Exciting Adventures around Hallowe'en Time and Unseasonably Lovely Weather on a Beach

So, I've been a bit rubbish about updating this week. This is partly because for the first few days it rained, which rather discouraged us from venturing much further than the 7/11 at the end of the street. When it rains here, more often than not, it does rain Properly. Although, fortunately for us it has mainly done that at night. It reminds me a bit of that holiday in France when I was 7...

In other rainy news, all those doom mongerers who keep telling me that it rains non-stop here: it doesn't (only at night) and in fact today (November, I might remind you) was so warm that I stripped down to a T-Shirt and sat on a beach. And watched a glorious sunset (which didn't actually look quite like this picture of it does (it's all camera trickery...) but isn't it a nice picture?).



Anywayz, where had I got to? I think I last updated sometime before Hallowe'en, so I shall start with all things ghostly.

The Canadians go a bit nuts about Hallowe'en - I would say nearly as much as the Americans, but I would definitely be guessing. On the 31st itself Tabitha and Hannah (my flatmates) went to Metrotown - a huge 470 shop mall which I have yet to grace with my presence - and reported that not only were loads of the kids dressed up but that they were more or less trick or treating shop-to-shop as the stores were all giving out free 'candy'! Besides that, there were some pretty impressively dressed up houses in the Westend (although, they were unfortunately difficult to photograph without a tripod :( In any case, they looked like Christmas houses but with ghosts, pumpkins and spiders instead of elves and reindeer. V cool. All through the weekend, wondering around Downtown Vancouver, all sorts of creatures and characters could be seen, donned by people of all ages - some of them had made a very impressive effort.

I failed to persuade my flatmates that if you can't beat 'em, you should join 'em, so sadly no dressing up was to be had last weekend. We did celebrate Hallowe'en with a visit to a creepified theme park though :) Five of the people off the flight went, along with a bunch of other BUNACers/Swappers. Between us we very much divided into two groups. Those of us who thought that big rides were scary and/or not worth feeling ill for, and those who thought that the haunted houses were absolutely the most terrifying things they'd ever been through. Those of us in the former group spent most of the evening finding the latter group's hysteria absolutely hilarious - it wouldn't have been the same without them ;) And the haunted houses were pretty good too - you came out of the variously themed houses to have a brief respite before being instantly chased around by characters themed to match the house... Just when you think all the freaky clowns are over, you turn around and their right behind you. Awesome. All in all an excellent night.


What other things I have I got around to? Well earlier in the week we decided to make a start exploring some of the parks in North Vancouver. Being cheap, we didn't want to pay to see the Capilano suspension bridge (one of the Top Things to do/see by most accounts - looks suspiciously like a tourist trap to me (especially since the main attraction is 'a big suspension bridge through rainforest', which is something I've done in the past through more interesting rainforest), but i might get there eventually). Instead, we opted for it's smaller sibling in Lynn Valley Park.

A shortish bus ride there and we headed into the park. Well, that is, after we'd pressed all the buttons and lit up all the lights in the ecology centre displays (designed for 6 year olds, i'm sure, but satisfying nonetheless), and learned what to do if we found a bear; basically, don't panic, reason with it, and don't run lest you instigate 'exit persuaded by a bear', or something... Although, as it happened, when we came to a sign pointing out we were entering an areas of bear activity, we decided that we had no wish to even contemplate reasoning with a bear and promptly headed in the opposite direction...

Anywayz, after a large amount of faffing and 'learning' (about endangered super flying squirrals, amongst other things :D ) in the ecology centre, we finally made our way to the bridge, which is quite cool, and claims to have been built by Scouts, but since it's still here 80 years later, I remain unconvinced.

On the right hand side I made a collage of photos, so you can see what you see from looking down and then gradually looking up the creek. It was a very pretty waterfall, and while it's cliche, it really did look much bigger in reality, the photo does it no justice... Still, gives you an idea.

Then rather than appreciate the nature and explore the trails we spent a good half an hour having what i can only describe as a photo shoot on and around the bridge. But fair play, it was a cool bridge...


And when we did finally make it into the woods proper, the light amongst the trees was pretty stunning (as were the trees incidently, although, i think Canada needs to branch out (hah!) a bit from just having fir trees *everywhere*. Some perspective as to their size though:


Well, ok, not perspective maybe, but it does make them look a lot bigger than they do in the waterfall picture...

And there was pretty light coming through them:



I promise that future blog posts will contain fewer pictures of trees, I just couldn't resist...

In order to keep this blog in some sort of orderly fashion, I shall break here before moving on to more recent explorations tomorrow morning (which also conveniently means i can go to bed...). Exciting Adventures around Hallowe'en Time #2 shall follow shortly. Promise. And I hope this post has made up for my previous lack of pictures.

I leave you with the view that we returned to that evening, on our way back from the park. Downtown Vancouver from the end of my block (I apologise profusely to the photographically minded of you that I don't possess a tripod, but it's still a pretty cool view):



Hope you're all well back home!