Some pics of our apartment and the neighbourhood

Here are a few pictures of our apartment, the building and views from the beach down the road. 

 More will follow when we have finished furnishing and I've taken the car seats out of the lounge!

Lake Louise - the Canadian version

Before we talk more about our adventures, I just wanted to pause for a moment to reflect on Lake Louise.

As the Sherry troopers will rightly remember, Steven and I had to stay behind when a family skiing trip was organised to Banff National Park because it was during our first year of uni. We were - understandably - gutted.

Now I'm happy to say I've reached Lake Louise - the Canadian version of the "lake" at Crow's Nest. And this is how excited I was to be there...

Steven, you're now the only Sherry not to have had the pleasure of seeing this stunning spot. I'll take you when you come over...

CES

Heading for the hills

Our third week in Canada was spent on a 1,907 kilometre road trip of Bristish Columbia:  Vancouver to Whistler (day 1) to Wells Gray Provincial Park (day 2) to Jasper National Park (day 3) to Lake Louise in Banff National Park (day 4) to Field in Yoho National Park (days 5 and 6) and then a one day 769km mission back to Vancouver (day 7). The distances are big here.

Amazing trip. Here are some photos. Didn't see any bears but spent a lot of time camping in fear of seeing them. We did however see a wolf, a coyote, a moose, countless Elk and a couple of Bald Eagles.

My 30th was spent hiking in the mountains around Yoho National Park. Also discovered an amazing if slightly random restaurant called Truffle Pigs for birthday scallops, steak etc. Complete with bear skin, flying pigs and highbrow life commentary it was a Canadian outpost restaurant on some serious magic truffles. Great food and drink, good times.

As well as the shear distances the thing that suprised me was the difference between areas, we went from rainforest to Mountain to prairies, lakes and rivers to huge mountains to vineyards and almost desert like areas.




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DRG

Monty Montana is born

Our search for the perfect vehicle was over quickly. A Pontiac Montana Sport fully equipped with 3.4l V6, five spoke alloys and blacked out rear windows was just the ticket. Importantly it included winter tyres, a bike rack, roof rack and all the back seats could be removed making it the perfect place to sleep.

Insurance here is a rip off, costing nearly as much as the car - a state monopoly looks after that. You also have to pay HST which is like VAT but 12.5% for second hand cars which is a bit of a sting. Petrol is cheaper and there's no road tax so I'm hoping it will balance out in the long run.

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Planting the flag

Papers signed, money handed over and we have the keys to our new apartment. It’s Thursday and we arrived in the country on Sunday – pretty good going by anyone’s standards. We left the hostel with no fond fair wells, though it served us well we were happy to leave. First night was on camping rolls but we were happy to have our own space. 

Here are some of the photos we took from the beach at the bottom of our road.

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