In Yatta We Trust

Hi guys, yatta is back ! While looking at the cute girls in Japan, we've finally found a wifi access to update you about this crazy trip.

Lire la suite

San Francisco was our mystery destination for 10 great days! We had time to see everything we wanted, it is really a cool city! From Alcatraz to the cable cars, the golden gate bridge, the zoo, the parks, chinatown, shopping and climbing the crazy hills of the city

Go have a look at the photos from the trip here!

Saturday, 6 am. It's time to get up! Today we go to Tofino!

We got a bus until Horsehoe bay in West Vancouver, where we hop on the ferry and here we go to Vancouver Island. 10 am, we arrive in Nanaimo (east coast), we get our car: a Ford Focus wagon! Waaa that was a bit scary for me, because i only drive once every year

Tofino is 4 hours away, we have to cross all the island from east to west. The road is very nice, we drove past lakes, huge trees, mountains with snow, and we finished by reaching the pacific... beautiful!
I didn't get any trouble with the car, and the automatic gear make it way easier!

The Pacific Rim Park is made up of three separate regions: Long Beach (where we were), the Broken Group Islands, and the West Coast Trail (a hardcore 75km trail!). It rains over 3 meters a year in this area! All the forest around are rain-forests, full of bears, cougars and frogs We didn't meet any bears over the weekend. But we saw one deer on the road and a bald eagle in the sky.

The forests here are just so huge, some trees are 800 years old, they were here before Colombus! The French forests look a bit sad to compare to these ones! I have never seen trees so big before!

Tofino is a big spot for surfing, there are some very big waves here! We didn't see too many surfers in the water. They were too busy chatting up girls in the pub! (Brice de nice style!).

We did most of the trails park on Sunday, the weather was nice that day. But on Monday, it was pouring tons of rain. We had to drive under the snow on the way back, epic! One car was in the ditch, so you can be sure i was concentrated! Jen was a good co-pilot, even though her map only shown half of our trip.

A very nice getaway weekend, in the wilderness of the pacific coast. I don't really know how much we spent during these 3 days, probably around 400$. But it was worth it!
There are loads of photos in the gallery, click here!

That's it we definitely said hasta la vista to our mountain. We went a last time to Cypress this week, just to check how was our overall progression. We can say now that we are pretty good at snowboarding, and we will be able to surf finger in the noise in the coming winters in Europe or wherever. I was about to sell my board, but now i'm thinking i should bring it back, a little souvenir for the nice time i had with it here!

We will miss Cypress and all the crazy people we met here
We created an account on Facebook so we can keep in touch with everybody. Click on it to see our pages.

Don't forget to have a look at the Flickr gallery for more wicked pics!!

April is here, we are nearly at the end of our year here in Vancouver. We are jobless, so this is the moment to make a list of all the stuff we want to do and see before the end. This includes a walk on the English bay beach, all you can eat Indian and sushi, a little bike stroll around Stanley Park, bring back Jen's favorite Chinese chili sauce, a last run with my snowboard, a weekend in Tofino, see some raccoons or seals, and a secret trip in May... and too many others things.

We went to Lighthouse Park yesterday, a virgin forest located in West Vancouver. Some of the 500 year old Douglas firs stand as tall as 60m - these were big trees even in 1792 when Captain Vancouver mapped this coast. A lot of trees were down, due to the last winter storm; the same storm which destroyed a part of Stanley Park. Go have a look at the photos, and play the game "Where the hell is puppy?"

Jenifer bank cards was copied, she can't use it anymore. It was probably over an ATM. Be careful!
No more crazy news for the moment, what about you?

I bought a ticket for the return, with zoomairlines this time, since i got screwed up with british airways ultra. If you have nothing to do the 15th of May, Dad, can you come and pick me up at the airport ?

We finished working at Cypress Mountain, yesterday was our last day. A rainy, crappy day with nobody on the mountain, only some hardcore skiers. Our bus exploded on the way up to the mountain, there was white smoke inside, we nearly died :D. That was funny, the bus driver said " i think this will be my last day too!".

It's good to be finished anyway, i liked Cypress, but at the end of the season you 're just fed up with this brain dead job and want to do something else. I hope we will keep in touch with the friends we met here. On the last update, Nut the squirrel is still living on top of the sunrise chair. His eye is now much better, it's back like before, so hopefully he can see again. Nut, we ll miss you.

We will probably go snowboarding this week a couple of times, the station close for mid-April, we finish now because the night skiing is over and they don't need so many staff.

The party was wild, the beer won the battle once again. We always think that we can be stronger than a few pints of Guinness, but that's not true, the wake up was difficult this morning. And we missed the St Patrick parade in Vancouver.

More photos here!

Here are some panorama i just finished stitching up. Click on the picture to view the original size.

Yiiiahh!

Last weekend we went to see uncle Sam! Our pockets full with dollars, we took a bus and went to Seattle for 4 days! Seattle is only 3 hours away from Vancouver, so we had to go and see it for ourself! It's worth it!

We stayed in a very nice hostel (green tortoise) right in the downtown center, with free breakfast and one free dinner!
We went to see the famous Pike Place Market: one of the oldest farmers market in the USA.

We visited the museum of Music. Very cool place, where you can see the Jimi Hendrix exhibit, with the guitars he broke on stage. And a lot more with Nirvana or Pearl Jam stuff. There is a demo room as well where you can learn how to play electric guitar, bass or drums... awesome dude!!

Later we went up the space needle (184m), which is meant to look like a flying saucer. There is a nice panoramic view on top overlooking Seattle and the bay, it was bloody windy!

We also visited the oldest part of the city, the "pioneer" area and went underground the streets for a little tour back in the cowboys and gold rush time!

We quickly went to china/japan town, but it is not as nice and colorful as the Vancouver Chinatown.

Visiting places is interesting but what about drinking? Well we found some good pub with cheap 2$ beer. And we were lucky enough to see a jazz band playing live, they were excellent!

It was relaxing to get away from Vancouver a few days and get to see an american city.

There are tons of pictures on the flickr gallery. So go and look at it for more details. And don't forget to write some comments on the blog so i don't feel like writting to a mirror

Next post, after Paddy's day! If i am sober enough to write!