Hey you guys, here’s some of the latest photos from Kava and my adventures around Vancouver and Vancouver Island! We went to a hockey game- Giants vs the Medicine Hat Tigers. It was strange- everyone was super quiet and into the game until the ref sent off one of the Giants for a 5min penalty. And then wow- the abuse the crowd hurled at the ref was shocking and hilarious. We were 2 seats back from the rink, and the ref came to stand on the other side of the plexi-glass and one guy sitting behind us yelled, so loudly, “Kirk! Hey KIRK! You’re a horrible person!” and no-one around us batted an eye!
There’s only so much watchng men with sticks that we could take, and so after the 2 period (there are three in total), we left. But we ate White Spot burgers, dranks Molson’s Canadian Ale and had a pretzel each, so I feel like we fulfilled our canadian reponsibilities.
We’ve just spent 5 days on Vancouver Island. We spent 2 nights with Hannah and Tony, one of which was stranded out in the Juan de Fuca straight! Tony was dead keen to take Kava fishing, so we headed out and anchored in a bay. They went fishing in the freezing rain, caught nothing, but stayed impressively upbeat. Then, we were ready to head back to harbour around 6pm, and the engine wouldn’t start! And we were slowly losing power on the electrics! So, wind started picking up and it was getting pretty choppy, and raining hard. They debated calling the coastguard, but eventually called their mechanic who could come out the next morning and get us started. Beacuse of the wind we were in danger of the anchor coming loose and drifting onto the rocks, so we had a sleepless night, getting up at 2hour intervals checking our position. Exciting stuff. In the morning I was getting sick of being on a cold, rocking boat, but thankfully we were rescued and back in the harbour by lunch. Oh and to make things more exciting, in the morning we were in the middle of a joint US Canadian naval and airforce practice! They were in the straight and decided to use the bay we were in as the place to bring in two helicopters for the navy to jump out of! Just metres from our boat!
It was great spending that time with Hannah and Tony too- they’re so much fun, and so easy going, we had lots of laughs.
We hired a rental car, drove right out West and spent three nights in Ucluelet, which is a beautiful sleepy town on the far west of Vancouver Island.We had an incredible time there. 3 days of sun, and long walks and beautiful views. Both Ucluelet and Tofino were deserted, tourist season is still a month off, and it was just like wandering around quiet sleepy towns north of Whangarei. We even picked up some first nation hitchhikers and dropped them off at the local reserve (“The res”). It was very thought-provoking, and just from the 20mins we spent with them, we could draw a lot of comparisons between them in Ucluelet and say, Maori in Dargaville. High unemployment, fishing is the main industry but not a lot of work, tight communities living in fairly run down housing. But they talked about cougar attacks, wolves annoying their dogs and chasing bears from the reserve, which I guess is a bit of a different situation.
We’re back in Vancouver now, and off to Cuba on...Monday! God that’s so soon. We’ve also had a pretty emotionally rough week and I’ve made the very difficult decision that I’d like to travel independently, and that this is a priority for me at this stage in my life. As you can probably imagine, this throws up lots of questions and decisions, and we’re still being very lovely to each other and communicating fantastically and working through things step by step. At the moment we’re travelling to Cuba together, but perhaps saying goodbye on the Island. Kava is still going to Costa Rica, and I’m unsure what my next move is. I’m thinking about buying an open-ended ticket with Air Cubana and making up my mind when my tourist visa expires. I’ll write more on this later, I’m still processing all of it at the moment and kind of swinging between have-I-just-made-the-worst-decision-of-my-life to feeling like this is what I really want, and feeling totally strong and awesome and independent. Just a side note from Kava, the decision was really hard for Cordelia to make and I was really broken up, but I could definitely see that it was something that she felt strongly about, so what am I gonna do? Treat her like shit? Kidnap her and force her to be with me and possibly be miserable? The answer could be yes, but that would make me an asshole, so instead I've decided to make the last few weeks a celebration of us and our relationship, then we'll see where the currents of world travel will take us....... This is strange sharing something so personal with everyone (at least those who bother to read my blog) but it helps with the emotional ups and downs, so please comment, some different POV would be welcome Chur Kava and Cordelia |
