Tag: Canada

Whale Watching in Vancouver Island

Another early start this morning and after having our trip cancelled yesterday we were glad to get on the boat for our whale watching trip with Prince of Whales (yes, that really is what the tour company is called).

It takes about 2 hours to get from Downtown Vancouver to the straight between the mainland and Vancouver Island . There are hundreds of small islands in the strait which host a variety of wildlife including seals and eagles so we spent a while sailing around between them and taking a few snaps.

The captain of the boat had been on the radio to the other tour boats and they’d located a pod of about 80 Orca whales (although that would have been made up of many smaller groups of 4 or 5 whales), so we headed south into more open water to see them.

Seeing whales in the wild is incredibly impressive, but they don’t like having their photo taken. They spend most of their time underwater, coming up briefly every couple of minutes for air and the boats aren’t allowed within 200ft of them, so getting photos is hard. Having said that, at one point the whales decided to swim towards us and the only thing the captain can do when that happens is switch off the engine and wait for them to pass by. At this point a couple of whales surfaced about 50ft from the boat and then swam right underneath us which was hugely exciting.

After seeing the whales the boat carried on to Vancouver Island and docked at Victoria which is the capital of British Columbia. Victoria is a lovely place and we could have spent more time there than the hour we had, but the trip included a drive to Buchart Gardens , about 40 minutes drive from the capital, so we left after lunch.

I’m not the biggest fan of horticulture, but the gardens were very impressive and probably the most relaxing thing we’ve done in the last 3 weeks. It also gave me a chance to practice my photography on something that wasn’t moving.

Our day ended with the boat picking us up from a small cove next to the gardens and a 2 hour ride back to Vancouver. We weren’t the only ones on the boat that wanted to sleep on the way back. The Seattle/Whistler/Vancouver area is another area I’d like to revisit in the future, you can’t move for amazing scenery and there’s so much to do we could easily fill another 2 weeks here.

 

 

 

Zip Lining in Whistler

I think today might have been our most tiring day so far.

The alarm rang at 6am because we had to be in Downtown Vancouver by 8:30 to board the boat for our whale watching trip. We left plenty of time because this was Monday morning rush hour and we were heading through Downtown Vancouver. Strangely, there was no traffic at all and we got there an hour and a half early.

We waited to be called for boarding until about 9:20am, by which point we were starting to wonder what had happened. Unfortunately the captain came out to explain that their boat was out of action and today’s tour would have to be cancelled. Luckily, we have one more day in Canada tomorrow so we swapped some stuff around and decided to bring forward our trip to Whistler .

So, we got back on the road and did the 2 hour trip to Whistler, the home of the 2010 Vancouver Olympics , where we had a date with the world’s longest zip line .

Ziptrek organise zip line tours down the side of the Blackcomb mountain . Basically they drive you up the mountain (right next to the start of the bobsled run) and let you make your way back down the mountain using a series of treetop bridges and zip lines. Our tour consisted of 5 zip lines, a small one to start with, leading up to the one we’d really been looking forward to, which is apparently the longest in the world.

It’s 2000ft long and over 20 storeys high apparently, and it looked it. They say you can get up to 80 km/h, although I think that’s fairly theoretical.

There’s a great video below which Jen took. She managed to be the only person to “bounce” off the landing platform and slide back across the canyon, requiring the guide to scoot back out there on a harness to rescue her. She kept the video running throughout the “rescue” though which is entertaining.

She managed to redeem herself on the last zipline though which was the only one you could hang upside down on. Unlike me, she managed to flip herself completely upside down and hold her arms out!

If you’re going anywhere near Whistler/Vancouver at any point you really can’t miss this. Brilliant fun. Another 2 hour drive home and we’re about as tired as it’s possible to be. Good job we don’t have to be up at 6am again for our whale watching tomorrow…

 

Jen getting stuck on the big one.

 

Jon on the big one.

 

Jen going upside down.

 

 

 

 

Montreal and Bonus Photos

We’ve only got one night in Montreal unfortunately and to be honest don’t have enough time to see the city properly. Our trip into Canada is only a quick one and seemed a better idea than travelling through the New York State countryside. Still, it’s nice to be here, however briefly.

I wasn’t sure what the mix between English speaking and French Canadians would be. Well, Montreal is pretty much 100% French speaking and I got a D in GCSE French so reading the signs and going out for a meal has been…. interesting…

We’re staying in a nice suburb called Longueuil which you can see in a few of the photos and we took a drive into Downtown Montreal, hence the slightly shaky photos taken from the car window.

We’ve also just taken some photos off Jen’s camera from the last few days, there’s a few extra ones from Mount Washington and some nice road trip photos from our drive through New Hampshire.