our carriage awaits

We stayed at an unbelievable hostel, the rooms were old train cabooses and they had llamas!  The 'caboose' carriages were complete with kitchen, original seats and bunk beds.  The llamas were 'Massey and Ferguson'. They also had a native style sweat lodge that we didn't try and a canoe that you could take out for free on the river which had a beaver lodge.

In the caboose

the garden of the hostel

Massey or maybe Ferguson

un alarmed llamas

All aboard - the car we stayed in

Bailing out the canoe

The beaver lodge, minus beavers

A guy and his son were sharing their carriage with a  family who had gone to bed early so we let them hang out with us. They were from Calgary where the Stampede had just taken place so he was waxing lyrical about rodeos and running with bulls.  Most of you would have wet yourself if you had been there, he chewed our ears off until midnight, it turns out he started out designing planes, moved into heli-logging and then finished up working on tar sand extraction! he rounded off the evening blaming climate change on HAARP!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Frequency_Active_Auroral_Research_Program

He also worked designing mechanisms for dispersing conifer seeds as they work so hard to control the habitat by preventing natural fires they have to spend a fortune harvesting cones by pole sawing branches from pine trees, collecting up the cones, shaking out the seeds and roasting them to simulate a fire which they need to start germination and then they zag zag over an open area in a helicopter to disperse the seeds.  A bag of dried seeds he said is worth $90000!  Must be a big bag.  All because they prevent natural fires.

After blueberry pancakes with our first Canadian maple syrup we took out the free canoe to go in search of the beaver lodge, unfortunately all the beavers were fast asleep inside so we didn't see any but safer then the pair of us out in a canoe at night.

Not a whistling marmot in sight

Whistler is an amazing place and rightly a biking Mecca, it is like the Scottish 7 Stanes and Alps all rolled into one. Whistler is named after the whistling marmots which frequent the hills.  Sadly we heard no whistling in Whistler, Ralph says they are probably too out of breath from cycling to whistle.  There are also loads of black bears there, we even saw one on the road up!  As you will see from the pictures we had fun trying some daring feats on our weeks guided mountain biking.  We both loved the cross country routes but our day in the bike park was a bit hectic! 

In preparation for our week of hardcore cycling we had a rigorous regime of eating lots and sitting on our bums, sorry ass's. This preparation did not go to waste, the end of the second days cross country ride made us both feel as if we had ridden a double marathon! 

Everyone else where we were staying was addicted to the bike park so we thought we'd better see what they were raving about.  The bike park is the summer version of the ski area.  You put on lots of body armour so your hearing, vision and movement are restricted, then you line up and prepare to lift your 40lb downhill bike onto a moving bike rack as it swings past and try to make sure its in securely as its worth $2000, and then you have to get on the tiny seat and try and not drop any of your gloves helmets or self on the way up in case you land on a black bear grazing on the hill below.  Then once you're at the top it starts to get stressful.....As well as having to go fast down scary trails there's the added excitement of hoards of armoured super fast riders whizzing past annoyed that someone slow is in their way then the trails merge and you have to be extra vigilant to check the sign for skull and cross bones before you set off down a double diamond black super extreme trail as myself and Jane very nearly did instead of a more gentle blue.

From another perspective, Ralph's, the bike park was really good, the down hill bikes with 8" of travel can pretty much fly over anything. The pedals on the downhill bike were for some reason smaller and less grippy meaning it was hard to keep your feet on the pedals. Ralph hit a jump at speed and managed to come off and land on his back, having earlier refused to pay the extra 10 dollars for a back protector - oh the irony! When Ralph limped back to the shop at lunchtime they offered the back protector for free - bargain.

A bike built for a giraffe?

Fettling at 'Alta Vista' our home for the week

Paul coaches Fiona though a difficult rocky section

the one that got away - ralph tried this 4ft high double teeter totter (see saw to you and me) but had to jump off half way across.

I tried the door but for some unknown reason i couldn't get in

Back protector, best worn before falling on your back

American football anyone?

We also used our day pass from the bike park to take the cable car across the valley.

The cable car system is the longest in the world apparently

Those black blobs in the background are bears - honest!  The black blob in the foreground is Fiona in disguise!!

For my fellow bike geeks out there if you want to look them up on you tube here are the runs we did:

cross country:

big timber

tunnel vision

a river runs through it

bobs rebob

danimal

get over it

Bike park:

B line

Ho chi min

Devils club (best one)

heart of darkness

karate monkey

Something or other pizza cat

After Whistler we returned to Vancouver to hire a car and head for the rockies............

Ice, ice and even more ice baby

In Vancouver we stayed with a lovely couple called Alex and Justyna, they made us feel really welcome by picking us up from the bus station and making us bran muffins. They took us out to a crazy japanese tapas style restaurant where all the chefs and waiters shouted at each other, the food was great but it wasn't the best place to hold a conversation. However, it was a really fun place and we shared the "surprise" soup which contained a boiled egg, a big bit of swede or radish, a bit of fish marinated tofu and some weird rubbery thing we could not identify. 

Fantastic market on Granville Island

View of Vancouver from Granville Island.

Ralph rang the Vancouver aquarium and arranged to meet one of the directors to discuss their Oceanwise food sourcing program run with restaurants and their annual coastal clean up program. This was really interesting and has given him some ideas about the 'Our Rivers' campaign back home but sadly did not result in a free ticket to the aquarium.

The aquarium does some great conservation work and the interpretation and demonstrations were really good but we both couldn't help feeling that all the enclosures were quite small. We probably spent three quarters of the visit watching the sea otters. They are amazing, much bigger than we imagined and with back feet like that of a sea lion.

Super cute sea otter holding his favourite piece of plastic in lieu of a stone.  They aren't allowed stones in the aquarium as they bang on the glass of their enclosure and break it.  This means that the staff have to shell all their food for them which seemed a shame to us.  They did however give them a ball to play with which they swam round underwater with, held to their chest with one paw.

Beluga Whales

The aquarium was also home to a crazy 4D cinema, It showed a 3D version of the Blue Planet but every time a dolphin splashed into the water you got sprayed with a fine mist of water and when a whale took a breath you were blasted with a hot fan. Also I looked ice cool in the special glasses.

or like Gok Wan (don't tell Ralph I said that)

Add caption

sculpture at aquarium entrance

Alex and Justyna also took us to an amazing ice cream place which offered over 200 different flavours including wasabi, garlic and chilli chocolate - all of which you can try before you buy. The wasabi was surprisingly nice, a bit like creamy horseradish, but settled for a taste rather than a whole scoop.

Not everything in town had been fixed since the riot and some of the windows in down town were still boarded up. They were covered in graffiti and bad poetry, all condemning the violence and questioning why it had happened - I think people in Vancouver really care about what people think of them, take note Biggleswade!

sailing to independence

Sam was not the only dude on San Juan and we booked a trip to see the independence day fireworks with an incredibly mellow dude indeed. During the day we went into town to enjoy the parade (semi-ironically if thats possible), when we bought a coffee we were supplied with complimentary and very stylish stars and stripes hats. The parade was relatively low key and the highlights were the numerous dogs in fancy dress, it is easier to look at the pictures.

The image below is a dramatic reconstruction of events the previous day. After we found out there were no bicycles to rent we were hanging about on the porch of the bike shop planning our next steps or maybe sulking, definitely one of the two. On the porch was a customer trying and failing to use their newly aquired and singing all dancing $25 bike pump. Being a know it all I rushed to the gentlemens aid, it was simply a matter of valves if he just unscrewed the top like so and turned around the rubber piece like so it would work,   however before I even got to the rubber piece I managed to accidentally drop the vital outer component between the slats of the wooden porch, that was only accessible from above. This would have been embarassing enough without the half hour crystal maze-esque (think the cube, younger readers) attempts by pump owner to retrieve the piece using a bent spoke and Fiona's knitting needle that I had cunningly cobbled together. After several stress inducing near successes the day was finally won without the agrieved pump purchaser threatening me or swearing once - he was a true gent, I was a true Wally! 

On Monday we finally got the bikes for a day, it is a great island to ride around

Fi is not actually in the ocean here, this a full scale replica

The local boozer had some great bumper stickers

The Spike Africa in all her glory

At sea on the Spike Africa - Taken by a rather pissed bloke from Oregon, his wife was rather unimpressed, with him not us!

Big dolphins and the dude

Before we left for San Juan we heard the island was great for cycling, we rang the bike hire place from Seattle and they had plenty in stock so we didn't book. This was kind of stupid as it was the fourth of July weekend! When we arrived they were all booked and our plans scuppered. However, this turned out great for us in the end, we had to resort to hitch hiking, which is were we meet the most interesting people and got to ride in the back of pickups like in the movies. The second lift that we hitched was the lady who helped run the cycle shop, she took pitty on us as her daughter lived in England and we paid our way back to the campsite by strawberry picking for her at the church allotment.

Hitch hiking is also how we ended up meeting a geneticist studying the whales. Sam Wasser is basically a real life version of the dude from the Big Lebowski, only much more high flying.  He pioneered a technique that involves dogs trained to sniff out whale poo among other things.  The dog stands on the front of the boat as it follows a pod of orca whales and barks to direct the crew towards floating whale poo which is apparently similar to egg white and someone hangs overboard with a scoop to collect a sample which can then be analysed.  See this link  for more about the work with  detection dogs http://conservationbiology.net/research-programs/killer-whales-2/ http://conservationbiology.net/conservation-canines/

Sam and fellow conservationist Fred took us out to see 'J' pod a resident group of orcas who feed on Salmon which get channelled between the San Juan Islands.  Sam wanted to get some photos of the whale watching boats so once we had helped assemble and then test out Fred's new table tennis table we set out in a small boat to find the pod.  They were fishing up near the north of the island by driving the salmon against the cliffs which meant the people on the land had orcas right under their feet.  We were as close as boats are allowed  to get and the whales were putting on a good show of breaching, swimming upside down and tail slapping - it was absolutely amazing! We were dropped off at Roche harbour home of the super rich, only about two of the boats had sails while the other 200 were gin palaces. Roche is also home to a very strange sculpture park (see pic below)

We rounded off the day with massively oversized marshmellows at the campfire given to us by friendly neighbours at the campsite.

The don't come much cooler than this

Whales - I wish I had A better camera

Very dodgy looking naff sculpture at the sculpture park we were too cheap to visit

Marshmellows on steroids with Canadain bus driving ladies at the campsite

A totally killer island

We are on the ferry leaving Seattle for the island of San Juan, a place that has become world renowned for its resident orca whale population. It is the best place in the world to see orcas from the land. If you go to Seattle or Vancouver it is definitely worth the visit as it also has one of the best campsites I have ever stayed at.

The ferry from Seattle which is just there in the background

Ralph hard at work

nicest camp site ever?

sunset from the campsite

We went on a sea kayak trip that ended whale less but with good views views of rhinocerous auklets, harbour seals and porpoise and river otter it was still a great day trip.  One of the guides had just come back from studying a little known species of sloth, the pygmy sloth in Panama, we were v jealous!

kelp i need somebody

perfectly out of sync

At the campsite we met a cool older dude named Richard who travelled around the US by bike and train. He told us about this deep ecology novel called "Ishmael" by Daniel Quinn which we found in the coolest second hand bookshop on the island which Richard has told us about. It's an amazing book I highly reccommend it,  although it focuses more on population than consumption (which grates a bit) it has some amazing stuff in it. There is a particularly powerful passage in it that I would urge all my conservation colleagues to read - it basically compares the paradigm of human development to those who first tried to fly without an understanding of aerodynamics. Quite a poor description but it really is better than I have made it sound!

Also at the campsite we met a load of cyclists from Tacoma, it seems Surly is as popular their as On One is at the lodge. They were super welcoming and gave us beer and coffee. There group contained 2 guys called called Greg, to avoid confusion they dubbed one New Greg and one Old Greg - as Mighty Boosh fans we found this pretty funny. 

always wanted to have a go on one of these

Beers by the camp fire

Tacoma bikers