After farewelling Sarah, The 'Hound spirited me across the border and into Canada - no real hassles there, not counting the minor inconvenience of unloading and reloading every man, woman and child (and their luggage) of course. Home for the next few days was the Global Village Backpackers in downtown Vancouver, which offered the usual mix of friendly travellers, thinly-disguised vagrants, snoring bunkmates, cheap barbeque, questionable video choices, well-patronised vending machines, and pricey internet access. Pretty much all we love about the hostelling experience, right? Accommodations aside, Vancouver was a wonderful city which I had a great time exploring - wandering around the unexpectedly dense downtown zone, the historic Gastown area, indulging my apparent predilection for urban viewing platforms by shinnying up "The Lookout!" ... all good stuff. After retaining the services of a competent tour guide after a Saturday night out in Davie Street, some of the city's more outlying areas were taken in - the beautifully tranquil UBC's Nitobe Memorial Garden was a real highlight, as were the spectacular views from around the bay. Vancouver's wealth of tasty, inexpensive food was also indulged - cheap and cheerful Chinese, after watching the sun go down on a walk around the Stanley Park peninsula, certainly hit the spot.
So ... a beautiful location, friendly locals and fine food - a great, albeit brief, introduction to Canada and the perfect end to my travels. The getting home was an interesting exercise though - an unexpected day in L.A. after a missed connection to Auckland ... these things tend to happen though when airport security hasn't noticed that a metal detector has been turned off for ten minutes, necessitating the entire reprocessing of around five full flights worth of grumpy passengers. That hitch aside, finally arriving back on the opposite side of the globe was great - after two-and-a-bit years of being a foreigner, it was strangely satisfying to waltz past the crowds and front up at the counter designated for New Zealand citizens. In your face, tourists! Auckland's icy, early morning air also did an effective job of letting me know I was back in the depths of an Antipodean winter.
Home. They say there's no place like it, and now that it's a few months down the line and I've managed to settled back in almost entirely ... I think they may just be right.
‹ 1.10.02
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