festival, booked our bus back to Vancouver. Way to long busride. Did some final shopping in Van, got ourselves a tattoo. packed our stuff. to the airport.
bye Canada. I miss you.
