Letter from... Canada

  Last week we visited Canada - a highschool friend of mine is living in Vancouver, so killing two birds with one stone, we went to Vancouver to see them and on the weekdays we visited the Canadian Rockies.
  Our flight was direct from Mexico City which was a relief after all the connections in the US to Japan. Also, Canada was relatively close, only 5.5 hours by plane. (A piece of cake compared to the 12-14 hours flights to Japan.)
   After getting off the plane we went to pick up our rental car - which finally messed up all our plans for the weekend, as even after 2 hours of waiting and quarreling at the rental shop, we couldn`t get a car... The Ace Rental Car was a very strange company - after arriving to them (outside of the airport), they told us they would took us to another place, because they hadn`t had any car at the place. So far it didn`t seem so strange (it happens), but than we arrived to a totally different rental car company where they wanted to give us a car twice the price we had reserved with Ace Rental Car. To me it seems as fraud, but as I am not a lawyer, I could only reason with them on the base of common sense: why they accept reservations online if they won`t ensure cars for the customers? Well, common sense hadn`t worked, so after a long flight and a long (unfruitless) wait for our car, we headed to downtown in a taxi where we had some delicious, fresh sushi before my friend picked us up.
   My friends are living in North Vancouver, just a few kilometers to the North from Vancouver. The road crosses the beautiful Stanley Park on the Western corner of the city and after a short drive on the highway you arrive to the suburban town of North Vancouver.

green suburban

   The city is quite and is at the foot to the woods, so the next morning we took a short walk in the nearby forest - it took only about 5 minutes among the houses to reach a trail that leads to an ecology center, and nice, wooden coffee near to a suspension bridge and trails over the bridge and the stream.

ths suspension bridge in North Vancouver

   The plan was to go visit Victoria the next day, but without car, we had to skip that and go to the airport the next day (again) to rent a car. This time we had more luck and in the afternoon we strolled around in the city: visited Gastown (the shopping area for tourists with its famous steam lamp), walked from there to the harbor at Canada Place where the seabuses and hydroplanes land.

Canada Place

   After lunch (of course, it was sushi again - a shabby looking, but turned-out to be extremely delicious place, called Hitoe Sushi) we walked around on Denman street which is full with restaurants and shops and leads to the beach. The weather was really nice, sunny and warm, but for me not hot enough to swim in the cold ocean.

English Bay beach

Even though, this weather (it was about 28 C) was so hot, a lot of people had enjoyed the nice weather on the beach - sunbathing, even swimming in the ocean. Even if you don`t swim, the beach is a little park with both sandy and grassy part and a lot of benches around to enjoy the view and the weather. This part of Vancouver reminded me of La Joya to the north of San Diego where the houses face nice beaches just across the streets. After a good walk in the city, before leaving to North Vancouver, we had dinner at the Fish House in Stanley Park. What is good in Vancouver is that there are many many restaurants (apparently Canadians love to eat out and try different types of food), and most of them are extremely delicious. The Fish House was no exception - it was an elegant restaurant with smaller portions (for me it was just the good size), but even more enjoyment to the tongue. The food was refined, the fish fresh and the service excellent. I really loved that place!

in Fish House

  On Monday we left early to the Canadian Rockies, as the distance from Vancouver to our destination, Canmore was 890kms. The trip finally took about 12 hours, because at places the highway was curvy and only 1 lane, but after a few hours of drive we reached the mountains and the drive was around flowery meadows and nice mountains, so the 12 hours hadn`t seem so long finally. Arriving to the Rockies, it turned out that the entrance for the National Parks are not for a week as in the US, but it is sold by days and one has to pay for every stop of the car within the National Park, no matter if it is only for 1 hour. Hearing this, we gave up to look around on the rest of the day and were also happy not to stay in Banff, as it is in the center of Banff National Park, we would had have to pay 40 CAD only for spending the night there. (Canmore is just outside the National Park, so we were "safe" for that night there.) Also, to me it seemed quite expensive paying 136 CAD for 2 people for 1 week, whereas in the US even in Yellowstone we paid 50 USD for the same period. I wonder why the Canadian government is not giving more allowance for the National Parks, if it is indeed called "National" Park. (Of course, everything is relative: compared to an entrance ticket to Disneyland, a 1-week pass to the nature might not seem so expensive for the same price.)
  Anyway, on this day we finally just drove all the way to Canmore, checked in to our hotel and just looked around a bit in the town. The whole town has a really good feeling - all the houses (even supermarkets, even McDonald`s!) have the same features of mountain lodges (steep roofs, wooden ornaments, earth colors) which gives a nice uniformity to the whole town. (Actually, I preferred this town than Banff - the latter was a bit over-touristicated, at least the center.)

our hotel in Canmore

  On Tuesday we drove to Banff (about 15kms from Canmore) to buy the park passes and start our journey in the Canadian Rockies. Unfortunately after the hot and sunny Monday, it became cloudy although this day we were planning to see the turquoise-blue mountain lakes: Lake Louise, Moraine Lake, Bow Lake.

Moraine Lake

But first we walked around in Banff a little - as I said, I preferred Canmore, as Banff is all about tourists and souvenirs. The houses are the same cute as in Canmore, but more concentrated in the city center and of course, everything is about tourism. So, if you would like to buy souvenirs, it is the best place to look around.

Banff downtown

We had lunch in Banff and left for the lakes. Lake Louise (maybe the most popular lake in this area) was just about half an hour from Banff. Thanks to the closeness of Banff and the huge hotel built on the shore of the lake, Lake Louise was packed with people! It was terrible! Like a nature`s Disneyland: there was a huge line for renting boats and you literally had to line up even for taking pictures! However, I have to admit, without the hotel and the crowd, the scenery would be beautiful as two mountains close above the turquoise lake.

Lake Louise and the crowd

   Moraine lake and Bow lake was much less crowded, but unfortunately due to the cloudy weather, was much less enjoyable as it could have been. So, we didn`t bother to take much time around these lakes, rather we took a little walk in the Johnston Canyon. The canyon`s trail goes along the Johnston Creek and leads to two waterfalls. We took the shorter trail to the lower falls, which was an easy 2km walk.

Johnston Canyon

lower waterfall

  This day we have already entered the land of the icefields, so on our way to our hotel (The Crossing) we saw a lot of glaciers and icefields (in the middle of the summer).

  The next day it was raining from the morning... we were planning to go to see the Columbia Icefield, so after checking the weather forecast (it forecasted the same weather for all week), we decided to go to the Icefields anyway. Fortunately at the Icefields (about 50kms from The Crossing hotel) it wasn`t raining, so we bought a ticket to the Icefields. A tour started in every 30 minutes and we were lucky only having to wait 10 minutes for the next.

the Icefield tour starts

   As it turned out, the tour wasn`t to the Icefields (which spreads to an amazing 200km2s), but to its "leg", the Athabasca Glacier. First a normal bus took us to the "gateway" of the glacier (just across the street), there we changed bus to a more robust bus that took us to the glacier. Altough the way up on the glacier was about 2kms, it took us 30 minutes. During this time our driver (Andrew) talked a lot of interesting things about the glacier.

up on the glacier

  Once we arrived, we had 15 minutes to walk around on the snowy-icy glacier. There was a little creek as well, and we could try glacier water. Well, Evian or Chrystal Geyser is nothing compared to that ice-cold water.

the beaver boardwalk

 As the weather stayed gloomy, we decided to go all the way up to Hinton. It was about 200kms, but was worth the drive, because up in the North is was warm and shiny. In Hinton there is a beaver-boardwalk. After getting instructions in the city`s information center, we headed to the boardwalk - it was just behind a residential area.
Apparently not even Canadians know much about it; by the time we got there (around 3pm), it was only us. The trails are around 3kms long, mainly going along the swampy lake where the beavers live. We were told they are more active in the evening and morning, but we only had to wait about 30 minutes to spot the first beaver. They started to work already in the afternoon - swimming in and out from their nest, taking branches to it. We spotted some little ones as well - which turned out to be a muskrat. Apparently, beavers and muskrats are relatives and can live together in peace. Actually, it seemed they are dividing the job pretty well: the beavers were taking branches while the much smaller muskrat cut grass and leaves to build the nest or to accumulate them as food for the winter.
   Walking around the trail we have seen various smaller and bigger dams built by the beavers. They are indeed the engineers of the nature! We`ve seen a trunk about 50cms in diameter that the beavers cut out - checking it after, apparently the beaver can cut down a 30cm diameter tree in just 10 minutes!

beaver at work

  We`ve been so amazed by the beavers, we ended up looking at them for 3 hours! (As they started to come out, they were coming and going in every 5-10 minutes.) On our way back to Canmore (about 380kms long drive) we saw 4 huge caribou deers and later at night a coyote. This was our best day in terms of animals!

caribou deers

   On our last day in the Rockies we took it slow: in the morning we went to the Banff hot springs.

Banff hot springs

After an hour of relaxation, we headed to our destination, Golden. On the way we stopped by the Emerald Lake and Natural Bridge.

Emerald Lake

Natural Bridge was a big rock stretching over a river with a hole inside. Literally a natural bridge.

Natural Bridge

We drove another 150kms to Golden. Thanks to that, the next day was a bit easier to get back to Vancouver. We left early in the morning and got to the city by early afternoon. Spent the rest of the day with our friends before leaving the next day back to Mexico.

For more pictures, click here! → Canada