Monday 11 February 2008

Bridge and moisture

Unfortunately, there are no photos yet, as I'm typing this from LA airport, but shush, don't tell anyone. Kai and I woke up in time for breakfast, and on further inspection of the weather, decided to wait an hour or two for the rain to ease up. It didn't, so we gave up and braved the crazy weather anyway, luckily I had my cunningly small to store rain jacket, which I utilised with a suspicious intent. We we got the sea bus station, bought a day pass and then just got on the boat in time, with about 20 seconds to spare! Boa was incredibly slow, but was fine. We felt peckish so explored the nearby indoor food market, where we got "chips and gravy" which were an odd cross between real chips and fries.

Found the bus to the Capilano suspension bridge, and endured the slow ride, with the world's most annoying sounding windscreen wiper ever.We finally got to the bridge, I somehow got in as a youth with one of my crazy cards, and we went in. Then my jaw hit the ground. Then I wandered around with a huge grin on my face, while Kai was totally freezing, I was too excited to care about the cold. The view was amazing! and walking across the suspension bridge over the valley below was amazing...

[the rest of this post is available for a one off free of $1 trillion.....and/or ineed to get off this airport kiosk because it turns out to be expensive, more later!]

Continued: The rain, mist and everything amplified the beauty and greenery of the trees. We went up to the tree top adventure, which are a series of connected bridges high up in the tree tops, which you can walk along. Good fun. At this point Kai was turning to ice, so I forced him to go along the cliffhanger walk, along the side of the valley, was excellent, though even my hands were beginning to fail in the cold. So going back across the bridge, and playing in the shop momentarily, we caught the bus back to the ferry port, and crossed the river/bay/puddle via StarBucks. Kai then took me to a cool Mongolian near Stanley Park, where you can make your own stir fry, from 4 types of meat and loads of veg buffet style. You then mix your own sauce, either following their recipes or freestyling it, as I kinda did. The guy at the end of the buffet then throws it on a huge circular metal heating device, and fries it for you. All for $6, and it tasted great. As I was leaving in the morning I decided against anything crazy at night, and started/continued reading the Golden Compass, which is very good. Must wake up at 5am tomorrow morning *screams*

The solution to all

After grabbing some really nice take away Thai (I got a Yellow Curry), for a ridiculously cheap price, we returned to ravenously munch it down in the hostel. We decided to attempt to get tickets for Matt Costa, but once we walked there it turned out it really was sold out, much to our disappointment. The night turned into a hunt for beer, though we got pointed to a cheap beer place by a random homeless guy who tried to sell us drugs initially. Apparently it was $10 for a pitcher, though suspiciously it turned out the pitchers had a huge lump of plastic in the middle to reduce their volume. Still worked out cheaper than the other night, so we had two and chatted about diving and general travel. Good fun. On way back we went back in Lennox pub from the other night for 1 more and watched the end of another Ice Hockey match, which the canucks actually won via a shootout. Heading back, we stopped in another pizza place and started chatting to a random Canadian dude about his fries, which are some sorta Canadian tradition, but just seemed like Cheesy chips with gravy to me.

This morning, it's vastly wet outside, which sucks for Capilano, but last day to do it anyway. Had breakfast, and were joined by a cool French-Canadian called Pascal, who seemed nice. Now we're waiting for weather to ease up a bit, and to take the ferry then bus to Capilano.