Deve’s Blog

(last pictures!)

After leaving Banff, we had a whole day of travel ahead of us, with not a lot of things to see after the “indigestion” of the previous days… The destination for the day was Vernon, a pleasant city in British Columbia, renowned for… well, not much I think… for us, it was merely a night stop, no point in lying. But we had to get back to Vernon somehow, right?

Along the way we stopped first to visit some anonymous waterfalls (I honestly can’t remember the name), then at the observation point for Big Hill Spiral Tunnels, two tunnels in an 8-shape that allow trains to climb a remarkable height without an excessively steep slope… nice, but unfortunately if there’s no train going through there’s not much to see… The main highlights of the following two stops were a nice squirrel, peeking from a hole in the asphalt of the stop area, and a nice ice-cream in a local farm / ice-cream shop. Then we got to Vernon and the day was over!

Ok, not quite, in Vernon we had an included Chinese dinner, not so great honestly (and please tell me: if I’m visiting Canada, why are the included dinners spaghetti, pizza, Chinese… which have nothing to do with Canada?!). Then we set up our own party in one of the hotel rooms, high-school trip style, with a bit of booze from the supermarket in front of the hotel, as we didn’t have many other options… fun things were Franck with an open umbrella, neck massage lessons and a few laughs together…

But let’s go on to the much more interesting day that followed, July 29th 2007, another day of… travel. Indeed we got to Vancouver maybe around 4 pm… During the trip we tried to spend some time with a couple of movies, if I remember correctly “40-year-old Virgin” and… hmm, maybe “Road Trip“? Not sure…
Anyway, the optional for the last night (and I think almost everyone took it) was the dinner cruise, around Vancouver harbour… and despite a few clouds, finally even Vancouver greeted us with a nice sun at sunset, and the dinner was really pleasant. The boat was relatively small, so it was all for us; the food was not bad and then we spent the rest of the two or so hours taking silly pictures, laughing and enjoying the really beatiful view… Definitely a worthy conclusion of a fantastic tour…

After dinner Ron took us to a nightclub (I think it was the Roxy even if I’m not so sure) where we spent the last part of the evening… It was great when they played “Home for a Rest” by Spirit of the West, another song we heard often during the trip, and in order to start dancing all together in a circle I accidentally hit Louis, whose beer ended up on the floor… “My drink man!”…

After some goodbyes to the people who were leaving town early, we headed back to the hotel, and those who stayed another day, like me, decided to meet for lunch. So in the morning I went for a nice walk in Vancouver downtown and harobur, very nice, and also got on the Harbour Tower to get a decent view.

After lunch and the last goodbyes, Mike and I were the only ones interested in visiting Grouse Mountain (other people stayed in Vancouver longer, so they would visit it later on), so we headed that way and after crossing the Vancouver Harbour with the efficient SeaBus, after a bus drive and a cable car climb, we finally got there… If during the winter Grouse Mountain is a ski resort, during the summer it’s a nice place for a walk, to look closely at the Grizzlies of the reserve, to see a cool exhibition of trained raptors and the great lumberjacks show. The show was really fun and spectacular, unfortunately my camcorder battery ran out right at the end of it…

On the way back I say goodbye to Mike, who had to catch his plane in the evening, and stopped by the Capilano Suspension Bridge, a 137-metre-long suspended bridge; it’s not bad, but it’s not as impressive as you’d expect, and everything is handled in a super-touristy way. The park which includes the bridge has some other attractions, but nothing exceptional. Ron told us it wouldn’t be that good, and that there was another similar bridge (but totally free) in another area of vancouver, but this one was right along the way, so I went for it. Anyways, it was nice enough.

The last objective of my day was going back up the Harbour Tower (the ticket allowed two entrances, one in the day and one in the evening), to enjoy the view at sunset and at night… and this time my camera ran out of juice, although only after I managed to take many shots…
And on the following day, airport… for three flights to get back, a day of pause and a new destination, Ireland… but that’s another story…

And so I came to the end of this “travel diary”, unfortunately after a good 3 years… This was my first experience with a tour of this kind, which works for “lone” travellers, and I was very satisfied. You get all the comfort of not having to worry about transportations and lodging, but still you get a decent flexibility (free days or half days, optional excursions etc.). Furthermore, Contiki is targeted at the 18-35, so finding someone to have fun with together is a given, and the “international” component is certainly a big plus. Franck, Sabrina, Luciana, Louis, Andrea, Carina, Mike, Bear, Jeff, Scott and all the others were fantastic travel mates…

Actually, so far that is still my only Contiki tour, both because of a bit of bad luck (booking at the last minute, when you are forced to go through a CTS booking office, doesn’t always pay off…) and because with the exception of a few recently added trips in Asia, all of the Contiki tours are in “western” countries: Canada, USA, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. Having visited Canada, I’ve already seen a good deal of the US, quite a lot of Europe, while for Australia and New Zealand it’s not easy to have the right amount of time in the right time of the year… So in the last 3 years I used GAP Adventures, that organizes tours of all kinds in all the continents, and that in comparison with Contiki has the advantage of the reduced size of the group (15-16 people max), but the “disadvantage” (although it never was that for my trips) of not having an age limit.

And I’d really like to “recover” my travel diaries, as I’m also trying to do with my pictures… Peru, Cuba, China, Egypt… let’s try. Although actually, before that I’d have to start with Ireland…