Oh Canada....hanging out in Vancouver

Just a little bit of catching up to do before we get to Canada. On our second last day in Homer, Alaska we went to the local Farmer's Market, which was a small but interesting and quite charming affair. They had locals play some music, and much to our astonishment the band was comprised of all teenage boys (with some adults mixed in later). My theory was that at least they get to hit something :)

It was quite enjoyable to listen to and take in, and I enjoyed a serve of cod and chips with the show. Video below.

 Fog bank on our way back to from a walk.

Driving out of Homer, a pickup with a sofa and dog on the back.

The next day was basically just going back to Anchorage, cleaning the RV, dropping it off the following morning and then going to the airport to fly to Vancouver via Seattle. We arrived in Vancouver around 10pm on monday night.

Instead of hotels or motels, due to our length of stay here we had arranged to basically rent an appartment for 10 days before we move into the hotel where the convention is held. This works out a lot cheaper, we pay about $50 per night and we are sharing a house with locals Jeff and Nicole, their daughter, Finlay the dog and Lily the cat. The house is separated into two individual apartments, we have the one upstairs. We have a separate entrance which we can lock and we have bedroom, bathroom, lounge, kitchen and Lily. I just call her kitteh.

Kitteh has decided that I'm her bestest fwuent and she follows me around everywhere. She's very friendly and playful, and it seems she has learned that it's not cool to wake uncle Tim up at 6 in the morning by jumping onto him in the bed (Disclaimer: no animals were hurt when this first happened). Interestingly enough my allergies seem to be pretty much non-existant...I still take precautions though.

One late afternoon we went to Red Robin, and we enjoyed a delicious meal. The burger I had was really flavourful, we both were very happy with our choices. I had a mushroom burger with a side of Mac & Cheese.

 Dinner at Earl's in Yaletown. I just had two appetizers, the chicken wings and the baby calamari. Simone had the baked brie and chicken sandwich with apple slices. All very nice food and as an added bonus for me the waitresses were all very easy on the eye :)

The other day we did a long walk starting in Stanley Park. We walked through the rainforest part and then along the shore back to the mainland. Altogether I think Simone worked out we walked over 10km. The weather here is actual summer weather, so the temps are in the high 20s low 30s. But the sun here doesn't burn as harsh as it does back home, that's for sure. I guess having an ozone layer over your head does some good.

Granville Markets from the bridge.

Ok so in Canada they have something they call poutine. It's a dish originating in Quebec and basically the original is fries with gravy and cheese curds. They of course have all sorts of different variations but it's a popular dish, you can even get this at your local Burger King. So today whilst googling some eateries I came across Fritz European Fry House. They do fries with all kinds of sauces. And of course poutine. So I had to try it.

The small poutine. The gravy is served very hot so it actually starts melting the cheese curds. I have to say after tasting this, I'm a fan. This is the kind of food you have when you're craving something fatty and satisfying. Apparently this place is THE stop late nights when people leave the bars and clubs and want something quick to eat before falling into bed.

Jumbo serve of fries with Dutch Mayo (frittesauce). None of this ketchup business. Though they also have curry ketchup on the menu, which I guess you could use if you wanted pommes rot-weiss.

Simone had lunch from one of the food trucks she learned about on Twitter - Guanaco. She did her best to pronounce the name of the dish she wanted, and thankfully the server knew what she meant :)
This truck is quite popular and highly rated on sites like Urbanspoon. Simone had the Revueltas pork pupusa & yuca frita.

I bought this drawing from a homeless man for $6. At least he wasn't just begging like so many others here in Vancouver, and when he said that a meal would cost him $6 when I asked how much he wanted for it, I believed him.

Homer - Bear Viewing Tour Up Close And Personal!

After Seward we decided to go further south and we picked Homer as our next destination. It was only a few hours drive and apart from one stretch of road where we needed to follow a pilot car through the roadworks, it was an easy drive. We even spotted someone's agility setup in their front yard :)

Once we arrived in Homer we went for a quick shop, picked our campground for the time here (3 nights) called A Fisherman's Resort, and after hooking up the RV we went for a walk. Well firstly we went to see about a bear viewing tour we had picked and their office is only around the corner (literally). But they were fully booked. So we went on a walk down to the end of what's called the Homer Spit, basically a natural pier that's around 4miles long into the ocean. At the end there are restaurants, tour offices, fishing charter offices etc.

There is also a campground on there, and you can see some people take their camping seriously. Full on truck with oversized trailer thank you very much.

Some leftover boat

A slightly different RV, this one looks home made, complete with furnace.

Someone with enough time on their hands had fortified their tent on the beach.

Fishing is the main tourist and local business here, and on the spit there are tables outside the charter offices where they fillet the fish for those who went out on a trip. This guy could fillet a halibut in about a minute flat. The main fish caught here are halibut and salmon.

These fish were massive, about a meter long.

Another husband waiting bench in front of a souvenir shop.

One of the offices here belonged to the Alaska Bear Adventure company. In the window they had a sign that said there were spaces for the friday afternoon tour, so we went in and enquired about it. We could go on standby and if there were people booked on it with enough room for us, it would only cost us $399 instead of $650 per person. Yes it's not cheap and all bear tours are roughly the same price. So after checking them out online and making sure they were good ( they are number 1 on tripadvisor) as decided to ring them friday morning and put ourselves on the standby list.

So at 9am we were on standby and we rang again at noon to find out about the weather and if we could go as standby or whether we had to buy full price tickets. Turns out that a group of 9 had booked in, so two planes were already full. So we decided to bite the bullet and make ourselves full paying passengers with a guaranteed spot.

We were debating on whether or not we should spend this amount of money as we had already seen bears in Denali. In the end we decided to go for it. We're here, this is the best place to do this kind of tour and we're not gonna come back anytime soon.

So we drove to the small airport where we were given special long gumboots and given the safety talk about flying. Each pilot is also your tour guide, except in this case because there was a group of 9, only two tourguides were needed and our pilot Mike had the time off after flying us to the viewing spot.

Mike

We were in a group of 5 people with Jared as our guide. Before we set off on foot to go to the bears he told us a few of the "dos and don'ts" when it comes to bear encounters. The bears here are quite special in that they have never had bad experiences with humans and have also not been fed by humans. So they don't see humans as food providers or shy away from them. Which means they can get incredibly close to you without being bothered by your presence. When I say they can get close to you it means just that: humans are allowed to approach the bears in certain viewing areas in the wild, up to a certain distance. But if you sit down in a viewing area and the bear comes towards you, you don't have to move. In fact you shouldn't move, and running away is one of the worst things you can do. They can outrun you easily and running away will trigger their instinct to chase.

So the best things to do is kneel down (submissive posture) and don't move. If they get too close for your comfort, you can slowly stand up (this is a warning posture) and they will take the hint and move away. We got to see this in person!

The bear below walked towards us, checking us out and was about 5m away, when Jared stood up. And the bear paused and then moved past us.

This is him moving past us. I couldn't even get his entire body in the frame, he was that close. Interestingly neither Simone or myself felt in any way nervous or in danger. He was just casually strolling past us and checked our group out, there was no hint of aggression.

We called this one Einstein, he still has his winter hair around his face and neck :)

He strolled past us about 10m away.

We saw several mums with their cubs too, this one had three cubs following her around. They are spring cubs, meaning they were born in February this year and have grown from fist size to their current size since then. At a very young age they start eating what mum eats, in addition to mum's milk. They do that for a couple of years until they get told to move on.

Video:

 This big boy crossed the river towards us. Check out his paw!

There were also birds in that area.

And jellyfish.

Our plane.

Shots from our return trip past some glaciers are below. What an incredible day and we were glad that we did the tour and got such an amazing experience. Yes we could probably have gone to that Brooks River waterfall where the bears catch salmon - but you're there with 500 (literally) other people on a viewing platform and it's all very touristy and zoo-like. This way we were a group of 5 plus own personal guide and we got to see adult bears and cubs, seeing them fishing, clamming and foraging and experiencing these majestic animals close up.

Video from the return flight: