VanAussie Daily

Hopkins Landing

Tuesday, March 22nd, 2011

Forgive me readers, for I have sinned. It has been many days since my last blog post. This is because we’re into to our last two weeks here in Canada and there is just way too much to do in our last small amount of time here.

One thing we did do two weekends ago was escape to Hopkins Landing, which is only a single ferry ride away from Vancouver and right at the very south end of “the sunshine coast”, but it may as well be a world away when you’re whiling the time away in front of the gas fire and the stars are peeking in through the skylights.

The sunshine coast is called that because apparently it gets more sun than Vancouver annually, and its a favourite escape point for Vancouverites. We chose Hopkins Landing as it was so easy to get to and we could walk to our holiday cabin from the ferry… We sold our truck a few months ago, so we’re down to public transport and our feet for getting ourselves around.

The cabin we rented was fantastic. Grand views across the water to the back side of Cypress Mountain, framed by Gambier island on our left and Keats and Bowen island on our right. You may have read my blog post from where we climbed up Mt Gardener on Bowen island this time last year. To save me describing the cabin in great detail, here’s a collage of the interior, taken using the Autostitch iPhone app.

Here’s a sunrise view from out the front:

After spending three nights at this place we didn’t want to leave…

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Taipei, Taiwan

Sunday, January 16th, 2011

So this is another of our previous trips, except I realised after I wrote the last one that I didn’t quite go back to the start of our adventures – I forgot the stopover that we had in Taiwan on the way over here.

Like most Aussies heading to Canada, we were on a budget for our flights. And by budget I mean “cheapest possible”. And little did we know that doing it on the cheap would actually net us a little adventure before we even started our lives in Canada! Checking out the flights before we booked, the cheapest flights were mostly through Los Angeles, however the cheapest of them all was actually flying China Air and went through Taipei. So we picked that, then found out that it had a stopover. For close to 30 hours. Wait, what? It was okay though, as the airline laid on a hotel so really it was like a free trip to Taiwan.

Our knowledge of Taiwan pretty much extended to the “made in” tags that you find on a lot of toys and electronics, and the firm knowledge that it was a stinky smoggy city, right? Oh well, worth the explore.

We flew in late at night after a close to 10 hour flight from Melbourne or Sydney, can’t remember which. Not knowing our way around we grabbed a cab and told him where we were going – “The Liz”. Sounded pretty upmarket! So we drove for ages, to the point where we thought we were going round in circles as the island wasn’t that big, was it? But I’d looked into it a tiny bit before we left and found that it was a little way from the airport to where our hotel was, so we trusted the dude and carried on. Even after he filled up with gas/petrol. Even when he started radio’ing in to hq to see if anyone knew where “The Liz” was. We had an address, but that didn’t seem to help. Eventually after fighting our way up and down a couple of alleys he found the hotel and dropped us off. We checked in and were shown to our room in the basement. It was reasonable enough, slight smell of mould, but it sure was an adventure We crashed to sleep after the long flight.

Next morning we got up and went upstairs to help ourselves to the complimentary buffet breakfast. Holy crap, I don’t think I’ve ever felt so “westernized” as when I was trying to work out what to have for breakfast. Nothing was really recognisable apart from what was maybe eggs, but we dug in anyway and found it was reasonably good. We were sitting opposite some Taiwanese who lived in the US but regularly came back and they gave us some pointers for the day. After breakfast we grabbed a tourist map from the front desk and went out to experience the city. Here’s a quick pictorial guide to some of the stuff we got up to that day:

On reflection, it was an amazing opportunity to get a free stay in Taiwan, but it actually showed how unprepared we were for the stay. We didn’t really know what to do or see, and just grabbed a map and walked. We were lucky enough that we stumbled on The Palace Museum and Danshui township, but next time I’d like to be a little more prepared and know a thing or two. I guess it’s a little reflection on the difference between my mindset three years ago versus one that is now used to traveling to various places for short periods of time… I’ve got my ex-work to thank for that.

In short, if you’ve got the time and you get a free stop over, take advantage of it!

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Come and get it!

Tuesday, October 5th, 2010

When you’re leaving a place that you have called home for a couple of years, the inevitable happens- you have to shed all the valuable possessions, whittling down your stuff till you can fit it all back into the two bags you came over with. Either that or pay through the nose for shipping.

So, it is with great regret that I must give away one of my most prized possessions, one of the pertinent reminders of my homeland. It can be yours too if:

A. Your Australian enough.
B. You can pick it up in Vancouver.

What is it? My preciousssss…

Yes, that’s right folks, you are looking at a larger-than-life size corflute Coopers bottle sign, and it makes the perfect addition to any Aussie flat in Vancouver – show off your Aussie pride!

If you want it, “git yer Ocker on” in the comments – post up your favourite Aussie sayings or whatever… I’m willing to bet there won’t be much competition, but points will be awarded for creativity

Hell, even if you don’t want it or you’re not in Vancouver or don’t want the sign then feel free to post up anyway! Just let me know you’re not serious… I’ll even kick it off – see below

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Posted in Downtown Vancouver, Musings, travel | 6 Comments »

We’re going home + Powell River & Vancouver Island Circle Trip

Wednesday, August 25th, 2010

With the boys now at home and occupying most of my spare time and pretty much 100% of Nat’s time, we’ve realised a couple of things:

1. Having twins with no family support around is rather tough
2. With kids, you can kiss any sort of reliable spare time good by
3. With young babies, getting out of the house takes lots of planning, and longer trips are pretty much out of the question for the time being
4. Those folks who reminisce about the “new baby smell” have glossed over the more pungent memories of sour milk and poop.

SO with the above and a few other things in mind, we’ve decided to head back to Tassie next April (2011). It wasn’t a decision that we took lightly, but in the end it wasn’t that hard – the support and having the kids grow up around their grandparents (free babysitting!) pretty much made up our minds plus the cheaper cost of living available in Tassie. I’ll also be taking my job home with me, so that’s another plus, as there won’t be that horrible job searching part.

In light of all this, there won’t be many exciting trip stories to tell, just burping and pooping stories which you’ll find on the boys blog, plus tidbits from my life around Vancouver. So I’ve decided that to make this blog a more complete memory of our time here in Vancouver, I’m going to go back through all the trips that we’ve done previously and stick them in here for posterity. I hope you enjoy the ride and they inspire some of you to get out and about. My particular favourites are the trips to Oregon, Tofino on Vancouver Island and Nahatlatch, which is in the Fraser Canyon (kinda), about 5 hours east of Vancouver, but we’ve actually been to a surprising amount of places in our time here… enjoy!

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Vancouver – Sunshine Coast – Powell River – Courtenay/Comox – Nanaimo – Vancouver round trip

Looking at that title, that seems like a hell of a lot of places to visit and a fair bit of distance to travel, but we did it all in the space of a weekend not long after we got to Vanco (more…)

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Posted in In and around BC, Previous trips (memory lane), scenery, travel, Twins | 1 Comment »

Just added a new blog to the CanAussie.com network :)

Friday, August 13th, 2010

I’m excited, as I’ve just linked up a new blog to the CanAussie.com network of blogs. This one is by Grant and Gen, some friends of ours from Tassie, and they’re off on a big trip around the world, stopping by in Canada for a few months this winter to help change diapers… I mean, to experience the winter season and probably do a ski season at one of the resorts close to Vancouver.

They are current in South America and have just visted a glacier that is growing at a rate of 2 meters a day. How cool is that?! It’s not often you hear about a glacier that is actually growing, and from the pictures it certainly looks a lot fresher than the ones we’ve got here in Canada, at least in the southern regions.

Check out their blog, book mark it, and, if you’re like me, live vicariously through their travels!

http://grantandgen.canaussie.com/

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Posted in scenery, travel | 1 Comment »

Point Roberts

Tuesday, April 6th, 2010

Over the weekend we had to renew Nat’s working holiday permit as we’re coming up to having been here for two years. The line ups at the main border crossing, Peace Arch, south of Vancouver, are usually hideous on long weekends, so this being the Easter weekend we decided to visit the geographical oddity that is Point Roberts.

South of Tsawassen, which is south of Vancouver, Point Roberts is a peninsula under USA rule that is not actually attached to the US mainland. If a resident of Point Bob wanted to get to Seattle by car, they would have to drive over the Canadian border, along to the Peace Arch crossing, then south from there.

PB was created in the 1846 treaty between the then British government of the Canadian region and the Yank government when they decided to cut north America up along the 49th paralell. You can read up on it on wikipedia, but basically after the fact they realized that there was a little bit seperated from the mainland in the west coast. Oops.

Here’s some pics from our trip down there:

Actually, I lied. I didn’t take any pics as it was boring as hell. We drove around for about 20 minutes before realising it was almost a ghost town and we probably weren’t going to find somewhere interesting for dinner. Their main industries seem to be gas (petrol) and post boxes, catering for Canadians coming down for cheap gas and to avoid costly cross borders shipping prices.

It’s supposed to be quite pretty during the summer, and I can see that, but on a spring afternoon, you could see the tumbleweeds rolling across the road.

Where is the benefit for traveling Aussies on a WHP? The Canadian border post there is a full service crossing, and the very short border wait times make it a great place to renew your work permit if you have a car to get down there and don’t want to frig around with the real border.

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Victoria, BC

Tuesday, January 19th, 2010

This is a quick flashback to January 1/2, when (due to various reasons, including cocked up flights) I arrived at the airport in Vancouver then had to quickly bolt home to Yaletown, grab some overnight stuff for Nat and myself, jump in our trusty 4Runner Rusty, and head to the ferry to pick up Nat. Nat was on a direct flight from Cancun to Victoria thanks to a cheap Westjet deal, which was way better than the flights she had originally.

I wanted to get to the 7pm ferry so I’d have plenty of time to piss fart around then pick up Nat from the airport, however that had sold out by the time I got there, and I had to hang out for the 9pm ferry… dang! Here’s my amazingly entertaining view for that period of my life:

Luckily, I arrived about 10 minutes before she disembarked at about 10.45pm or so, then we hightailed it into Victoria itself to some accommodation that I’d booked a few weeks before through www.hotwire.com, and I’d used their system where they don’t tell you what sort of hotel you got in the end, only the star rating. Lucky, as it turned out to be an amazingly nice hotel, and we got it for about $70 or so! The places name was Inn at Laurel Point, and if you’re heading over there for a weekend their normal rates seemed pretty reasonable and the rooms were really nice.

Here’s our view at night:

And the same one the next day:

Victoria itself is a pretty nice little town, and “feels” older than Vancouver with lots of really nice old stone buildings. It’s the Capital of BC, so there are parliament buildings, a cool hotel on the water there in the picture and a variety of other interesting stuff. I can see why people would rather live there than Vancouver, as it has much of what Van offers, but with more of a “small town” atmosphere. It’s only an hour and a half on the ferry between the two cities, and you can even get a sea plane between the two if you’re feeling well off

We couldn’t hang around on the Sunday morning as we wanted to get back home to clear our heads after the Mexico trip, but I would like to spend more time in Victoria next time we’re over there.

As a side note, the weather here has been abnormally warm of late, hovering around about 8 – 10 degrees C, which isn’t particularly good news for the mountains on the North Shore and the skiing they offer, and Cypress will be hosting some events for the Winter Olympics, so they’ve actually closed early to hoard snow at higher levels in case they need it for the activities they’re putting on. We’ve also been getting buckets of rain… I imagine if it had been colder, say in the negatives, all that rain would have been snow… the city would have been chaos!

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Phoenix, Arizona

Wednesday, January 13th, 2010

One of the things you dread when flying is those words: “your flight has been canceled.” Great. Now what do I do?

This happened to me on the way back from Mexico, and they actually canceled my second flight, so I was marooned in Phoenix for the evening and flew out to Vancouver at 2.30 the next day. Still, they gave me a hotel (quite a nice one) and a WHOLE $10 to spend on dinner… which I actually kept for lunch the next day at the airport and went out with a couple of fellow maroon-ees who were in the same position as me, one of which turned out to be Canadian Olympic level windsurfer Zac Plavsic – shout out to him for the beer that I still owe him!

I had a whole morning to myself the next day, so I asked the question, “What do I do with a spare morning in Phoenix?” I can’t really venture too far, but I wouldn’t mind seeing some of the town. The lady at the front desk in the morning recommended a little coffee area a couple of stops away on the light-rail (which was quite cool). As I arrived at the area I saw this:

So I figure, what the hell, grabbed a coffee and started wandering up there in between all the different fitness clubs and trainers who were using it to beat the crapola out of their trainees. Yay, lets run up as fast as we can! You’d almost think they’d never seen a hill before…

It is a steep little walk, but the view from the top is pretty amazing:

After finishing off my coffee I wandered back down and into the supposedly trendy district. It was quiet. Real quiet. Then I realized that I was actually in the University District on a Saturday morning, so of course nothing was going to happen till everyone recovered from their hangovers. Not only that, I was pretty close to the downtown part of Tempe, Arizona rather than Phoenix. Finding nothing more to entertain me here, I decided to go see downtown Phoenix, so hopped back on the light rail, buzzed back past my hotel and into downtown.

Quiet here too. Apart from the bum who looked at my Granville Island Brewery t-shirt and asked what I did at Granville Prison…

Still, they’ve got a big pigeon catcher in their park

I found a market, which was cool but I had no American dollars on me so it was a bit moot really, then I stuck my head into the baseball pitch upon the recommendation of one of their tourist guides as “a really cool thing to do”.

I then headed for the airport with a bunch of time to spare. This was only really a brief skim over what took me 4 hours to do, but it was really interesting to have a wander around the town, and it’s actually quite nice – weather was great too! It even goes to show that you can take advantage of layovers… there’s always something to see

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Coba, Mexico

Tuesday, January 12th, 2010

In between slumming it on the beach in Tulum, we decided to head up to Coba, which is about an hour or so inland (north-west if you’re being picky) from Tulum by bus. What a good move that was! It ended up being one of my favourite parts of the trip, so this post might end up being longer than your average bear

We got up EARLY in the morning, like 7.30am or something hideous like that, in order to make it to the 9am bus. Breakfast dragged on (they were on Mexican time), but we still got there with plenty of time. Except that the front gates to the bus station were closed when we got there… what? There was like, four other buses prior to ours leaving? Turns out that all seats on the bus had sold out, and that was their method of telling people to not even bother trying to get tickets.

So we purchased tickets for the next bus and hung out at the bus station for a while. All that spare time we had would probably give me a good chance to quickly relate the Mexican bus system to you… it’s great! It makes the American Greyhound bus system look like a clapped out 1950′s bus packed with Indians on a mountain pass somewhere on the way to Tibet! Well, not quite that bad, but you get the picture. Lots of buses, the choice between 2nd class (good, air-con may not be working, lots of stops) and 1st class (great, air con, very modern coaches, few if any stops, clean, pretty much always on time etc) and pretty much always predictable, particularly (as we found out) that they will most likely sell out of spots at busy times like Christmas and Public holidays.

So we hopped on the bus a little after 10 (not much of a wait really), sat in the ice cold air con for an hour or so, then jumped off into the warm jungle heat after passing by a lake filled with alligators. Man, it was warm in the sun! We headed to the entrance to the Coba historic site, grabbed our tickets adter a surprisingly short wait in line, and were off. Short hike up a small hill, and we were at the bottom of the first pyramid, known as the Coba Group Pyramid.

We must have arrived just after a cruise ship, as there was a bunch of people hanging around getting tours from various guides. We decided not to guide US$45 for the privilege) and just read through a couple of different guide books we had, plus we planned on renting a tricyclo later on, and they usually come with a bit of a guided tour.

The site itself is split up into several different groupings, all joined by ancient roads the Mayans constructed to get between the groupings, mostly dead straight and with some up to two hundred and forty something miles long. It’s pretty amazing to look at, particularly considering they built all of this without beasts of burden or the wheel. Must have had a lot of man power to throw at it.

After perusing the Coba group for a bit and checking out the small training ball court there, we headed over to where we could rent that tricyclo with its knowledgeable guide, got pointed to our guy, hopped on, and we were away! If you’re ever in the area, I’d really suggest renting one of these – it’s basically a bike on the back with two front wheels and a bench seat in between. To be chauffeured between sites with the wind in your face, winding through red faced tourists on their bikes and those brave enough to tackle the walk on foot, it was so worth it!

One downfall was our dude didn’t speak English. Or at least nothing past the usual nods and grunts and “I be here” when you were off discovering some new ruin. Of course, this didn’t stop him from trying, and it was really heartfelt as he pointed out something in Spanish and we knew there was something of importance there, but not quite what, at least till we looked in the guide book.

First stop was the Nohoc Mul Pyramid, the tallest pyramid in the Yucatan Peninsula at 48m tall, and the only one you’re still allowed to climb.

Standing at the bottom we heard all the other tourists saying how hard it was, so we psyched ourselves up and waited for a cloud to roll over – it was still quite hot in the sun – then headed for it, moseyed up in no time, and took in the amazing view.

You can just see the top of a pyramid in the center of the greenery. One of the amazing things I find is that this is the picture from almost the same spot looking over the back side of the pyramid.

The jungle comes right to the top, and its only because they cleared the temple of trees on top that they aren’t encroaching any further. Makes you think there must be so much out there in the jungle undiscovered.

After spending a bit of time at the top we decided to head down.

Although it was a little trickier than on the way up, most capable people should be able to manage it without too much of a sweat and on their own two legs… Here’s a pic of Nat picking her way down between the bumsliders.

Once down we recuperated, found our tricyclo (“number nueve!”), and headed off to the next site, the Crossroads Temple, which was the one we could see the tip of from the top of the Nohoc Mul Pyramid.

This was so called because it stands in the middle of an intersection between a couple of the longest of those long straight roads I mentioned before. It was pretty cool because of its rounded finish, something that’s not so common.

Next stop was a ball court for the ancient mesoamerican ballgame.

This next picture puts its scale into a bit more perspective, but it’s nowhere near the biggest court for the sport – Chichen Itza holds than honour, and its court is way bigger.

Following this we found our tricyclo again and headed on to the next stop, along the way working out what “bees nest” is in Spanish, not that I could tell you now what it was for the life of me of course. We rounded out our chauffeured journey with a stop at the Paintings Group, so called because this main temple still has some of the amazingly coloured and detailed drawings that used to decorate the outsides of the buildings contained within the room on top. No tourists can look in there of course, but you can catch a glimpse from the bottom.

Here’s Nat on the tricyclo, ready for the last leg back to the starting point.

Once back at the start, we paid off our dude, or at least the dudes pimp (he could actually just have been their main money holder/changer), then headed back over to the main Coba Group Pyramid as before to catch a breather before heading out as well as to soak up some of the jungle ambiance, seeing as we somehow managed to lose the cruise ship along the way.

We then headed out, grabbed lunch, then realised that we had another couple of hours to spare, so decided to find a cenote after reading that there was a couple of cool ones in the area. We found a taxi, said “cenote”, and he nodded then fired down a potholed backroad for 6 k’s or so, we paid a dude in a box for some tickets, then went another few hundred meters down a gravel road and found this:

We were half way down the steps when a guy yelled at us… we hadn’t showered, whoops! Quick shower, then we headed down the steps

While we were expecting a collapsed cenote like we had swum in the other day, it was actually a proper limestone cavern one, and it was absolutely amazing! Round, about 30 meters across and about 35 meters high with the bottom 10 to 15 meters filled with water, it had a rise in the center that you could clamber on and a wooden dock on one side. Stalactites clung to some low overhangs and I could have swum there all day! The only inhabitants were some small catfish, a mexican family having great fun, and another couple. Unfortunately the pics didn’t really show up well as we didn’t think to prop somewhere and get a good long capture low light pic, but let your imagination do the walking.

We splashed around in there for a while, then unfortunately had to catch a taxi back into town to get our bus back to Tulum… should have booked a later bus!

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