Garibaldi Provincial Park

My first hike this summer with the Meetup hiking group was up in Garibaldi Lake. This hike has been on my bucket list for a while and it did not disappoint. On a sunny Wednesday, we hiked up to Taylor Meadows and then continued on to Garibaldi Lake, a total of about 20km roundtrip.
The scenery is just spectacular and I hope to go back next summer, spend a couple of nights up there and explore Panorama Ridge and the Black Tusk.

Taylor Meadows

Garibaldi Lake

Garibaldi Lake

Catching the Black Tusk

Galiano Island

Galiano Island is one of the Southern Gulf Islands between Vancouver and Vancouver Island. We rented a cabin for a long weekend in the middle of nowhere and explored the beautiful nature on the island. The mainly undeveloped island with its unique shoreline with artistically sculpture sandstone formations, tidal pools, sandy beaches and wildflowers make it a wonderful place to explore. Mount Galiano offers spectacular views of the surrounding islands as well as Active Pass, the narrowest passage for BC Ferries. Galiano Island is a perfect place to recharge your batteries.

View of Active Pass from Mount Galiano 

Dionisio Point Provincial Park

Dionisio Point Provincial Park

Purple starfish at low tide

Wild flowers

Retreat Cove

Tidal pools

Cuban Architecture

Havana is full of beautiful old buildings, although the majority of them is decaying and in desperate need of restoration. These old buildings are a photographer's paradise. 

Faces of Cuba

During our week in Cuba, we met some pretty interesting people along the way. Rachel looked after us in the Casa particular that we rented in Havana for 3 days. She lived next door in a tiny little place and earned a few pesos by looking after people. She is a widow in her 80's, her husband and herself used to run a small grocery store around the corner but it was taken away from them during the Revolution. One day, she showed us old photos and told us about her life, fascinating!

One day, we came across a dance school in an old derelict building. We ended up chatting with a few people from the dance school including the dancer below and learned about upcoming their projects. It was super interesting hearing people's stories. 

Rachel

Mother and daughter

Violinist 

Girl at the dance school

Dancer

Classic Cars - Havana

Cuba is full of classic cars that have been passed down from grandfather to son to grandson. These cars are over 50 years old and are on the road pretty much every day, some are really well maintained. The owner of this Ford 'Fairlane' buys original parts from Florida to keep his car in pristine condition. 

Havana by night

One evening, I got the chance to go out and do some night photography with a Cuban photographer. Although Havana has lots of great old buildings, the street lighting isn't very diverse so I played around with the white balance. The luck wasn't on our side either as quite a few buildings that are usually lit were surrounded by darkness. I am still pleased with the few shots I got.

Varadero - Cuba

Cuba has been on my bucket list for many years and I finally got the opportunity to visit Cuba even if it was only for one week. I was travelling with 3 friends, one of whom flies for one of the Canadian airlines that flies to Varadero throughout the winter months. Varadero, Cuba's largest resort area, is located on the 20km-long Hicacos peninsula that attracts mainly Canadian and European crowds, that stay in the many all-inclusive hotels ranging from older, run-down soviet-style concrete buildings to high-end 5 star resorts at the far end of the peninsula.

Varadero Beach

We spent the first 3 nights in Varadero staying in a 'Casa particular', a little apartment with 2 bedrooms just across the street from the beach for just CUC$35 per night, equivalent to CAD$40 or so. Cuba has two different currencies, the local peso for Cuban's and the convertible peso that replaced the American dollar (also called CUC) for tourists. There are no ATM's that accept foreign bank cards and credit cards are rarely accepted outside of the resorts so we had to bring enough cash to get by. Cuba is still relatively cheap to travel around especially if you stay in a 'Casa particular' and some hosts offer a home-cooked meal for just a few CUC. Meals at restaurants are not expensive either, a main course of fish, shrimp, chicken or pork with rice, beans and a bit of salad will set you back around CUC$6 - $8. However, anything priced in CUC$ is expensive for Cubans given the fact that they earn an average of CUC30 to $40 per month.

Santa Marta

Since my friend has been flying to Varadero for the past 10 years or so, we got a glimpse into the local life by meeting some of her friends who live in Santa Marta, a small town outside of Varadero.
Most of the locals who live in Santa Marta make a living by working in the tourism industry in Varadero. We spent an evening strolling around the streets of Santa Marta soaking up the local life, which takes place outside in the streets. On our last night, Anita's friends went out of their way to cook us a delicious lobster dinner which we had to eat behind closed doors and windows. Lobsters are reserved for tourists and for export, fishermen are no longer allowed to sell them to locals or to keep them for themselves. If caught, they face a big fine as well the risk of loosing their fishing license.

Varadero Sunset

After two days of relaxing and enjoying the beautiful beach and the turquoise coloured water we were ready for a few days in bustling Havanna.

Olympic National Park, Washington

During a little break between Christmas and New Years, we headed South into Washington State and explored the Olympic Peninsula. Olympic National Park covers different eco systems from coastline to temperate rainforest and glaciated mountains.
Hoh Rain Forest is one of the largest temperate rain forests in the US and it is just spectacular. The large old trees are covered in mosses and lichens that give the forest a nice vibrant green colour.

Hall of mosses

Heaven's gate

Can you see the ghost?

 

Colonnade of trees that growing on a nurse log

Salmon stream

Ferns and mosses

A ski weekend in Nelson

Nelson, a small town in the Kootenay region is home to the Whitewater Ski Resort which is part of the famous Powder Highway. Known knee deep powder, cat skiing and other outdoor activities my ski buddy Erna and I decided to check it out.

Since it's a long drive from Vancouver, we booked a flight to Castlegar Airport, which due to its location in a valley is more closed than open in the winter due to weather conditions. Apparently, the instrument approaches are considered amongst the most challenging of any in use at a commercial airport in North America. Lucky us, the weather gods were on our side and upon landing at Castlegar, the passengers, some of whom had been waiting for 2 days to fly out, cheered and clapped their hands, happy to have made it.

A group of guys from Vancouver whom we ran into on several occasions were on a mission to get confirmation from the locals that Nelson was indeed the weed capital of the Kootenays. The story goes that the weed is transported by backcountry skiers across the border into Washington state.
Whitewater is a small ski resort with only 3 chair lifts, however, there is some great terrain to be explored and despite the lack of fresh snow, we were still able to find stashes of powder on some of the glade runs.

It is really a local's resort, apparently, 70% of the locals have a season pass and the atmosphere on the mountain is very relaxed and casual. The ski shuttle from Nelson to Whitewater only runs once a day and is a great way to meet locals or run into our male friends each morning. The shuttle driver is a lucky guy, he drives skiers up to the mountain, spends his day in the backcountry before driving the shuttle back to Nelson at the end of the day! What a hard life being a ski bum!

The Fresh Tracks Cafe at the base of WH2O is known for it's superb food, in fact, the recipes have been published in several cookbooks that became national bestsellers.
We had 3 days to explore the mountain and enjoyed the varied terrain from great groomers to moguls to glades with stashes of powder. Tracking our progress on our ski apps and comparing maximum speeds, vertical drop, distance and number of runs was part of our day.

We didn't run into the bear though….

In the evenings, we explored downtown Nelson which is basically a few blocks along Baker Street.
After 3 great days, my ski buddy headed for Red Mountain while I made my way back to Castlegar to catch the afternoon flight back to Vancouver. The shuttle driver was a funny character, for some reason we got into talking about religion and politics and he was so convinced that if women ruled the world, it would be such a better place!!! He might have a point there. When I finally got to Castlegar airport, the Air Canada guy greeted me with 'You must be Ms. Risler', I was the last of about 15 passengers to check in. Gotta love small town airports.