For the next 4 days we camped at Spanish Banks. This is a beach area along the harbour bay next to the centre of Vancouver. While waiting for the aircon parts to arrive, we had time on our hand to explore the city. The central peninsula is where the city has a high-rise business district. At the point of this peninsula is Stanley Park. The first day we walked around the business district admiring the old and new constructions. We took the sky tram (above ground metro). The last Fairmont Hotel of the Canadian Pacific railroad line is here. Now we have seen all of these hotels stretched out over the wide country. At one point goods from Asia arrived on the West coast and then were transported to the East coast and shipped to Europe. You still can see large freight trains with container boxes going inland and oil trains coming back. The second day we drove to Stanley park. We had been there before some 25 years ago and Rudy was excited to see that the park still has many large old growth trees. We made several walks through the park. The evening/nights were spent again along the waterfront of Spanish Banks. The beach section is further along but you are not allowed to camp overnight there. At the point where we stayed, there is a large grass field where dog walkers let the dogs run around free and play with each other. Every night we came back here, we seen more campers or people sleeping in their cars along the shore. One afternoon Rudy’s cousin, Bart Moorman, dropped by. He has moved from Perth Australia to Vancouver and works now in a local Children’s Hospital. He took us out to a very nice up market Vietnamese restaurant. It was great to finally meet and talk with Rudy’s nephew. He gave us some Dutch cookies and drop which are very welcome because we ran out of them. Thank you very much Bart. Late in the afternoon, we picked up the aircon replacement which had finally arrived at Bill’s house. We had found a garage (after several phone calls) which was willing to install the aircon on Friday morning. We spent the 4 hours installation time walking up and down the very long Main street of Vancouver and had lunch in one of the many Asian restaurants here. Delicious fried noodles. There is a large number of Asian immigrants in Vancouver. My guess is that it is maybe more than 50%. Chinese, Malaysian, Vietnamese, Filipino, Indian etc. Outside the business district, the land is covered with a sea of single houses. Slowly they are now being replace by multi storied apartments or town houses. On Saturday morning, Bill came by our campsite to say goodbye. Thank you Bill for your generosity and hospitality. We then finally drove through town to the neighbouring town of Port Moody where another former classmate of Jamaliah (Diana Cheok) lived. The ladies were thrilled to finally see each other after so many years and spoiled us by taking us out for lunch and dinner. For the first time since Edmonton we slept in a bed again. Jamaliah spent many hours chatting and catching up old times with Diana. The following day we drove on to meet Margaret and Perry in Harrison Hot Springs. We had met them before in Edmonton and Jamaliah knows Margaret from Brunei. The 131 km drive to this town was busy. This part of British Columbia is densely populated (compared to the rest of Canada) so the road was busy but not crowded. Margaret had cooked a nice large Salmon for dinner which was shared with visiting relatives. Finally we had freshly cooked salmon on the table. It was delicious. Thanks Margaret.
Rudy Welling's Travels 