Action, please!

It's over a week now being in Vancouver and things are becoming better and better. The more activities I do and the more people I meet, the more my excitement for this trip grows.

I met a lot of great backpackers and local people over here and each and every one of them is linked to a story that is worth telling it. So let's start! Follow me on my path and I'm sure you will find my experiences as interesting and entertaining as I do.

Alex

I met this American guy over couchsurfing - a worldwide community of people offering there couch and/or apartments to backpackers and travellers for a few days mostly. Honestly, that dude is really crazy! And this crazyness enables him to entertain people in the most possible way which in turn is the best qualification for his job: being a tour guide (also see http://www.moosenetwork.com/).

So besides surfing his couch, I decided to go on one of his tours through the Western part of Canada. This time I went for a 2-days-trip to Whistler with 20 other great backpackers.

So we got into the bus in the early morning and made our way to the small town of Whistler - famous for the latest Olympic Winter Games 2010 and the most popular skiing resort in British Columbia.

We used the Sea-to-Sky-Highway, an extension of the amazing Highway no. 1 (also known as Trans-Canada-Highway) which goes all the way from Victoria on Vancouver Island in the West to St. John's in Newfoundland - so with 7,000 km one of the longest road systems in the world!

The Highway to Whistler is amazing - passing by beautiful waterfalls and snow-covered mountains (the Coast Mountains), all of them surrounded by forrests and water. Now and then huge rocks appeared almost out of nowhere which are a paradise for climbers (but let me tell about that later).

Whistler itself is just a big bunch of hotels and souvenir shops and very touristic - so in my opinion not really worth describing it.

While we had a whole lodge on our own instead of being in a hostel, Alex and I decided to go climbing in one of the many canyons and rocks nearby the other day.

It was awesome! We climbed several routes on granite rocks and enjoyed the not so usual silence in that area. A bit tired and exhausted we headed back to the others of the group. Some of them went to the so called "Peak-to-Peak-Gondola" which links the peaks of Whistler and Blackcomb Mountain over a distance of 4.4 km. Full of excitement they told us seeing a bear with three babies from above which I thought has been a pitty to miss - still climbing has been worth it!! ;)

On the next day Alex and I got back to Squamish where we had climbed the day before. This time no group was with us but the whole climbing area was full of people! Every single route on the rocks seemed to be occupied by someone - from the license plate of the cars I could read that they even came all the way from Québec!
All in all these three days were definitely the best days throughout my first week in Vancouver.

Julia and the Swiss

Julia is a German girl who joined our tour group to Whistler on her way through the main parts of British Columbia and Alberta. She and five other guys from Switzerland represent the huge number of Germans and Swiss I met on my trip so far. And although they are amazing and great people, sometimes it can be a little annoying to meet no people from other countries over here. It seems to me that Vancouver entirely is populated by German-speaking backpackers! :P

Mirijam, Julia, Valentine, Matti

I met these guys in the hostel Vancouver Downtown. For the first time being here in Vancouver, I wasn't able to find someone to surf his/her couch - honestly, I didn't try too hard though! ;) I was wondering how it might be to stay in a hostel for some days. Unexpectedly, it didn't take long to get in contact with the first travellers. Surprise, surprise!!! They are from Germany and Switzerland! :D
Anyway, we spent some enjoying days together: cooking, going to the beach, exploring downtown, eating Japanese HotDogs (try them, when you have the chance! They are way better then the ones you can get on every corner), eating Sushi (probably the only kind of food that is CHEAP in Vancouver!!!), etc.
The Highlight of these days has definitely been the tour to Lynn's Canyon. The tour guide was an elderly Danish guy named Erik living in Vancouver for several years and doing these kind of tours since 1995. He describes himself as "The Viking Globetrotter" and has been to every continent except Antarctica! It is amazing how much he knows about Vancouver and its architecture. We started the tour with some sightseeing through Vancouver and got to know a number of buildings that we haven't even took notice of.
After that we got on the bus to Lynn's Canyon from where we started hiking through the rain forest surounding the city. Yes, that's right: it IS "rain forest" actually. One of just a few temperate rain forests in North America. These huge areas of forests formed because of the massive amount of rain coming down from the Pacific Ocean. The clouds are being stopped by the Coast Mountains which leads to a high humidity in and around Vancouver. This humidity however has been the reason for our exhaustion just after one hour of hiking. ;)

Yuni


She is my new personal banking officer of Scotiabank where I opened a banking account today. ;)
It was interesting to learn how banking systems work over here. The result: positive - quick activation of the account (just 20 min), low paperwork (just one form for opening the account and one for the debit card), got my card immediately (!!!), Online Banking included, free of charge (need to maintain a certain balance).
Now, having an account on my own, this is the next step to my new one-year-life in beautiful Canada.