Journal of Kings! (and mossy)

Orca Hunt

dmac_jmoss — Mon, 24 May 2010 07:25:00 GMT

So yesterday was one of the things I've always wanted to do. It was on my bucket list and I can now put a big fat tick next to it. We went out whale watching in the Pacific. But not just any old whale, in fact to be perfectly honest we weren't actually hunting whales at all...we were looking for orca, which have more in common with dolphins than whales. Where most whales have a thing in their mouth called baleen which allows them to filter feed, orca have rows of sharp teeth which makes them effective hunters. Orca also have huge dorsal fins which whales do not have. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orca for more info.

So we arrived at Whale HQ about 10.40am with the boat scheduled to leave at 11 sharp. On arrival we get given a special suit designed to keep you afloat if you fall in (re-assuring...) which is similar to what they wear in deadliest catch. Pretty cool. We then head out for our boat, the Pod Pilot, and to meet Captain Brian. The boat is roughly 39ft long and open top. And green. Which is pretty much the colour I'm expecting to turn after about 5 minutes on the ocean. Luckily I took some motion sickness tablets and they worked a treat, I didn't feel ill throughout the whole journey, pow.

So we set off into the Pacific on a pretty windy, pretty miserable day. Mossy and myself are both pretty low with our expectations. In all honesty I was optimistic of a sighting but wasn't sure how good it was going to be. We get out of the harbour and start to pick up speed heading north, the sea was pretty choppy and the swells were around 8ft or so making it a pretty bumpy ride and we got DRENCHED from the spray (that's what we get for sitting right at the front I guess). Apparantly we headed north to try and aviod the wind...it was unsuccesful. Captain Brian had let us down.

But, like any good Captain, he bounced back and announced that he had just received news of an orca sighting just south of our position at 7.30am that morning. El capitano swung the boat around and set the warp drive to 10. Pretty soon we were cruising through the Straight of Georgia in pursuit of a potential sighting. Based on what they knew of how Orca's travelled they could guess roughly where they'd be so when Captain Brian turned his engines down we knew we must be close. It was thrilling, we knew that somewhere out there at least one Orca was swimming about and everyone wanted to be the first to spot it.

Out of the corner of my eye I see a black shape splashing about in the ocean, "It's there, it's there!!" I yelled. Mossy started laughing. It was a damn piece of flotsam. A log or something drifting down from the logging camps up the coast. Dammit.

Maybe 5 minutes later I catch a glint of something in Mossy's eyes. And a smile. He doesn't say anything. "You've seen something haven't you?" I asked him. "I'm not sure," he grins. I look out where he's looking and there is nothing. He's winding me up. The idiot hasn't seen anything.

And just as this thought goes through my head a jet of spray rises from the waves and a dorsal fin briefly breaks the surface. We've found the orca. Well, Captain Brian found them and Mossy spotted them. But here they were non-the-less.

At first they were very elusive. After the initial sighting we saw random fins popping up all over the surface but not very frequently. We guess that there's probably 3, maybe 4 orca out there but we're not sure on size or sex. The pod is slowly heading south so we follow them about 100m behind.

Then all of a sudden one surfaces about 10m from the boat (in one of the pictures you can see how close she was but the picture is terrible because it pretty much came from nowhere) and we identify that these are transient orca and the one closest to us is a female. You can tell because the dorsal fin is much shorter. I was gobsmacked, I couldn't describe how awesome it was to see such a huge creature up close and in its natural habitat. It was amazing.

After this sighting the pod became real active. We finally made the count and the pod was pretty big, there were 7 all together. Six females and one male (I like those odds...). As the pod becomes more andmore active at the surface the "naturalist" Kayleigh, who was our guide, said she thought she recognised one of the dorsals and went to check her notes to see which. Turns out that the male is recognised as T20 and is one of the biggest transient orcas in these seas. He's 8.5m long and his dorsal stands at well over 6 feet tall and has a square chink at the top of it. If you look on the video I posted on facebook you can pick him out among the pod pretty easily.

Just when I thought it couldn't get any better they started jumping! The first jump I was the only one to see it because everyone was looking the other way. I quickly pointed it out to Mossy and the news spread. The next jump was about 4 or 5 feet and the splash was enormous! Again, I was in complete awe of these amazing creatues.I tried to get a picture or a video but I was engrossed that I didn't want to miss anything, although I did manage to get a good shot of one of the jumps.

So after this amazing spectacle we had to start heading back, apparantly you're only supposed to stay watching them for an hour at most out of respect and we'd been there almost and hour and a half. Ooops.

Before heading home though Cpatain Brian took us to see some sealions basking on the rocks, they're all male. No females travel this far up, only the males do to catch a certain kind of fish. like a men's fishing trip. no bitches. I like their style.

Then as we were coming back home we got ANOTHER AMAZING suprise. Perched on one of the rocks was a HUGE bald eagle, the american national bird. It flew off so we followed it and it turns out there was a nesting pair here. They were enormous, the rock it's perched on in my pictures is easily 6 feet out of the water. The bird is almost half the size of it. Its wingspan was easily 6 foot. Such an amazing sight.

As we landed back in the harbour we got news over the radio that the pod we followed were hunting a porpoise and had made the kill not 20minutes after we left. I would have loved to have seen that. But still, at least I can say that I saw a pod of orca on the freaking hunt, out in the pacific. And that is something I am extremely proud of.

Big love x

Getting up to speed...

dmac_jmoss — Mon, 24 May 2010 06:40:00 GMT

Ok, so let me fill in all the gaps from the past few weeks very briefly. Not too much exciting happened but we still did a fair few activities (and we didn't even have to make bunk beds!).

On the job front, I'm still not working full time.I have started service with EWR who place me at hotels but the shifts are very sporadic so I've been searching for something else aswell. Mossy is still working full-time landscaping and is loving it.

I got sent out to the Riverock Casino for my first shift with them and it was awesome. I worked 8 hours for $12p/h and also received a hefty cut of the tips aswell. So I earned almost $150 for a days work. Not three bad...being sent there again this thursday. Yes please. They also have a 24hour card room so I'm tempted to go gamble my tips in a poker game and make MILLIONS!!!!!!!!

Ok, so, activity wise we were supposed to go to the aquarium two weeks back but we failed pretty miserably at waking up (maybe alcohol induced, can't really remember) so we didn't even get downtown until 2pm and the aquarium closed at 5pm. So rather than wasting money we decided to just go up to Stanley Park and go in search of a place we'd heard of called Beaver Lake. To be fair it was pretty easy to find, especially with Geography-enabled sidekick, and the day was absolutely beautiful so we sat there for a good hour or so just watching the world go by. We didn't see any beavers which I was very dissapointed about, but we did see a big ass heron which I've got a video of somewhere where it's flying in slow motion...very graceful. The rest of the afternoon we spent wandering around the forest, we stumbled upon a wedding that was happening right in the middle of the park and with no other way round we had to crash through. Them all in their suits and dresses, me and mossy in shorts and t-shirts looking rough as hell. Pretty sure we're probably in some their pictures too. Top stuff.

On another amazing Vancouver day whilst Mossy was at work I decided to go for a little hike through the Pacfic Regional Park which is directly opposite our house (and way I say opposite I mean that it literally takes 12 seconds from leaving my door to being in the forest). I set off around 12 noon and foolishly forgot to take water with me! Oops. Anyways, I followed a nice easy trail that took me right out to the sea wall where a historic monument stands detailing the discovery of the river Fraser many moons ago. Turns out the guys got lost and found it pretty much by accident. Jerks. On the way back I followed a slightly different trail that took me right through the heart of the forest. The size of the trees here was stunning; the tallest are easily 100ft (there's a picture on facebook that has me stood next to one, it gives you a pretty good idea of the height). And then I found some very interesting wildlife - there were these tiny, no bigger than my thumb, but very round little birds hopping around in the undergrowth. I have no idea what they are but man they so friggin' cute. I reckon they were probably called "pigmy pigeons" or something. So that was a good day.

Then last weekend we finally made it to the aquarium (YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!! I LOVE AQUARIUMS!!!!!!!). This was an amazing day, we arrived pretty early on and decided we wanted to see as many shows as we could. Starting off with these little archer fish that shoot water at bugs on trees up to 6ft away which then fall to the water and are eaten. Pretty spectacular stuff. Then we saw Planet Earth in 4-D, so they had all water and stuff that sprayed on you. And bubbles. And vibrating chairs. Then it was the Beluga show outdoors. They were these amazing small whales that are born grey but eventually turn pure white and live in the arctic. Pretty amazing creatures. Then finally we saw the dolphin show late in the afternoon (accompanied by ice cream). They were Pacific white-sided dolphins which were rescued from the wild and then bred in the aquarium. They were doing flips and all kinds of dolphin malarky.

So huzzah! We're up to speed on everything except yesterday which I am going to put in a seperate post because it's pretty special.

Will try and keep this more up to date now so I don't have to rush through and catch everything up.

Stay cool.

Too Gay for Mossy! (Worryingly, Dan loves it...)

dmac_jmoss — Thu, 20 May 2010 09:04:00 GMT

So we went to a gay club. But not just a normal gay club, it's a little place called "Celebrities" which according to the locals I've met is the place where people go to, and I quote, "Be more gay than they actually are". From what I gather that means that people go here to be outrageously camp and flamboyant. Which kind of makes sense based on what I'm going to tell you:

It started off with a BBQ at the Ozzy's place. The plan was to have a nice evening in the glorious Vancouver Sunshine and enjoy a BBQ and watch the Hockey with a few friends. A crate of beer and a ton of meat later somebody (namely Ross) had the idea of heading out despite nobody having money. Being as it was such a stunning day (and it really was, we'd spent the afternoon down on kitsilano beach talking rubbish and playing footy) we decided to make the most of the weather and headed for the nearest nightclub: Celebrities. It was located on Davie street which is the gay capital of Vancouver so we knew what to expect...or we thought we did.

We were greeted by a hulking figure, with ripling muscles and a very defined jaw complete with 5 o'clock shadow...in a dress and wearing a feather boa. Bulge and everything. Now this doesn't bother me but the look of utter disgust on Mossy's face was HILARIOUS. $12 later and we got inside to be greeted with various stage shows of scantily clad muscle men all oiled up and gyrating against each other like the chippendales only with much more guy-on-guy. Mossy did not know where to look, I think he might have been slightly uncomfortable. In fairness, I didn't exactly know where I was supposed to look but I wasn't too fazed, it's all part of the lol. Mossy lasted maybe 30 minutes before quitting. To be fair to the kid he had been out the night before to some dubstep madness night so he was pretty tired from that...but Ross managed it...weakness? I'll let you decide...

The evening ploughed on and each act got more and more physical, there were poles, angle grinders, and god knows what else. After all the stage shows stopped there was an awesome selection of music and a very positive vibe throughout the whole club. Nobody was being pretentious and everyone just wanted to dance and enjoy themselves. Aaron (one of the ozzy lads) was chatted up by a lady-boy who he refused to accept had a penis, but the adam's apple gave the game away. Also the cock-bulge. Sorry mother.

We left aaron to it to go and dance, somewhere along the way me and ross lost alicja (the other ozzy) so we danced by ourselves for a few minutes until Alicja appeared from the crowd with a HUGE grin: "Some guys are [making love] on the dancefloor" (obviously this wasnt her exact words, I edited it for family reasons. The real word began with an F and ending in ing). Ross turned to me grinning and ran off. A minute later he returned: "OMG DAN THEYRE SERIOUSLY [MAKING LOVE]!!!!". Now somehow, I knew I didn't want to see this spectacle and any other time (i.e. if I was sober) I would have shrugged it off but drunken, morbin curiosity took over and I decided that I needed proo...OMG THEY WERE TOTALLY [MAKING LOVE]!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yeah.

So that was pretty much the point we SHOULD have called it a night.

Instead we carried on dancing until there weren't many people left. And lucky me! I found a feather boa! I was finally dressed for the occassion.

Then disaster struck again! The feather boa i had been wearing for a fair few minutes suddenly started to smell...funny. Then I realised that it was actually pretty wet on one end...and...CRAP. Two guys [making love], smelly wet feather boa...I put together a terrible image (which I'll leave to you to work out), ripped the damned thing from around my neck and ran out of the club, explaining my predicament to ross as we went. Who laughed so hard he nearly fell over.

Well. That was our night in Celebrities. Anybody heading to Vancouver I would reccommend a Saturday night there purely for the music and atmosphere...but just be wary of any discarded items lying around...there's probably a reasond they're discarded.

Ew.

Stay cool kids!

2 more weeks...

dmac_jmoss — Tue, 18 May 2010 16:04:00 GMT

Man, it's been a busy couple of weeks so sorry about the lack of updates.

I'm only updating this now because I am being coerced by forces of immeasurable proportions (I think she's called Miranda).

Anyways, I only want to update you very quickly on what's been going on and then I'll write a couple of bigger reports tomorrow on individual events. In the last two weeks I have worked a few shifts for EWR (fine dining) but have been given no shifts at all for this week which means I am very short for cash and maye have to leave Canada within a few weeks (which would suck). Mossy's pay has been screwing around so he is also short for cash. And we moved into a new place, which is an actual palace and has a pool table and 42 inch tv as part of the deal, which means that any money we did havejust about covered our rent. Great stuff.

So here's some exciting stories I'll update over the next few days:

1) Our night out in the gay club

2) Failed Aquarium = Walk in the park

3) Working the casino

4) My journey through Pacific Regional

5) The Aquarium

So yeah, I meant to do this tonight but I fell asleep for an hour watching the hockey and played a lot of pool,and I kind of forgot. But I always keep my promises so here is an update, which I will further update tomorrow.

Peace and love.

It's been two weeks..

dmac_jmoss — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 07:37:00 GMT

Sup?

So it's been two weeks since I last filled you guys in with what we've been up to. And there's a good reason for that...mostly it's because not a lot has happened.

We've been struggling to find accommodation which is a pain since we can't live at Bart and Ross's for the whole summer. I've been struggling to find work and have been very short on cash so not much money for activities, whilst mossy is working a lot so he can bust me some dollar to actually get a deposit on a house.

HOWEVER.

Today has turned things around, I've been training with a company called EWR who are a five star fine dining company. Today I finished that training and am fully certified to wait tables in 4 and 5 star hotels. The pay is good but the best thing is that I literally pick my own schedule, every thursday I submit what hours I am available for the next week, so when we get some money together and start actually exploring Canada I can take a week off with less than 3 days notice. Boooooom.

Shame I have to dress like a damn penguin though.

We did actually go and play pitch and putt up in stanley park which was awesome. We played 9 holes, par 27. I came in with a respectable 51 (lol!) and we have some funny slo-mo vids of my perfect (read: no where near perfect) golf swing. I'll try and get them up soon.

So, take it easy, our next update should be a bit more exciting!

Work! Sort of. (and what is wrong with Canada?)

dmac_jmoss — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 15:06:00 GMT

Supppp??

We got jobs! Kind of. Mossy is covering for Ross doing landscape gardening since Ross has injured his shoulder and is out of work. Dan (that's me!) has landed a 20 hour a week job booking clients for an acting School (Gareth Lush are you available?) which is only temporary until I can find something better. Only good thing about the acting school job is that regularly they have famous people come by for autograph signings and the staff usually get to gang out with them. A few weeks back they had that ponce Robert Pattison from twilight. I would have battered him if I was there. lol.

Other than that I can't think of much of note that we've done. We spent a day up in stanley park which is STUNNING. Seriously, google it until we get a chance to put our pics up. It's a big ass national park, forest in the middle, mountains round one edge and the pacific on the other. Mossy saw a heron. I saw a dragon. Good times.

I'd also like to point out a few things that are annoying me about Canada:

1) Tax isn't added on to the price of items at shops. If a shop says $3.99 for something, USUALLY they will add tax on when you go to pay. I say USUALLY because that's not always the case. Sometimes they advertise $3.99 and god dang it that's what you pay. It's like they don't even understand their own tax laws. I asked a lady in the Bakery why they do this, her answer was, "Because we're Canadian". That's not freaking good enough! Jeez.

2) Their coins don't make any sense. Seriously. Which is a bigger value of money - 5p or 10p? Simple (the answer is 10p by the way). Therefore which denomination of coin should be bigger 5p or 10p? In england, its the 10p, which makes perfect sense. In Canada a 5cent piece is twice the size of a 10cent piece, and only slightly smaller than a quarter. Pain in the ass when you're trying to sort out change for the damn bus.

3) Tips are mandatory. And god forbid if you tip less than 20%. You are the lowest scum if you do not tip AT LEAST 20%, even if the service is terrible. Can't wait to start work in a restaurant!

4) One plastic carrier bag. One measly, crappy plastic carrier bag. One horrible, poncy carrier bag which my mum has thousands of in her 2nd kitchen draw. One dumb-ass carrier bag cost me THREE FUGGING DOLLARS. Oh. My. Days.

Uh, that's all I got for now.

Also, one funny thing that happened today. Me and ross (not ross and I), went to have a word with a landlord about a house this afternoon. We went to his house which was AMAZING and had beautiful views of the mountains and the ocean. Appaza his house was worth $5,000,000. Anyways, he didn't have any rooms but he said he'd contact us regarding any spare rooms. $500 a month each, no security deposit. "No security deposit?" I asked. He answers, Rob Kelly-esque, "I'm a 2nd black belt, *I'm* the security deposit. You fuck with my house, I fuck with you" (sorry for the language mum!). What a hero.

Mossy said he had something to add. Let's see if that happens when he gets back from wherever he is.

Stay cool.

What's with all the Sushi?

dmac_jmoss — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 13:00:00 GMT

Suupp?

Been a busy few days for us in Vancouver, still no work at the moment which sucks but there a TON of painting jobs that are available so we're crossing our fingers. This would be sweet for us because we would work mon-fri 8-4ish and have the weekends to get crunk and enjoy Canada! Shaweet. Also applied to become a sponsored poker player, I doubt this will happen.

Soooo what've we been up to? We've done a lot of basic stuff: library cards (free internet pew pew), safeways club cards (cheap food peeewww peeeeew), banks accounts, cell phones and registering for SIN numbers (NI equivalent). Productive.

You may or may not have heard we were involved in a bank robbery. I wish I could say we were involved in an AWESOME bank robbery where five guys came in in balaclavas with shotguns and demanding money, took hostages and there was a shoot out. The truth, however, is a little pathetic to be fair. We were sat with our Canadian bank manager (brenda - very VERY chatty!)and she went to copy some documents for our accounts, when she came back she says "Good news and bad news - good news is your accounts are done, up and running. Bad news is, we had a note hadover robbery whilst you were here, did you see anything?" We're like...whuts one of those then? Apparantly its quite common and its where some desperate junkie comes in and hands over a note that simply says they are being robbed and to hand over any money. How gay. It's so stupid though, they don't have any plastic glass or anything to protect their tellers (clerks) so if it was a real robbery they're in trouble! Oh well.

Just wish we had money to put in our accounts!

Now one thing that is VERY predominant in vancouver is Asian culture. The city is populated with a 53% asian community! That's over freaking half! So everywhere you go it's SUSHI SUSHI SUSHI!!!!!! I HATE sushi. Apparantly there are 4 sushi bars to every normal bar in vancouver. Crazy huh? But when Ross and his Girlfriend Maggie invited us for sushi, considering how anti-social job hunting is, we jumped at the chance. We went to a place called the eatery, which is a pretty posh sushi restaurant in Kitsilano (which is where were staying). When we walked in they had a GIANT aquaman figurine hanging from the ceiling, I was going nuts, it was sooooo cool. Mossy didn't know who aquaman was. Top lol. I didn't wanna eat sushi so I had some beef alternative with rice which was BEAUTIFUL. Mossy had chicken teriyaki, which also very nice. Ross and Maggie let us try their sushi rolls, I did not like (did I mention that I hate this stuff?) but mossy was quite impressed. Probably because he's a gay.

After our sushi experience, we headed to a bar where we had our first taste of hockey since we arrived. Vancouver has a team called the Canucks, and they were playing a team called the Colorado Avalanches. Being in Canada watching a local hockey team is an amazing experience. Everyone is loving every minute and it's so fast paced that it's not to get absorbed. I hadn't really seen much hockey (except for a Manchester Storm game I caught at Manchester GMEX when they were sponsored by Adidas and Steve scored us tickets) but I am hooked! Canucks lost the game on penalties which sucked but we're (I'm a fan now you see? I use the inclusive "we") still in line for a playoff position and we're having the best season we've had for a long time.

GO CANUCKS!

So that was fun.

Next day we had our orientation with SWAP, our Canadian "minders". It was good, not very exciting and not much to tell. They told us about a Scavenger hunt event they were having and we thought it could be fun and a good chance to meet new people...we weren't exactly optomistic when we saw the sign up sheet...our names plus one other. What a lol this was going to be.

So the hunt was yesterday, it started at 3pm and we didn't actually remember until 2:30 that we were supposed to be there. Oops! A quick dash to the bus and a brisk stroll through town got us there for 3:10 and there was a decent turn out: 27 people. Pow. They split us into random teams of 4 which was GREAT because it meant me and mossy got seperated (for the first time since we arrived!) and we headed off into town with our maps, cameras and hunting lists.

I was with a german girl called sophie, and ozzie bird called Ellyce and an english lad Alex. We were called team Megatron. Mossy is going to write about his team and his day when I've done my bit here. We take it in turns because we're friends.

So, team megatron legged it from the swap office and headed to downtown vancouver. Such a great day, I'm not gonna go too much into detail, and I don't know what mossy is gonna add to it, but we just had a lot of fun taking random pictures with strangers and getting to know each other.

The hunt ended at a nice irish bar, the blarney stone, where SWAP had sorted us out with a free beer each and then they were going to announce the winners who would get food prizes. Team megatron, optimistic as ever, thought we were going to come around the bottom since we didn't even manage to finish the list so we were shocked when it was announced that we'd come second!!!!!!!!!!!!! OH YEAHHH!!! We won free appetizers each, but we couldn't use them on that day. lol. Although somehow mossy managed to cash mine so we got free chicken and chips (and yes, that is an appetizer!).

We organised to go out with some of the guys and girls we'd met from SWAP that night, so we went home got changed and headed to town to get our dancing shoes on. We met at a bar called Tonic, we paid $14 bucks to get in and it was VERY quiet when we arrived. Disaster! But it filled up nicely and ended up being a really great night. We got pretty drunk, danced a little and came home at like 1am (in vancouver, kicking out is 2am so that's pretty late considering the jet lag still).

So yeah. All in all its been a very good few days. We're still feeling the heat of getting a job and it is depressing but we're enjoying ourselves and that's the main thing I guess.

This is pretty long so I'm gonna sign off now. Don't think mossy wants to add his little bit because we've been typing, writing and that all day. We'll see what happens when I click save.

Anyways, stay cool guys and good night!

Dan and Moss.

A little story from Whistler...

dmac_jmoss — Thu, 8 Apr 2010 14:05:00 GMT

Sup?

Just a quicky from our trip to Whistler that I didn't write up the other day because I was struggling to keep my eyes open.

You know how me and mossy pretend to be super rad and totally tubular sick snowboarders? Well, that's not exactly true. We learnt to board two weeks before we set off so we are very much beginners.

And we learnt a hard lesson up in Whistler.

We'd spent the morning with Ross who's a qualified instructor. He looked after us, took us down some nice easy green runs and few light blues. Nothing too taxing. In the afternoon he'd left us to board by himself for a while so Me and Mossy decided to stick to green runs just to make sure we were safe and could get some good practice in without having to worry too much.

We saw signs for a delightful little green run called "Bear Cub". Awwww. How cute. Yeah, we headed for it. As you can imagine, we got freaking lost. We had to get off our boards walk for like 25 minutes because we ended up totally off course. We finally picked up our run about half way down, and in our excitement we strapped up and set off downhill. Without checking the maps or signs. Oops.

We'd boarded about 600m down before realising there was a disticnt lack of people and ton of bleeding trees and ice. Two words: Black. Run.

Crap.

We'd missed our turning and headed down a black run called "Bear's Claw". Not so cute. We only had one option: carry on - heading back was impossible because it was almost vertical. Oooopps.

What should have been a 30minute green run ended up being a 2 hour slog down a black. Oh well, we survived, and we learnt a valuable lesson. Boom!

Tune in next time to find what happened when we JOINED THE LIBRARY AND GOT SAFEWAY CLUB CARDS!

Exciting stuff.

Stay cool,

Dan and Moss.

Arrival & Whistler

dmac_jmoss — Mon, 5 Apr 2010 22:29:00 GMT

14 hours is a damn long time. It's not quite the same as flying to Australia, but I've never had to do that, so 14 hours is the longest I've ever spent in one little, poxy seat.

Flight was uneventful. Food was crap, barely slept, sat next to a frenchman.

When we first got to Vancouver we had to go through immigration which really was a breeze. BUNAC had sorted everything for us, we answered a few simple questions (Have you been to Canada before? etc) and BOOM! we were through.

We hooked up with mossy's friend Ross who very kindly said we could stay at his for a few days until we get settled. He lives right in the middle of vancouver, 5minutes walk from the beach. So first thing we did was to drop our bags off and head off on a stroll to the beach with Ross and his housemate Bart. Me and mossy didn't last long, jet lag kicked in, and we headed home and were in bed for about 8 o'clock local time. Wimps.

Today we decided to head up to Whistler to hit the slopes before the snow finally dissapeared. What an awesome day. We set off from Vancouver around 6am and arrived in Whistler about 9am. The journey was incredible, everywhere we looked it was row upon row of fir trees and snow and then every so often through the mountains was a glimpse of the sea. There was a fairly heavy mist so visibility was low but the view was phenomenal all the same.

We spent about 6hours on the slopes, still learning to board at a basic level. By the end of the day we were totally exhausted, jet lag and muscle ache had set in in a big way and we headed back to Vancouver around 5pm arriving about 7pm. We showered and headed out to a little bar down the road where Mossy, Ross and Me had nachos and a few pitchers of the local lager. Tasty.

Jet lag has hit me again, so the writing on this entry is poor. It's only 10.30pm here now but it feels like 6am for us. Gunna hit the sack now and spend the day recovering tomorrow.

Will keep you updated,

Stay cool,

Dan xx

6 hours till we leave

dmac_jmoss — Sun, 4 Apr 2010 03:36:00 GMT

6 hours till we leave and i've still not fully packed...

Not long to go...

dmac_jmoss — Fri, 2 Apr 2010 11:00:00 GMT

Hey, sup?

Not long 'til we set off now so just putting this up here as a placeholder for now so that we can give the link out to people who want to follow us (mostly our families, so let's keep it clean!) on our super rad adventure to the land of Canadia.

So far the plan is to fly on the 4th from Gatwick to Calgary, transferring there for Vancouver hopefully landing local time about 1 in the afternoon after a gruelling 14 hour flight. Not sure what we're going to do when we arrive yet but we've heard a little rumour that Whistler has just had a fresh layer of snow so on the monday we're hoping to head up to the slopes for the day and pretend to be Chodey. No plans for the rest of the week until thursday when we have an orientation meeting with BUNAC/SWAP who will help us sort out bank accounts, social security etc etc.

Will keep you updated,

Stay cool,

Dan and Moss.