Monday, August 11, 2008

Vancouver, BC

Time warps are pretty sweet. I left Australia at 1pm on Monday, arrived to Los Angeles at 930am on Monday went for lunch with my brother and his wife and baby, left Los Angeles at 130pm on Monday and arrived to Vancouver at 4pm on Monday, after over 20 hours of travelling only 3 hours in my life had actually passed me by.

Trev met me at the airport, and it is so exciting to be met at the airport. I travel so frequently that I am fully accustomed to arriving at a strange airport and finding my way to where ever I need to get. Being picked up and driven to where we had to get, not worrying about having the proper currency, following the correct route or anything else was heavenly. We went first to UBC where the World Championship of Ultimate was taking place and met up with the team from the Dominican Republic who I stayed with. Being phenomenally jetlagged we then decided it was in my best interests to wander around the beautiful downtown waterfront before supper and putting me to bed.

Tuesday morning I went with Trev to the Capilano Suspension bridge a little north of Vancouver. The suspension bridge was first built approximately 200 years ago across a deep ravine and it is quite impressive whoever thought to build a large, rickety, wooden suspension bridge to leap from mountain to mountain rather than fording the stream beneath.

There is an entire tourist industry built around the suspension bridge showing off the beauty of BC's forests and vistas along with some Native American totem poles, etc. Despite that, they've kept the area in a remarkably pristine condition and the splendour of the valley and bridge are not destroyed at all.

We then wandered around Granville Island's market under the bridge and ate lunch out on the docks. It is so beautiful to see a city on the water which has made efforts to keep the water and shoreline beautiful. Living in NY, some of the ugliest parts of the city are right along the waterfront, and sitting on a plaza swinging my legs over the water with seagulls circling overhead, ships and tugboats travelling back and forth under a beautiful sunny sky is such a treat and just not possible in NY. There was a musician playing there who needed a serious dose of endorphins, he was the most depressed street musician I have ever heard play and the only downside to my lunch.

In the afternoon we travelled to white rock, where there is a gigantic white rock in the middle of the beach which was deposited centuries ago by retreating glaciers. I am sure this rock is, in fact, white. To ensure the tourists know exactly which rock it is (the only large rock around for kilometres) they have painted it with the whitest white paint possible... I don't understand at all. White rock is a beautiful beach, we wandered out onto the wharf where kids were jumping off into the water 20 feet below and a few guys were hauling crates of crabs onto the wharf and letting the kids throw the crabs back into the water which were too small to sell.

We waded through the water for a little while and my coral burns stung intensely, we also saw tons of little mudskippers which was pretty cool. I tried to corner a few but failed miserably. The day ended early for me as Trev flew back to Calgary and I happily passed out in my sleeping bag on the floor :)

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