Camping and Hiking at Lizzie Bay, BC, Canada

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Three months living here and it’s my first Canada day weekend.  That means that Friday was a day off and we’ve headed north to go camping and hiking in the mountains.  Situated just by Pemberton, BC, Lillooet Lake is a beautiful expanse of water with a number of designated camp sites where you can pitch your tent for the night; www.lillooetlakeestates.com

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The campsite is pretty basic, with just a couple of long drop toilets, and it’s bear country, so you have to lock all your food away at night. We did see a couple of black bears not too far from the camping ground.

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Not too far away is Joffre Lakes, by Mount Currie which has a great hike to the upper lake, which at around 1600m, was quite refreshing.IMAG0221

 

 

 

 

It’s about a 4 hour hike round trip.  2 hours to the upper lake and 2 hours back, and totally worth it for the awesome views.

Things to do in Vancouver #5 – Mountain Bike round the Endowment Lands at UBC

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This one is for the more energetic person, as it’s quite a distance to get to the Endowment Lands (also known as Pacific Spirit Park) and there are some long hills.

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There are some awesome single-track trails round the parkland, which is shared with pedestrians, so keep an eye out for dog walkers and joggers as it is a popular spot.

A trail map is available here: http://www.metrovancouver.org/about/maps/Maps/Pacificspiritmap.pdf

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Top Tip: Take the Salish trail north at the end of your ride and it will bring you out on NW Marine Drive, giving you a nice flat ride along the beaches back into Kitsilano.

Things to do in Vancouver #2 – Cycle round Stanley Park

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Get on your borrowed or rented bike and take a trip round Stanley Park.

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See views of Coal Harbour, North Vancouver, the Lions Gate Bridge and on a clear day you will even see Vancouver Island. 

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The port of Vancouver is always busy and you will see a variety of ships navigating their way into port, and a stream of float planes taking off and landing.

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Bike Rental
Bikes can be rented from Bicycle Sports Pacific, located right at the end of the Burrard Bridge.  It’s a short ride past English Bay to get to Stanley Park.

 

Remember one thing: If you are cycling you have to go round it anticlockwise.

One Week In Vancouver

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So one week in Vancouver and what have I learned?

The weather is just as hard to forecast as the UK.

Hardly anyone wears a suit to work.

Lots of people walk/cycle/run everywhere.

When it rains, it properly rains.  Constantly.  All day.

The banking system seems a little antiquated in some areas.

 

However, there are some lovely views of some amazing scenery:

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Moving to Canada – Changing Driving License

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If you are changing a UK driving license to a Canadian one, you can now do this painlessly.  Before June 29th 2010 you had to sit a theory and driving license test.  Now you can just walk into a licensing centre and swap your UK licence for a BC licence for $31.

http://www.icbc.com/driver-licensing/moving-bc/other-country/australia

This makes it much easier, especially if you are licensed to ride a motorcycle in the UK as that would mean an extra 3 tests on top of the 2 for the car license.

Great news, although you do need your permanent residents card, both copies of your driving license (photocard and paper copy) and your passport.

Understanding Twitter

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When twitter first arrived on the scene, I, like many others was a little behind the curve in seeing the potential of what the simplistic technology allows.  It was hard to see how the deluge of information being deposited in cyberspace could add any value to either my work or my social activity. 

Since I do work in the technology sector and I advise many clients as to the use of various technologies to help their businesses, I thought I should persevere with using this technology and seeing the reasons for using it.  After all, a few years ago, we all wondered why anyone would read blogs, and now look where we are: http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2011/mar/17/sxsw-music-technology-soundcloud?INTCMP=SRCH

The great thing about twitter (once you get set up and comfortable with it) is that you can view a lot of things in one place extremely quickly.  Whether it be from what’s going on in the stock market, where your friends are going out, to the latest music coming out, all this information can come from searching through tweets.

It’s a total change in the way we do things, and it will probably take most people a long time to adapt, be comfortable sharing information, filtering out the useless, and subscribing to sources that help them, but eventually twitter can enhance your life.  Sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it?