Canada - Vancouver Island

Michael - as degenerate as me

A long lost friend from Ireland, Michael Keeley, would join me for three weeks of adventure in Canada and America.
We rendez-voued in a hostel in downtown Vancouver, where two Australian guys, Rob and Colin agreed to drive us on the ferry to Vancouver Island.

The ferry to Vancouver Island

Port Alberny was a place where we heard it was possible to see bears along the river at high tide. Sure enough as we got there, a black bear was strolling along the banks.

We got wind of where we could see even more bears – at a salmon farm.

Port Alberny Bear

Pulling in to Robertson Creek, we see signs posted everywhere saying: CAUTION – Bears on site. With over 100 000 salmon jumping in and out of the lake, it made the perfect picnic spot for our big Black friends.

Caution - Beastly Bears aBound

Being five of us, we decide to brave it into the woods. We came up with a few protocols on what should happen if…….. Stay together, stay still and wait it out, was the consensus.

One of 100 000 salmon

With me leading the pack, we turn a corner and suddenly less than a few meters in front of me I beheld a Black Bear. No one else saw it. I hardly managed to secrete the word: B-E-A, before something happened which we hadn’t heard about or read in textbooks. The thing started to charge towards us – or ME rather, seeing as I’m in front.

A walk in the woods

Not for long! Every instinct in my body said to get the hell away from being the first to be mauled. This involved throwing two people into the ditch to scramble to a safe third place.

In the space of a microsecond a war broke out. In slow motion, it went something like this: I throw Michael to the left where he lands upside down in the ditch. Next I grab Colin and rugby tackle him backwards, also into the ditch. This whole time Michael is holding on to my leg with a grip of: “If I’m going down, Jerry is definitely coming with me”. The other two managed to flee the scene completely.

One minute bears are cute and cudly: the next.........

Somehow the bear managed a last second aversion, during which time three petrified pair of eyes are looking up from the ditch waiting for a mad beast to come around the corner and eat them. As soon as Michael pulls himself together he breaks his stick over me and everyone joins in to calling me a traitor. That I sold my friends to save myself! So what. Anyone would have done the same. Besides, it was not in the “protocol” that a bear would come charging towards anyone.

He cant catch me so he goes for the salmon instead

With most of us scarred for the rest of our lives, we pile back into the car to head west to the Pacific Rim National Park and quaint beach town Tofino where we heard they were hosting their first ever Annual Beer Festival. Some of the trees in the park where so big, it took up to 6 adults to span around it with outstretched arms.

Pacific Rim National Park

It takes 6 to hug a tree

Tofino Beer Festival 2006

A group of international students drive us to the islands capital Victoria. The convoy involved a car full of boys and another full of girls. The 3 hour journey was made exceptionally tolerable with 70 mile per hour quid pro quo exchanges of boobs for bums out the car window.

Lasting as long as it did, the game took inevitably violating turns, which meant that eye contact was impossible when we finally said goodbye.

The convoy

The island is a famous place for going whale watching. Though many different types of whales come through these waters, there was only one kind Michael and I were interested in. Orcas. That’s Killer Whales to you.

Dressed up for whale watching

As 5 or so Orcas are exhibiting themselves at arms length from our Zodiac, our guide puts an instrument in the water which allows us to hear their echo location sounds. One whale looked directly into my eyes. Cruising back to shore with the sun setting before us, a bald eagle is perched on a log: our guide tells us we were the luckiest group he had taken out. I should hope so. It took me the whole of the night before to come to terms with parting with the 60 dollars!!!

A killer whale splashes its tail

The Orca

Our hostel in Victoria faces a nightclub we frequented every night. One night I didn’t even manage to get the ten meters across the street before I find myself once again in cuffs and headed for the Royal Mounted Canadian Police Station.

House of Parliament - where laws are passed about people like me

This time I was wholly innocent, as I later deducted they were only filling a quota of arrests, in the hope they would find drugs on me. I was released the next morning without charge.

Optical illusion - its actually the worlds tallest totem pole at 39m

Taking the ferry back from Vancouver Island we see some mountains which form part of the Olympic Mountain range. They belong to an entirely different part of the world. A first for Michael, we were on our way to AMERICA.

Along the pacific coasts of north America: 2 guys skinny dipping

Canada - British Columbia

Lion's bridge: the sea to sky highway begins

Glen’s Pontiac just about makes it into Squamish at 2am. His poor car had clocked up over 3000 miles and the last 50 had been dangerously loud, shaky and scary. Squamish is halfway between Vancouver and Whistler and lies along the famous Sea-to-Sky-Highway. So called because, looking out one window you see islands, water inlets, even whales; and out the other window the majestic towering Coastal Range mountains.

Glen's Pontiac

Glen invited a Tsunami survivor for dinner. Bruce had been playing his didgeridoo on a cliff off the coast of Costa Rica early one morning, when suddenly a thirty meter wave swallowed him up. If you have ever wondered what it takes to JUST survive a natural disaster, then here is your answer. He spent three months in a local hospital and was told he would never walk again. This man is a living testament to the human spirit, and is currently hobbling about on crutches.

Bruce, Glen and me

Whistler sees a winter of a millions skiers and a summer of a million bikers.
We arrived between seasons, so were only able to stroll around the resort imaging what the place would look like covered in snow.

Lake outside Whistler

More important than this tourist Mecca though, was the Skookumchuck hot springs, two hours north of Whistler, mostly off the beaten track along the rapid river with only the odd graveyard to furnish the 44km dirt road.

Skookumchuck Hot Springs

Glen being sac-religious

We soaked our travel weary bodies in the piping hot water. We had after all just driven across the whole of Canada. The stars were brighter than ever and it was just possible, with the help of a couple beers, to make out the northern lights.

Northern Lights

Our signs were written out for the Okanagan valley, where we’d heard we could find illicit work picking apples. Five hours away we were mildly disappointed to hear our first lift was only going 20 minutes down the road. Mike soon learnt that he’d picked up a couple of drifters low on funds. One thing leads to another, and an hour later Simon and I find ourselves equipped with hammers and masks, joyfully going about our operation. That’s operation “repair and restore” a mobile home in the middle of the mountains – back in bear country.

Worker who hasn't got a clue

Neither Simon nor I had the smallest of inklings about home improvement. We were taken in as labourers but before long the foreman and his sidekick got us doing absolutely everything. They spent five minutes explaining how to do the most complex things, like installing R20 fiber glass insulation, covering it in plastic, then boarding it up. Creating an entire ceiling in other words.

Even less of a clue

Rob the owner of the mobile unit came back after three days, saw what was happening, fired the foreman and kept Simon and I on as he was so impressed with what we had done.

Rick gets fired

Him and his wife Sheila own champion dogs, and had just returned from a competition where their Springer Spaniel had just won best in show. Their dog was worth more than a million dollars.

Million dollar dog

Robert - the Boss

With no kids, they immediately took me and Simon in as their surrogate sons. In the 2 weeks we ended up staying, we earned well over a thousand dollars, and Rob easily spent as much on us. Food (three meals a day), clothes and the odd treat like getting hold of a copy of Rambo for us. “First Blood” had been filmed in the nearby town of Hope. We went to a few of the locations wearing our Rambo trousers he had bought us.

Thousand dollars worth of food

Stuffing our fat faces

“First Blood” had been filmed in the nearby town of Hope. We went to a few of the locations wearing our Rambo trousers he had bought us.

Rambo

Our relief from a hard week of 12 hour shifts was to hitch to nearby pub: the Goldrush.Here we played pool, and got into fights with the local guys for “talking to their girls”.

About to be in deep deep trouble

I sent one guy flying across the car park; only it was witnessed by three police officers. They arrested me and thought: What the hell, we’ll arrest your friend as well!

So we both spent the night in the cell, I could hear Simon screaming, probably for a snack or a phone call or something.

The next morning they gave us our things back in prison bags, luckily there was no charge.

Just got out of Jail

Everyone we had met had told us that no trip to British Columbia was complete without taking a short ferry over to the island. Vancouver Island: follows

Beautiful British Colombia

Canada - Rockies

Alberta Plate

A few years ago I asked a lady and her daughter to take a photograph of me somewhere along the Italian coast. One thing led to another and they ended up buying me ice-cream, dinner and putting me up for the night.
I was on one of my spend nothing, hitching and camping trips, so this all came as a luxurious treat. They even gave me 5 Euros pocket money when we said goodbye the next day.

Shelagh, Bill the boys and the cute charming one

They were from Calgary, the next town we were headed to, so it was time to pay them back. By getting fed and sheltered again of course.

It was so nice to see them again (I didn’t get to catch up with the same daughter, rather a sister and her husband Bill). Around the dinner table Shelagh recollected that she had taken me in in Italy because I had come across charming and cute. All heads turn towards me to try and understand for the life of them what she could possibly have meant. I nod in agreement.

The area we had to commando around

The next day Bill takes us all to his favourite spot. A 50ft cliff jump into glacier cold water. If this wasn’t daring enough, the site had since been bought off by a development agency, which was patrolled 24 hours a day. We had to do a commando past the armed security, diving in and out of bushes, probably past cougars and bears to get to the cliff.

When two of them had jumped off I knew I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t go through with it, though it was the single scariest thing I have ever done. Mark went last and landed awkwardly. He was instantly paralysed. We thought he was a gonner. I couldn’t stop laughing.

4 daring heroes

We had to commando our way back out, this time coming fractions away from getting caught, but my army communications to the group pulled off and got us back to the car unscathed. Bill had to rush back to work, so we headed off to Canmore and Banff.

Mark can barely stand, his back hurts so much

Massive on the tourist map, we only really passed through these winter wonderlands. No one can deny how breathtaking it was. Near Banff we heard of some hot springs, but the boys refused to pay 7 dollars to wallow in “Pool” as they called it. We would find some wild hot springs somewhere instead.

The area around the cliff jump - beautiful Ceebey

The last stop we made in Alberta was a visit to Lake Louise where we warmed our bones with our usual meal – a sachet of noodles and boiling water. We weren’t at all prepared for the high altitude weather. After all, (Jim Carrey Voice “We’re in the Rockies”).

Full on noodles in Lake Louise

Needless to say, I froze that night, only surviving it because of a blanket that Shelagh had given me.

Lake Louise

The second highest waterfalls in Canada are your first attraction when crossing over into Beautiful British Colombia. Total height of 384m the Takakkaw Falls are fed by the Daly Glacier on top of the mountain.

Takakkaw Falls

Takakkaw falls river

Known as the “other lake”, (referring to the popularity of Lake Louise), Emerald Lake is every bit as enchanting as its counterpart. I overheard a tour guide saying that “The Edge” was filmed in the area, and not in Alaska where it’s set. You could easily imagine you were in Alaska.

Emerald Lake

We had heard from someone about some secret wild hot springs down in the Kootenays. To get there we had to drive away from the Rockies and into the next mountain range – the Columbia Mountains. After 2 hours, we were to take a free ferry across the Upper Arrow Lakes, then ask the locals to let us in on the secret location.

The ferry guy, after making sure no one could hear us, whispered the following instructions: Drive past two bridges, take a left onto a dirt road and drive 11km. Walk left into the forest for 10 minutes and you will arrive at the natural wild hot springs.

Free ferry from Shelter Bay to Galena Bay

We came across a crazy naked guy who took us to a secret location WITHIN this secret location. Lucky us!

To appease Glen, we all went naked and dipped our travel weary bodies into 3 pools of deliciously piping hot spring water, coming from the ground. Just behind us we can hear a waterfall crashing down into the freezing glacier stream beside us, which is full of spawning salmon.

Another guy, David from Switzerland, helped Glen collect wood for a fire while we prepared our tent. Glen supplied all the alcohol for an evening of lying naked under the stars and sharing secrets in the hot tub.

David and the fire beside the hot springs

The next day we all head out together in the direction of hippy town Nelson, but don’t quite make it. We had picked up a hitchhiker on the way, who had invited us all back to his farm for lunch.

Brent's family

It turns out Brent and his family, were entirely self sufficient, living totally off the fat of the land. Dinner came straight from the garden; Mark helped pick the beans, while I was out chopping wood. Simon was making a kitten house with the kids. Invariably, I had been calling Mark a “City Slicker” throughout our trip. We all walked away from that experience humbled and enlightened.

Brent's farm in the Slocan Valley
Playing with the kids (of course they have no TV or anything like that

On the way to Vancouver we stopped off at the Okanagan Valley. The wine capital of Canada, we tried some surprisingly good wines. The valley is famous for having the only desert in Canada, and the scene of most of the seasonal fruit-picking.

In a town called Penticton, two lakes are joined together by a man made channel, which we went down on Tubes, drinking beer and telling more secrets. Glen lost again, but fresh out of secrets his forfeit was attempting a handstand which he failed miserably, falling back into the channel.

Tubing the Channel between Skaha and Okanagan Lakes

A last night of camping in the wild before a final journey in our car across Manning National Park, which was so smoky due to nearby massive forest fires in Washington State. Sadly the car was due back in Vancouver. But not before we had clocked up over 5500km. Fortunately we had unlimited miles.

Our last night of camping with bears (Mark caught with his knickers down)

We reach the Pacific at Wreck Beach, Glen’s favourite and of course a nudist beach just outside downtown Vancouver. Watching the sunset over the Ocean I ask Simon if he realizes he has just driven from the Atlantic to the Pacific at the widest point of the Americas. He looks on in silence. We both felt like pioneers.

Two young pioneers