Winter Wonderland of Canada

So Canada is probably the country that I collectively spent the most time in. Which I am very happy about as it was by far my favorite place of my whole trip & I fell in love. Completely & utterly.

After New York I caught the train up to Niagara falls. First impressions weren’t that great. Pretty slum and ghetto like on the New York side. Absolutely no stores were even open & the place seemed completely deserted. The first evening I was there I decided to walk across the bridge over to the Canadian side to view the falls. I walked over just before dusk and saw the falls at sunset which was gorgeous! I wondered over and got dinner (due to the fact that there were zero eateries on the American side except the casino, which I wasn’t too keen on going to), & resorted to Wendy’s & Starbucks. At night the falls are all lit up by projectors & glow different colours and look absolutely amazing. The next day I was going to go back down to the falls & see them during the day but it was pouring down so I pretty much went to Starbucks and that was me for the day. I only spent one night in Niagara & I honestly don’t think you’d even need that. If I was to do it again I would just catch the train from Toronto (which is only 1 hour), and view the falls from the Canadian side.

The following day I caught the train up to Toronto. Now I didn’t realize that this city was so damn big! It is the multi-cultural capital of Canada & has 4 different china towns & multiple little Italy’s. I was staying in Kensington Markets which as you would assume has markets but barely does. stayed in Planet Traveller & would highly recommend it to anyone whose heading to Toronto. Kensington Markets is full of many cute cafes & knick-knack stores with all the buildings exterior wall plastered in graffiti & art. I marveled in this. I spent 4 days just wandering around the city, walking through the central business district, the Distillery District, and markets. The distillery district is cool as it’s an old packing district on the water front of Lake Ontario which has been converted into galleries, cafes and has lots of sculptures around it. Toronto was far the coldest place! I was walking around one day at -10°C. I was so cold that at all points I was either carrying a coffee or about to go into the next coffee store. The bottom half of my face was literally numb it was that cold! To make matters worse that wasn’t even as cold as it could get.

Caught the next flight to Calgary & caught up with Jill & Jeremy & their awesome Bernese Mountain Dog Ivan! It was awesome to see them and catch up about their trip to Thailand, as I hadn’t seen them since Koh Samui. That evening was spent drinking & playing Card against Humanity followed by beers, pizza and watching Ice Hockey at the local pub. Go the Calgary Flames!! ( I think that’s what they were called?) The next day went & played disc golf! I had absolutely no clue that it was an actual thing, but also learnt that I am terrible at it. Co-ordination is required, and that is not something I have. Later that day off I went and got the bus into the Rocky Mountains.

Banff. Oh Banff. What a good time .The most fun I’ve had in a long time. On my arrival I met Carly, one of my room-mates and got along immediately. To date she is now one of my closest friends. She courage me to go out that evening, so hair in a bun, bit of make-up, yoga pants and converse was my outfit for the night. Up in the kitchen flippy cup, beer pong and other drinking games went on. I originally said “I’m not drinking much tonight,” which was far from the truth. Ended up going into Hoodoo (a club), getting piggybacked to the club, being dropped during said piggyback, drinking copious amounts of alcohol, hanging out with my new found friends Callum & Ben all night. Managed to lose Callum on the way out & Ben & myself decided to walk back. It was snowing, we were very drunk doing handstand competitions and him piggybacking me. The following days I spent hungover but exploring around Banff town. Went across the Bow River through some woods in knee deep powder, through the Grotto Canyon on an Ice walk, to at Lake Louise walking across the frozen lake amazed by the surrounding mountains covered in Snow. You know in the adverts for Canada the cliché blue/green lake surrounded by mountains? Yeah, well this is that place but in the middle of winter. I was completely blown away. The morning I went up to Lake Louise I was very much worse for wear as the previous night I had gone out with all the boys to dinner, which had a deal on half price wines. So we decided to get 4. Played pool all night and got a lot more intoxicated than expected. So the drive to the lake was not ideal. To make matter worse on one of the stop I desperately needed to pee, which may have had to do with the fact I had 4 coffees before 8am. No bathroom in sight so I had to venture up into the woods. At this point I’m nearly knee deep in fresh powder, had to do the oh -so-classy squat to which I then lost balance and ended up bare in the snow. So hungover and freezing cold behind are two things that are not enjoyable when together.

One of the days I spent up at Spray Lakes on a dog sledding tour. I would 100% recommend that when in Canada you try and go do this! I went with the company Snowy Owl Sled tours ( http://snowyowltours.com/), which picked me up from my hostel. It was a little bit of a drive and slightly pricey but well worth it. I can honestly say that this is one of the best days of my life to date. I was lucky enough to get the sled to myself & my guide was Eastern Canadian so had the SEXIEST accent. The dogs were going crazy just before we took off, they were so excited and so pumped to be going for a run. The first km was called “poop hill”, as every single dog seemed to go toilet up here. Literally every single one! There were 6 dogs pulling my sled. They were Konan, Yukon, Splinter, Moonracer, Denali and Gibson. Konan was at the back & as you are supposed to help push uphill he would turn around and check to see if you were helping, and if not just come to a complete halt. Cheeky bugger. When we got to the frozen over lakes the view was beyond amazing (as seen in featured photo). Flat ice lakes stretching for ages, snow capped mountains in ever directions with woodlands which were frozen over surrounding the out skirts of the lake. Afterwards we all relaxed around a fire drinking warm apple cider (which I thought was weird as we only drink it cold here) and little cinnamon rolls. It was my ideal kind of day that I will never forget!

Banff was the most enjoyable part of my trip. I made so many friends which I am still in contact now & hope to for awhile. One of my favorite photos was taken early morning (probably still drunk), with Carly & I being in the kitchen, look outside and see this gorgeous sunrise. So what do we do? Run out into the middle of the street in socks and take a gazillion photos. The town itself it so cute. I would describe it as the Queenstown of Canada. Except they have deer just roaming the streets and cougars in the shadows. Its an amazing little town.

I was sad to leave Banff & the friends I had made but was on to the last stop on my World Trip- Vancouver. This city has the best of all worlds. Water, Mountains and forests all in close proximity. When I arrived it wasn’t anywhere near as cold as everywhere else I’d been in Canada but was very rainy. There are so many homeless people here as it is the warmest major city in Canada ( and probably also as weed is legal, but kind illegal at the same time?). Spent a few days wandering the city, through Stanley Park which is a reserve on an island in the middle of Vancouver, up into Rice Valley, Granville Island and to Dove cove in North Vancouver where myself and Rena walked up to Quarry Rock. The view from the rock looks over the surrounding area & can see the city in the far distance. The forests in Vancouver reminded me of home so much. Lots of ferns, high trees, damn wet feeling, and fresh air. Fresh air is probably the main thing I missed. On one of the days I went on a tour up to Whistler. Made a few friends, who I still am in contact with. We made a few stops, one at a bay which was eerily creepy with low lying fog, and another at an amazing waterfall. We were given the choice of either bungee jumping or zip-lining in Whistler. As NZ is well renowned for bungee jumping I chose the zip-lining tour, as who can say they’ve done that down the sides of Whistler Mountain! It was absolutely amazing! We caught the gondala halfway up and walked through the snowy forests to the zip-lines . The first one was the longest and I couldn’t even see the other end! Literally flying over the rivers, trees and canyons was amazing! Second behind the dog tour in my memories.

After a week in Vancouver it was tie for me to head home. After 80 days of travelling and marveling at all the different wonders I wasn’t ready to come back to reality. Usually all good things come to an end, but for me that was just a taster of what is yet to come.