Aug 18, 2010

New adventures

Back to Vancouver on Aug 4! After arriving at the airport late in the evening, I was facing a huge problem: where to sleep that night?!?!
All my former couchsurfing hosts had whether moved out of the city at that time or weren't answering their phones! So I finally came up with the idea of just popping in to Brad's house at 10:30 p.m. I hoped to be lucky enough to crash on their couch for at least one night. I bumped into Diana, a roomate of Brad who apparently remembered me from my last stay. She immediately offered me the couch since Brad already went to bed.
Well, lucky as I were, Brad offered me to stay at their place for as long as I would like to and finally I ended up staying with them for five days.
Five days that were marked by my desperate search for another roadtrip to join. I really got hooked on these kind of adventures.
So I permanently went through craigslist, couchsurfing groups, etc. just to find people who are going to move to....well, just to somewhere else!! :)
Unfortunately, there were just a few guys offering a roadtrip but tons of people looking for a ride to join. You don't have to know a lot about the mechanism of supply and demand to find out that the chance of getting a ride is not exactly high! This has been another occasion when I realized how valuable a car is in a country like Canada.
Anyway, after five days of staying with Brad, I got the feeling to get out of there. Not because I don't like the place - not in the slightest! - but because I didn't want to get on his roommates' nerves any longer.
So Laura, the girlfriend of one of the other roommates, just told me she was in to couchsurfing, too, and I could stay at her place which is owned by another couchsurfer named Rob.
What can I say?! This place is awesome!!! It's for sure THE Couchsurfing paradise in Vancouver. Even though very crowded - we were ten people surfing + Rob + the other three roommates + Stanley (the dog) - this place turned out to be an ideal place to get to know to other travelers from all over the world. Rob himself is a hilarious and most laid-back guy.

While staying with him for nine (!!!) days, we did some cool stuff in and around Vancouver which includes

  • a huge barbecue with some of Rob's friends
  • hiking on top of Grouse Mountain north of the city with an amazing view on North Vancouver, Downtown, Stanley Park and Vancouver Island; around 1,200 m/4,100 ft high, small rocks and staircases lead up to the peak; a short trail of 3.5 km/2.2 mi transcend a height of 900 m; this trail is heavy!!! I did this hike with Eli and Brendan who I met in San Francisco and we made it to the top within 1h which is not too bad considering that the current record is 36 min!
  • chilling on the several beaches of Vancouver (English Bay, Kits Beach, Spanish Banks and Jericho Beach)
  • another bbq with salmon, veggies and self-made Brownies
  • a hike to all the three peaks of the "Chief" near Squamish (took us five hours to go up with lots of funny pics) 



















  • a meet-up with Fabien, our crazy French member of Bruno's Crew; he is currently in Toronto or Montreal to continue his travel around Canada
  • an all-you-can-eat sushi dinner in downtown!!!
    Although I had an incredible time in Vancouver again, I still wanted to move on, especially because the summer is not very long in Canada and I wanted to enjoy the warm time of the year with traveling as much as I can.
    Due to the fact that I couldn't find any road trip to join, I came up with another idea: out of a sudden a word popped up in my mind that I almost have forgotten about - wwoofing! This is a very comfortable way of traveling, because you stay at the places where you would like to go and that you intend to explore and have a bed and food at the same time, without paying for it.
    Since I really wanted to see the Rocky Mountains in summer, I decided to go on a three till four week journey through the famous National Parks of Yoho, Banff and Jasper. That would be long enough to return to Vancouver in the middle of September which is a good time to start looking for a job. All the students have to return to university at that time which means that a lot of them might quit there jobs or at least reduce their working hours.

    My plan was to start in the town of Revelstoke which is not in the Rockies but between the Selkirk and the Monashee Mountains, two ranges west of the Rockies. From Mirijam who I met in the hostel in Vancouver in June, I knew that this place provides travelers with a variety of nice spots to hike and a great landscape. Additionally, she worked/wwoofed at Amble Inn, a B&B, for a week and was so thrilled about this host that I decided to make my own opinion about it. So finally, I ended up writing them about my plans and got a quick response in which they told me to come and stay for a week or more.

    Now, writing this, I am about to pack my stuff to go on this journey, ready for more adventures to come. Because I want to go on a low budget ride I hope to make my way to Revelstoke all by hitchhiking - a tough challenge with 560 km of road to follow. We'll see how far I can get... .

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