The trip of a lifetime

Hola! (That's Spanish for 'how do!!')

As promised, we had an early night in preparation for our coach trip into the Rockies!! We woke early and checked out of the hostel and waited for the bus to turn up. When it finally arrived we met out driver (Sara) and a couple of others also travelling with us towards Banff and the Rockies. The Moose tour is pretty much the same system as the Stray Bus we took in New Zealand. As we made our way out of the city of Vancouver it began to get a little greener and a few mountains sprang into view on the horizon! Throughout the day we made various stops in order to take some photos (which just seemed to get better as the day went on!) and we were always on constant alert to try and spot some wildlife (which Sara was always extremely excited about!!). We visited such places as Bridal Veil Falls and Hope (where the film 'Rambo: First Blood' was filmed) before arriving at our first over night stop at Shuswap Lake. A nice hostel about 5 minutes from the Lake and a very cheap food option! Burgers!! We had a few drinks in the hostel bar and began getting to know the other travellers on our tour.

The following morning we all woke early to pack up the coach and head out on the road again. Today's highlights were Craigellachie (The place where the trans-continental railway was completed and the final spike in the track was hammered in back in 1885. Over in the States at this point in history Marty McFly and Doc Brown were dodging bullets in the Wild West trying to get Marty back to the future!!). Next stop was Roger's Pass to view spectacular mountain ranges and glaciers. Here we stoped at an information centre to learn about avalanches through the Pass and how they are now controlling them. Afer hopping back on the bus, we then went to the Emerald Lake for a short walk before finally making our way to our second over night stop - Banff! The Banff National Park is the third national park to be established worldwide, Yosemite in the States being the first and Royal in Australia the second. In the evening we made our way into the town centre for a couple of drinks at a club and then back to the hostel to sleep.

On the third day, our destination was Jasper, but befoe we got there we had a full day of sight seeing through the heart of the Canadian Rockies! The first stop was the magnificent Lake Louise for some truely awesome photos! We stuck around for a while soaking up both the view and the sun! As we progressed we drove through the Icefields Parkway, up the Big Bend (a huge bend in the road carved into the side of the mountain to reduce the steep incline). We stopped at the top for more photos of the U-shaped valley (U-shaped valleys are carved by glaciers whereas V-shaped valleys are carved by rivers!) and then continued on to through the Columbia Icefield to Tangle Falls for some funny group pictures! We then visited the townsville of Jasper to stock up on food for the evening meal. Tonight we are staying out in the wilderness! It took 20 minutes to get from jasper to the "hostel". We say it like this as it was basically 3 cabins in the woods with a communal area for cooking and relaxing. That evening after we cooked, we built a fire in the woods and sang songs and talked until everyone was tired enough to head off to bed. Everything had to be kept inside (especially food) as bears we close by!! After the encouragement of a couple of beers, our host (Sasha, who is a guy despite his name) invited us to join him for an early morning swim! Naturally we agreed and left it at that.

We didn't wake up early enough for the swim...or so we thought!! Sasha marched onto the bus (as we were about to leave) and demanded that we get our swimming shorts and get our backsides down to the river. So much for thinking we'd wriggled out of doing it! So there was us two, Sasha, Aisha and Dov all preparing for the plunge. You have to keep in mind at this point that this is a glacial river in the heart of the Rockies, it's gonna be cold...almost freezing! We guessed at the temperature to be somewhere in the region of 2-4 degrees celcius! One by one we waded into the river which, to the delight of the various spectators, was just as cold as we were anticipating! The only problem is that we had come this far and there was no turning back without looking completely cowardly!! Nothing can really prepare you for something as foolish but euphorically cleansing as it was. Again one by one we took the plunge, Aisha first, then Matt, then Sasha, then Dov (who almost got carried off downstream before banging into Ric) and finally Ric went under. As we mentioned it was quite an experience which gave an intense rush of adrenaline and a jump start to the immune system to try and get your body back to normal operating temperature. Photos were taken and there's even a video for your viewing pleasure! As we got dry and dressed we then got back to the coach and headed off to the Athabasca Falls. Incidentally the falls we only five minutes upstream of where we had just been for a swim! They were truely awesome and we spent quite a while admiring them. Our next stop was at Peyto Lake after viewing the Stutfield Glacier from the side of the road. Of all the sights seen so far on this tour of the Rockies, this has to take first prize!! Named after "Wild" Bill Peyto, it is the most amazing shade of blue you have ever seen!! It seemed almost impossible for anything else to be able to top this (and we were right!) but what came next was pretty close! We visited Moraine Lake and as we clambered onto a huge pile of rocks the lake opened up in front of us along with the "Valley of the Ten Peaks". We stuck around for a while as Sara gave us some history and interesting facts. As we made our way back down to the bus we hear an almighty crash of thunder! "Bizzare" we though due to the fact that there wasn't a single cloud in the sky and it was probably the hottest day of our Rockies tour! As we looked around for the source of the noise we viewed a torrent of snow rolling down the mountain side directly in front of us!! An amazing sight and topped of a great day! We had all decided earlier in the day (following our frozen swim) to indulge ourselves in the Banff hot springs! Quite the contrast to experience both extreme cold (3 degrees) and then just bareable hot (39 degrees) within the space of 12 hours!! After the springs we headed up to the Banff Springs Hotel (one of the many hotels owned globally by the Fairmont Group that also own The Savoy in London). Its a fantasticly designed building that mirrors and oversized European Chalet one would find in the Alps! That evening we said our fairwells to those who were leaving the next day as we had decided to stay in Banff for two nights before heading back to Vancouver.

We woke at our leisure after a busy few days and decided it was time to sort out our lives in teh form of some personal admin! Due to the fact that it is the height of summer in the States it was necessary to plan and book for the remaining days of our trip to the finest detail! Like a couple of professional travel agents we planned every detail, booked hostels, hotels, overnight buses to save money on unnecessary hostels and waisting the precious days we have left. We also burned photo CD's and did our laundry!! An extremely successful day which lifted a tremendous weight off our shoulders and allowed us to relax a little.

After yesterdays successful admin we treated ourselves to a mountain walk (Tunnel Mountain) and a walk around town (to pick up our Greyhoud coach tickets) and also up to the Bannf Springs Hotel to take some pictures and walk around the grounds, al the while basking in the sun and success of the previous day's accomplishments! On our mountain walk we stumbled into Dov and he joined us. We did a huge loop of the hotel grounds and back to the town via the river path and the Bow River Falls. As we got back to the hostel we retreived our bags from storage and made our way back into town to the bus depot and waited patiently for the coach to arrive. The journey was pretty uneventful (12 hours of a journey with limited stops!) The trip ended up back in Vancouver at around 8am the following day. We couldn't check into the hostel until 3pm so we had a walk around Vancouver, down to the beach and then bought supplies for our tea. That evening we met up with Tom (who we met last time in Vanvouver) and had a couple of farewell drinks.

The following morning we woke and checked out of the hostel and went to the local deli for some sandwich supplies for our coach trip in the afternoon. We made our way to the Greyhound depot for about half one and again waited patiently. We jumped un the coach and prepared oursleves for the 25 hour journey ahead! Again, it wasn't particularly eventful other than the fact that our driver from Seattle to Sacramento got lost getting out of Seattle, missed the junction for Olyimpia, couldn't work the air-conditioning properly and (we were convinced) was probably halfway through a bottle of gin!!

We arrived in San Francisco at around 4:30pm and managed to get to our hostel safely on the public transport. On the bus down from Vancouver we made frineds with two english girls who were also making the long journey to San Fran and we arranged that we would meet them near their hostel for a drink and some food. They are staying a LONG way from our hostel, on foot anyway, in the Mexican area of San Fran. As per the saying "when in Rome" we met them in a Mexican bar/restaurant and had Tapas for tea. After food we hit another couple of bars for a final drink before making the dicision that we wouldn't walk back so we jumped in a taxi! We had agreed with them to meet the following day at 11am (ish) to get onto the Alcatraz Tour.

In true Matt and Ric style, we were on time for our rendezvous with a quick ride on the famous San Fran cable cars to the harbour. We arrived a Pier 33 with no sign of the girls and hit with the crushing news that the tours were all booked up for the next 4 days!! Utterly dissappointed we greedily indulged in a huge burritto and then took a walk back round the harbour to Fisherman's Wharf, down through North Beach and towards the Bay Bridge, snapping away like a Japanese tourist the whole way! We then made our way back to the hostel to chill out and cook food, via a sports bar for a jar of ale! A relatively early night as we had a huge walk planned for the following day.

We woke and prepared! We headed out of the hostel to Union Square and hopped on the cable car up to the harbour. From there we walked all the way to the Golden Gate Bridge, across it, took some photos, walked back across the bridge, back to the harbour, down through a residential area, up a VERY steep hill and down the famous "Crookedest Street", through North Beach again and down through China Town. It was an impressively long walk and we relaxed in the late afternoon after a pizza from the shopping centre. After a quick snooze (for Ric anyway!) we headed out to find a bar to have a drink. This took much longer than anticipated!! We sampled 2 bars before resting in the cellar of a Irish bar. The theme for the night was "Dueling Pianos"!! It was a fantastic evening where two guys would play song requests from the audience (attached to the paper requests were the obligatory dollar bills...the more you pay, the moer likely it is that your song will be played! Genius!) We thoroughly enjoyed the evening and the banter between the performers and the audience, just what we needed!

We had learned the other day that an old friend from Uni (Jodie) would be arriving in San Fran and we arranged to meet at a cafe in Union Square for a coffee and a chat! It was great to see her again and we arranged that we would meet up for Tea at the famous Cheesecake Factory on Union Square. After coffee we went down to Market Street to watch the Gay Pride Parade before they went off to the harbour for the Alcatraz Tour (they evidently knew that it was a popular attraction and booked in advance!). We spent the next few hours wandering the shops and then came back to the hostel to update you lovely lot on our recent escapades! We'll be off out for tea soon so Matt needs to go make himself pretty!

Adios Amigos!!!
xxx

P.S. This is probably the penultimate blog post before we arrive home in just 13 days time! We'll post again (hopefully) in L.A. and then once we get home there'll be a final summary of the 6 months as a closing chapter to "the trip of a lifetime"