Apart from a severe jetlag our first days in Canada start on Tuesday 15 July 2008 with sunshine and pleasant daily temperatures in mid 20. We catch several buses from the Vancouver airport to downtown not only to keep budget in healthy state but also to experience local street rush. And it was! Luckily everyone speaks English and people are really nice to us, however last 100m between the bus station and our hostel was quite unusual sight of many homeless and desperate looking characters wandering around adjacent park and streets. We are later informed that this East Hastigs Ave is quite 'famous' for its residents. Seeing so many young people sitting at the curb and injecting themselves with some crap is really disturbing picture. And all this horror like scenery happens only 5-10 minutes walking distance from nice Vancouver city. Next morning we catch ferry and bus to Lynn Canyon and here we get a preview of Canadian landscape and flora. Tall pine trees, berries of all kinds, turquise rivers and waterfalls are abundant.
On Thursday the Greyhound bus takes us to Whistler at somewhat slow pace due to construction of new road. We learn that Vancouver hosts 2010 Winter Olympic Games and building activities are seen everywhere. We are impressed with cosy feel of Whistler village, kind of like Thredbo but in much more lush green surrounds. One cannot ignore floral arrangements on streets which give whole town feeling of happiness and optimism. Sleep in a small village Pemberton and next day we make about 13 hour trip to Valmount via Vancouver where we discover that next connecting bus leaves Valmount at 4am to Kamloops. Well, this is part of fun. Kamloops and surrounds look like Australia - dry and bare hill and we left lush green forests just minutes ago. Unbelievable quick change. From here we travel to Valmount where we sleep over night and early morning at 4am we are catching Greyhound to Jasper. We are told that about 150km trip from Jasper to Lake Louise by Greyhound would take over 12 hours by some strange detour. We decide to hop on a sightseeing tour run by Brewster at double price ($140 p.p.) but for less then half of time. It turned out that Brewster has some sort of exclusive rights for transportation through Jasper National Park. At the end we liked the trip which gave us opportunity to walk on the Columbia Glacier and drink the purest just-melted ice cold water.
We are staying at dorm at HI Lake Louise hostel which was clean and cosy. Next day we are lucky to get a lift from a Canadian guy Ron to Lake Louise. WOV!!! See pictures! Today is our first proper hike in Canadian Rockies from the lake to Beehive peak and back to the village. All up about 12 km round trip with elevation difference 800m. So far we are unlucky to see real bears and we start to suspect that they do not even exist. Next morning we meet an Asian guy at the village bus station describing his close encounter with a black bear that morning on the same track we did yesterday. Apparently he saw the bear about 10m ahead of him on the trail and decided to back off and take a different route. Not the bear! The asian bloke!
On Tuesday 22 July we sadly leave beautiful Lake Louise and travel to Banff which is essentially our last stay in Rockies. Banff is a typical touristy village full of souvenir shops and restaurants. The mountain range is somewhat lower and not as majestic as we were used to between Jasper and Lake Louise. Thursday morning we commence our last leg of Rockies from Banff to Calgary. From here we would like to travel south to USA. We do not know how as yet but we will work it out somehow.
