It was a real effort dragging ourselves away form the Beswicks house on Vancouver Island to hit the mainland for a few days but we managed to leave before 9am and drive the 120km or so up to Nanaimo to catch the ferry to Horseshoe Bay north of Vancouver. We drive slowly and only rush the last 15km as the ferry time approached. We got there with only minutes to spare only to find the ferry already full so we have to wait around for the next one in a hour or so. The earlier ferry loads and the waiting lines are just about empty so we throw a frisbee around till the queues begin to build up again and we notice a Starbucks on the other side of the carpark.

The Ferry only takes minutes to load all the cars and then is slipping its moorings for a very gentle cruise over the passage to the mainland (why was whale watching not as calm as this?) We are soon back in the car and heading off onto the highway bound for the mountains. Now if you didn't know Vancouver and the Whistler mountains are to hold the 2010 Winter Olympics and there are major improvements to the highway between Vancouver and Whistler, they are carving new routes from the hillside to speed up the drive. We just happened to choose the day they were laying 2km of fresh black tarmac and got stuck in a jam for about 30 mins waiting for our turn. Oh well getting the traffic control people to wave and smile passed some of the time for us.

We had booked a condo over the Internet after scouring loads of different pages and somehow choose one over the multitude of others. So we were unsure how it was going to work out as we drove around the village looking for it from the instructions emailed to us after handing over my credit card details. We were given a number and door code after trying it several times we at lst gained entry...

Well you have guessed, the place we had booked was absolutely wonderful. It was quite a swanky pad with loads of gear to feed and entertain us for a few days. It turns out that its a privately owned by a couple from south Vancouver that rent it out a few weeks of the year when they are not using it themselves. it was perfect, we even received a call from the owner on the 2nd night to check everything was OK and we were happy with our booking.

So we have spent two days up in the mountains walking (well catching chair lifts and walking down!) Enjoying ourselves then heading back to our pad for a well deserved meal. We were told about the local bear population and even heard of a couple of sightings from others but nothing for us. On the second day we were taking an open chair lift up Blackcomb Mt when Al just said "I want to see a bear just here"...when lo and behold a black bear club was there under our feet from the chair lift. We tried to take a few pictures quickly as proof. We just could not believe it.

At the top of Blackcomb we watched the hordes of summer camp skiers do there stuff on the glacier for a while before watching one of them get carried of the mountain on a stretcher! We head down the mountain and back into the valley sunshine to warm ourselves up a little. R tries some rock climbing on a wall then its back to base camp to pop the kettle on.

So tomorrow we are due to head back south to Vancouver itself for a day before heading back to The Beswicks for our last week.

See you in two weeks.

Jonathan