I think I might be a bear. I say this, not on account of how much I’ve been eating, drinking and sleeping lately. (Although the casual observer could be forgiven for believing that I am in training for hibernation, storing up enough calories to last several winters and practicing sleeping for extraordinary lengths of time.) I say this because the bins here are designed to be bear-proof and I can’t bloody well figure out how they open.
Apart from carting my rubbish around with me, I have had a very busy week. After defending Vancouver so vigorously in my last blog, I promptly left the city. I blame the Grouse Grind, which is the name given to the act of climbing Grouse Mountain. Several times during the journey, I balefully groused (har, har, har) at my grinding companion Cara that it was a stupid thing to do to climb a mountain. Eventually, even Cara’s usually ever-present good humour evaporated as she reminded me that the climb was actually my idea. My humour returned in the form of abject hysteria when it turned out neither of us was very good at fractions. Cara and I, already causing landslides with our sweat and panting loudly enough to distress the bears in Washington State, were convinced we must be about 7/8ths of the way up the mountain. It had been 40 minutes after all. Then we rounded a corner and we saw what Cara pronounced as the most disheartening sign she’d ever seen. The half way mark. I was laughing so hard that people stopped to watch. And asked what drugs I was on. And asked whether they could have some. Luckily the second half didn’t seem as long as the first half and we made it to the top of the mountain. The bears were happy to see us. I was happy to see a plateau. I vowed never to climb another mountain for as long as I live. Remind me of that next time I get the urge to go hiking. Remind me also that while wine tasting is fun, moderation is the key.
Sadly, moderation was not a key word during our visit to the Okenagen Wine Region. Officially the furthest that the three of us had ever been in Canada, we were prepared to represent and show those Canadian wine growers how tastings are done (that being, in spades). And so it came to pass. After a disappointing start at Mission Hill (great views, great architecture, really awful wine), the wine improved at the next three. And the next three the following day. Sadly, the brain cells responsible for remembering the names of those wineries were massacred in the battle waged with their wines. Absent names notwithstanding, the wine was excellent and as you might have guessed, plentiful. Also taking plentiful to all new heights, depths and as a consequence my width, was the food we consumed. I think we probably ate enough to feed most of Africa for a year. At least, this is what my jeans are telling me. I blame Joe - it’s hardly my fault he is an excellent cook and provided us with delicacies beyond imagining. You try sitting in front of a prawn the size of a lobster and not eat five of them. Bacchus was well served over the course of the weekend.
After defying death by food and drink, I decided I had to run away from Joe’s cooking for a couple of days to allow digestion time. So off I went to Whistler and Victoria, the capital of British Columbia.
Whistler is a charming mountain town, best known for skiing. It is summer and the snow is thin at best so you’d think Whistler would be a ghost town. Not so! These crazy Canadians, not content to just use mountains for skiing have turned Whistler into a summer cycle paradise. Mountain bikers belt down mountains like avalanches and BMX bikers hurtle through the air in full body armour. Even the ski lifts have special bike rack seats to get people up the mountain expeditiously. The really interesting thing about Whistler is that I think it’s actually in the wrong place. Judging by the number of Australians working there, it should be in either the Victorian or NSW Alps. The Australian Census needs to send some forms to Whistler - that’s where the other 50% of the nation’s population is at present.
After finding so many Australians, I decided to try and locate some real Canadians (not those strange Vancs from my previous blog) so I jumped on a sea-plane and putted across the Straights to Victoria on (ironically, in my view) Vancouver Island. Vic is the capital of British Columbia, so it is the seat of the Provincial Government. If anyone is going to accuse anyone of being boring, I think Victoria might be a contender. Not to say it isn’t nice - it is. If nothing else, it has a lovely hop-on, hop-off tour past alleged points of interest and it does have the stunning 100-year old Butchart Gardens. So....it has a bus and a nice backyard.
Look, in all seriousness, I’m not knocking it. It is a nice, small town - not quite charming or quaint but pleasant nonetheless - with some nice scenery around it. I think it is precisely its vanilla-ness that annoyed me. It’s neither grand, nor iconic, nor great, nor steeped in history, nor modern, nor anything else remotely defining. It’s just a bland blancmange of buildings. And, to add insult to blandness, the walls of my hotel room, despite appearing to be made of concrete, have the soundproofing quality of a lady-bug’s undies. The person next door was flatulent.
On the upside, Victoria is the closest point of departure to catch a boat for some whale-watching. I was thoroughly spoiled by my experience - not only did we see around 20 killer whales (or orcas if you prefer) but they were feeling particularly playful that day. We saw spying, fluking, breeching and all manner of socialising. I had not realised just how large these beasties are - the males’ dorsal fins can be six feet high!! While the boats are required by law to keep a sizeable distance from the whales, we were lucky enough to be in the direct path of a pod. This meant that we had a closer than normal look at them as it took a while to gently get out of their way. As well as seeing some very large males, there where also a couple of babies to enjoy watching. I’m usually a determined landlubber but after this experience, I can at least understand why the sea holds such fascination for so many people.
Back in Vancouver, my last two days passed in a blur. Not the least because we were desperately trying to finish off all the wine we bought the weekend before. Not sure why we felt the need for total consumption but it seemed like a good idea at the time. On Friday evening, the three of us went to see “The Bard on the Beach”. We saw the Merchant of Venice which turned out to be an interesting production. Maybe it was just me spending too much time on Pride Proud Davie Street, but the play was very heavily laced with homosexual overtones. It was distracting to try and follow the love story between Portia and Bassanio when in fact Bassanio was clearly in lust with Antonio. Perhaps it was true to the original then?! Sub-texts and mistaken love interests were always favourite themes of the Bard.
On Saturday Joe and I headed to Granville Street to check out a Brazilian festival. Before you get too excited boys, it was of the Brazil kind, not the waxing variety. (Given Vancouver’s penchant for strangeness, I did feel the need to clarify that.) As you’d expect from anything involving Brazilians, it did not get started until well past the appointed hour. We intermittently enjoyed the music and watched some weirdos before wandering down to see the skate-boarding competition on the next block. That night, we went to the baseball and saw the Vancouver Canadians (yes, I kid you not, that is what they are called) beat ...um...someone. I was too wrapped up with the assistance-dog-in-training brought along by Cara’s friend to notice that there were some blokes bashing a ball around.
And so once again, I ask you - with all that activity, how can Vancouver possibly be considered boring? Well, of course it will be a lot more boring now that I have left but that’s not the city’s fault.
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