Paradise Lost?

March was to be a busy month for us. Casting COVID concerns aside last October with COVID waning, we made a number of reservations and dove back the travel pool with gusto. COVID did not care and continued to throw curves at us as our travel dates drew nearer. First victim to fall was our spring break, one week cruise planned with our entire family departing New Orleans out into the Caribbean. The Omicron wave was peaking and if any of us tested positive, it would require us to self-isolate in New Orleans for up to 14 days before being allowed back into Canada.  So joining 4,000 strangers on a cruise ship for 7 days did not seem like the wise thing to do as it did back in October. When we booked the cruise COVID was over and Omicron was just a single paragraph in the local newspaper.  

 NCL’s Norwegian Escape Runs Aground Near Dominican Republic 

It would seem that our dark cloud had a silver lining; the ship we were to be on, ran aground on March 15^th as it was exiting its stop in the Dominican Republic.

Instead, to see our grandchildren we flew back to a cold and wet Ontario. We first celebrated a belated white Christmas with Nonie’s sister and family. Omicron had burst their family bubble and  kept them all apart at Christmas. It snowed 10 centimetres the day before which made our celebration more festive that is except for the shovelling. We were joined by our son and grandson.

 

The next week was spent in Peterborough with the whole family completing small projects around the new house, crushing an escape room in less than 60 minutes, throwing axes with no one losing any fingers, laser tag where I shot myself in the foot, an outdoor fire with hot dogs and s’mores, finishing the week with a family dinner where both sets of grandparents swapped bawdy tales with the grandchildren about their parents.  

 

Back in October, we had also planned to reacquaint ourselves with Hawaii to celebrate our 47^th  wedding anniversary having visited the Big Island 17 years previously to celebrate our 30^th anniversary. We invited our grandchild-less son and his significant other to join us. They are both avid surfers and this would be a bucket list adventure for them to surf Waikiki and the North Shore. If we had to isolate some where for up to 14 days, Waikiki certainly trumps New Orleans.

Getting to Hawaii requires a clean rapid antigen test taken with 24 hours of your departure. Our son is a teacher, his significant other a veterinarian and with all our own activities during our trip out East, we were all a bit nervous about the tests. It was with great relief that we all passed and Air Canada approved our flights. Now all we had to do was pass the same test in 10 days so we could get back into Canada without having to isolate in Honolulu.

It has been some time since we have walked off a plane with a warm, humid breeze caressing our faces hinting of good things to come, making wind chill a distant memory. It did rain while we were there but tropical rain is different than West Coast rain. It comes with a warm wind, nicer ambient temperatures and Mai Tai’s. I found they make everything better. Nonie claims I may have a Mai Tai problem. But I ask, how is ordering a breakfast Mai Tai a bad thing? 

So to make a short story long, our 9 days in Oahu were warm, humid with the odd chance of rain and filled with little adventures. Oahu is not a big island and if you avoid rush hour it can be easily driven around it in a day. Nonie and I rented a SmartCar for a day only to discover it was not a smart car as we became lost several times in our journey.

 

The kids surfed their brains out not missing one day of our stay. Most days they were out twice, once at sunrise and then back in the late afternoon. 

While they surfed Nonie and I explored Waikiki. Honolulu is a tourist Mecca. Except for delicious Kona coffee, Dole pineapples and grass skirts there is very little that it exports.  Tourism accounts for over 25% of the Hawaiian economy, 216,000 jobs and brings in over 18 billions dollars a year.

Oahu is the third oldest island of the Hawaiian chain at 2.3 million years. The islands were formed by an ocean hotspot. As the Pacific Plate moved slowly over the hotspot the islands were formed by the escaping lava. Currently a new Hawaiian island called Loihi is being formed over the hotspot about 15 kilometres south of the Big Island. The top is 3,000 feet  below the ocean surface.

Thanks to its old age, Oahu is an island of beaches. The beaches have been formed by erosion of the volcanic magma, driven by time, wind and the ebb and flow of the ocean’s tide. 

Waikiki is all about the beach. It is ringed be dozens of hotels, spitting thousands of vacationers out on to the sand every day and it comes with a great view of Diamond Head

We are not beach people, preferring to be more active but you cannot visit Waikiki with out spending a day on the beach. For $85 USD we rented two comfortable lounge chairs and an umbrella for the day.

 

Arriving early we nearly had a bit of the beach to our selves but by noon we were packed 5 deep from the beach. And there lurks the dark underbelly of vacationing in Oahu. It is a popular vacation destination that attracts over 10,000,000 tourists each year so most attractions while beautiful will come with a lot of people and reservations a must.

 

A morning hike up to Diamond Head was so congested; it looked the conga line at your cousins wedding. Then there were the dumb ass tourists who thought hiking up a mountain trail in flip flops was a good idea. Arrive early if you can. They are considering implementing a reservation system that is in place for a number of the more active attractions.  

 

It is my belief that swimming in a cool tropical pool fed by a misting water fall is on or should be on every ones bucket list. Waimea Valley in the north end of Oahu had exactly that. 

Photo: Waimea Valley Ecological Park Brochure

To get there involved a 60 kilometre drive, a two kilometre hike through a gorgeous biosphere of Hawaiian horticultural history with the pool and waterfall waiting for us at the end. 

Alas, the skinny dip that I planned had to be shelved.

 

After a morning in Honolulu’s China Town, we headed to the nearby Iolani Palace, home to the last Hawaiian king and queen. It was fully booked for the next 4 days but we were allowed to visit the gift shop and a video presentation on the history of the palace.

 

We had planned to fit in a luau at the Hawaiian Cultural Centre only to find that they were completely booked out for the next 7 days.  A visit out to the USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbour was all fully booked, though we were able to wander the grounds without a reservation.

I was up a 6:30 am in an attempt to book a visit to Hanauma Bay Nature Preserve for some reef snorkeling and managed to book an early afternoon time slot by refreshing my internet page a dozen times as available time slots quickly disappeared. They had to close the bay that day due to infestation of Box jellyfish whose stings can cause paralysis and possible death. I don’t remember seeing that in the tourist brochures.

 Photo: Hawaii Magazine

As you read this, I am sure you may be getting the distinct feeling that we did not have a good experience. If we compared this trip to our first taste of Hawaii 17 years previously, there was no question this trip did not meet our expectations set by our previous experience. Then, there were so many times when it seemed we had the whole Island to ourselves with numerous opportunities for skinny dipping. No so much on Oahu, small island and 10,000,000 visitors.  

But it was still pretty decent. The weather was perfect and Waikiki is a walking and shopping paradise. Name any high end brand and you will find it if you can get past the security guards. There was never a shortage of places to get a Mai Tai. The cheapest drink came as we enjoyed dinner at our first ever meal at a Cheese Cake Factory. For some reason, the Bare Naked Ladies song “Origins of the Universe” kept running through my head. Not sure why but perhaps it was the Mai Tai talking. 

I have one last comment before I close. Penticton is a tourist town, and I must admit to getting cranky after several months of tourists invading my beach and filling my favourite pubs and restaurants. With ten million visitors I fully expected to run into cranky Hawaiians. Not to be, I found them to be friendly, helpful, open and welcoming every where we went from the grocery stores to the beach bars. Perhaps it was the Mai Tai’s.

 

It had been my plan while writing this that I would intersperse some tidbits of our first trip to Hawaii but after revisiting it, I believe that trip deserves its own blog. I kept a daily diary of the trip so the writing is already done. Stay tuned.

A Communing Culturally COVID Adventure in Vancouver

 Running out of things to do in the Okanagan, we decided to head to Vancouver for some big city excitement. With a surfeit of unused air miles we booked plane tickets rather than risk winter mountain roads. With a little internet research I had discovered that Vancouver had a lot going on during our stay. Celebration of La Poutine, a Hot Chocolate Festival, the Davinci Experience, the relighting of the 2010 Olympic Torch for the 2022 Olympics, Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel, a free admission cable suspension bridge in Lynn Valley Park and most importantly connecting with friends and family that we have not seen in almost two years. Our bubble is about to expand.  

Day One. Arrived at the Penticton airport in a blizzard wondering if the plane was going to land. Not an unusual occurrence for us. Flying into Penticton during the winter can be a real crap shoot thanks to Valley cloud which can settle in at a moments notice. As the heavier, denser cold air passes over Okanagan Lake it sinks into the Valley creating a layer of cloud we lovingly call Valley Fog. 

Photo: Infotel Penticton

These clouds can remain trapped for weeks but sometimes it can be escaped by driving into the mountains and getting above the cloud layer. On occasion the moister warmer air rising from the lakes mixes with the trapped colder air to create snow. Known as “lake snow” in other parts of the world here we call it “flavage” a termed coined by one of our local weatherpersons.

Over the years, we have been often stymied completing the last leg of our flights into Penticton due to low cloud cover and or snow cancelling the flight. This has required us to spend a night in Vancouver and more often having to fly into Kelowna the next day with the additional hassle of getting to Penticton from there.

Photo: Penticton Western News

It has happened so often, that we have given up flying into and out of Penticton during the winter, instead opting for Kelowna’s airport and its extravagant parking fees or driving to Vancouver on treacherous winter roads. So before choosing travel dates for our Vancouver adventure, I checked the 14 day weather forecast for Penticton and Vancouver selecting our travel dates based on favourable weather forecasts. Sadly 14 day forecasts are really no more then 14 day lucky guesses. Fortuitously, our plane had already landed before the Valley became completely socked in and the snow had started. Taking off is not as difficult as landing in a blizzard but just as scary.  

We arrived into Vancouver to the forecasted partly cloudy with sunny periods but a nasty wind chill that had not been mentioned in the weather forecast. Checked in to the hotel and were quickly off to the Mink Chocolate Café, a hot chocolate with marshmallow truffle for Nonie. For me, a ruby hot chocolate ganache both specially prepared for the Hot Chocolate Festival. Not to be as it seems they had run out of the ingredients and were no longer available. Disappointed, we moved on to Nonie’s “must go to place” when ever we were in downtown Vancouver. Dressew, a Garden of Eden of fabrics and every kind of sewing notion you could desire. Not to be as they are not open on Mondays. 

Next  stop was the Diva, a bar in the trendy Met Hotel for a feed of Shoyu glazed crispy pork poutine, a tribute to La Poutine Week. But it seems Valentine’s Day had them re-shaping their food menu around a “love” theme and the poutine had been dropped off the menu. Crazy right, I mean, who doesn’t love poutine.

 Photo: La Poutine Week

Our final stop of the day was to see the Vancouver Olympic torch once again lighting up the sky like it did in 2010. 

Sadly, not happening, did someone not pay the gas bill? 

I discovered later that it had been lit but only for the first day of the opening ceremony.  What the f###, our adventure seems to be going quickly off the rails. 

At this juncture, I would like to give a shout out to TransLink, the public company that provides public transportation to most of the Lower Mainland.  The have developed a mass transit system that can rival any we have used around the world. Utilizing their very useful app to plan our trips, we were whisked around quickly and surprisingly on time. The app would meticulously plan your travel and provide an estimate of the time of your arrival. They were never out by more than a couple of minutes on these times.  

Day 2 dawned not with the sun promised fourteen days ago but the overcast and 30% chance of rain promised yesterday. As this was the best forecast for the next three days, we had decided to spend day 2 hiking in Lynn Valley Canyon. Lynn Valley is one of those hidden gems that can be found scattered around the Lower Mainland that provides opportunities to commune with nature while being close to all the amenities of the big city.

 

What attracted me to Lynn Valley was the chance to walk on a cable suspension bridge, something that I tried to do in 1984. We had just moved to the Lower Mainland with our young kids and one sunny Sunday went for a drive to North Vancouver to hike the trails of Capilano Canyon.  

Photo: See Sight Tours

To access trails you needed to cross on the famous Capilano suspension bridge. Arriving, we discovered that there was an admission charge to use the bridge. I was ready to pay but Nonie said we could not afford it and nixed the hike. This ignited the first real fight we had as a married couple. We were mortgaged to the max so money was very, very, very tight. Thus was borne my mantra, “happy wife, happy life”. There was to be no bridge crossing that day.

So here we are 38 years later and the only barrier to crossing this bridge was not an admission charge but Nonie’s fear of bridges that move up and down when walked on. To overcome this fear, Nonie has developed some copping mechanisms that have allowed her to cross bouncy, swingy bridges from Disney World.........

.........to Nepal. 

First she starts humming her happy song, looking straight ahead, never down and the most import, never stopping to enjoy the view till she reached the other side. 

The Lynn Canyon suspension bridge has become just another notch on her bridge belt. She even stopped for a photo op but never look down.

 

The bridge crosses over Lynn Creek which for the past several thousand years has carved out the beautiful Lynn Canyon and filled it with picturesque waterfalls

and deep crystal clear pools. 

Sadly it has also killed and injured dozens of people who fooled themselves into believing they could safely climb down the steep cliffs and swim or dive into these inviting pools.

Stupid is as stupid does.

The trails are well maintained and marked, perfectly suited for a couple of seniors. The trails do climb up and down into the canyon numerous times but instead of intrusive switch back trails, they have installed stairs where any change in elevation was required. This was done to reduce the impact on the environment as stairs require much less area to build on compared to switchback routes. 

While it reduced the environmental impact, not so much for the impact on our legs. "Feeling the burn" became an ongoing sick joke when we kept stumbling up and down all those damn stairs.

 

Arrive early as the place is popular with the locals and visitors. Despite being in the middle of the largest city in BC we had the place mostly to ourselves this morning with only the noise of the rushing water of Lynn Creek. Weirdly, there were no bird calls. Later, sitting at a picnic table by the welcome centre enjoying a well deserved lunch, we watched as droves of noisy tourists started to arrive. 

Lunch over we jumped back on a bus back to civilization with a stop at Drewssew before heading back to the hotel for a few laps in the pool and some hot tub time. No sign of that 30% chance of rain.

Day 3 dawned with the forecasted over cast skies and 30% chance of rain. Not a problem for today was to be a lazy day with indoor plans. We enjoyed a late breakfast in the hotel and then a visit to Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel exhibition at the Vancouver Convention Centre.

 

Nonie and I have had the pleasure of visiting the Sistine Chapel twice. The first time was in 1993 when we were on a family vacation. At the time the Chapel was undergoing restoration and 2/3 of the ceiling was blocked with scaffolding and dust sheets so only a small section of the ceiling was visible.  This visit required two trips to the Vatican as on our first trip we were wearing shorts which are not allowed if you want access to the Chapel. It is still verboten to this day, no bare knees or arms allowed. Twenty years later, the scaffolding and sheets were gone we were dressed appropriately and left awed by the entire ceiling.

Photographs are not allowed but I could not resist and took this in 2014 when God wasn't looking. Does not do the ceiling justice. 

Viewing the ceiling can be daunting, at over 40 meters high with lighting kept low to protect the images. It can be a workout on your neck keeping it in a tilted position that allows you to look up that high. Today’s exhibition made viewing the splendor of the ceiling so much easier and no dress code. Every painting was broken out separately and reproduced on panels from 8’x4’up to 8’x20’ and hung of walls. They are high definition digital reproductions with lots of lighting.

 

When the name Michelangelo pops up in my day, my mind immediately goes to one picture that I first saw on the ceiling in 1993. Till this day, I did not know the name of the painting but it had been burned into my memory. The painting is of a beautiful woman “of course a beautiful woman” known as the Delphic Sibyl. She was a prophet in the 3^rd Century who chanted proclamations about future events from the Sibyl rock, a natural rock rostrum found near the Temple of Apollo in Delphi Greece.  There are several paintings of other Sibyl prophets to be found on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

 

 

There was not a lot of information provided on the paintings in the Sistine Chapel so I assumed everything I saw had something to do with Jesus. After all, we were in the Vatican, the heart of Catholic religion. Not so. None of the art on the ceiling has any direct relationship to Jesus. Shocking revelation, I know but it had to be told. Over the centuries there has been much discussion of the paintings by historians looking for proof that paintings could be linked to the story of Jesus. But it is all supposition and not built on proven facts. 

Back to the hotel before jumping on the Skytrain out to Surrey and dinner with an old high school friend. We finished day 3 with lots of laughs and good memories and a small surprise at the train station in Surrey. It seems that the frequency of trains into downtown Vancouver have been reduced after 9pm due to COVID, so we had a 20 minute wait for the next one. Using the app we were given an alternate route that involved a different Skytrain stop, the #99 Broadway bus and the Canada Line train which got us to the Yaletown stop only 8 minutes earlier than the later direct train would have.  

Day 4 dawned with the forecasted overcast skies and 60% chance of showers. You should know that when weather forecasters refer to either rain or showers they are implying different kinds of day.  The use of showers implies the weather will change a lot during the day with on and off rain whereas the use of rain implies that the day will see continuous wet weather for hours at a time with the chance it will clear afterwards. 

So the plan today was a run out to the Tsawwassen Mill Outlet Mall in Delta and the indoor Davinci Experience so showers were not going to get in the way of our enjoyment.

We joined Jesus for supper. Probably our last one. 

Davinci was a brilliant painter, anatomist, engineer, inventor, arms dealer and creator of weapons of mass destruction. It would seem a misnomer to call Davinci an arms dealer when you are staring mesmerized at his famous image of the Vitruvian Man which he believed to be a divine connection between the human form and the universe. How could an artist who could create something so perfect design weapons that could kill so many people.  

From the first machine gun to the.......

........first armoured tank, he had designs for all kinds of 15^th Century mass killing machines. To be fair, it has not been established which of his designs if any actually made it on to the battle field. But it is the thought that counts; isn’t it?   

 

Thankfully my disappointment of Mr. Davinci was tempered by my enjoyment of an up close visit with the Mona Lisa.  It is thought that Mona is a portrait of the wife of a Florentine merchant who had commissioned Leo to create it. For some reason, Leo had difficulty in giving up the portrait, never delivered it and carried it around with him for most of his life. Having seen the original in the Louvre and now this high definition reproduction, I can see why he could have been crushing on Mona. Culturally sated we headed back into Vancouver for a late dinner with family that was filled with good beer and lots more laughs. 

 

Editor’s Note- Due to Nonie’s Italian heritage, she has inserted herself into my blog. It seems Davinci should actually be written da Vinci but I am too lazy to go back in re-edit that section.

 We woke up to Day 5 with the weather forecast for Penticton to be scattered cloud with sunny periods. Looks like our flight might just get us home and it did. All in all, we can mark this down as another successful Vancouver adventure.

 

An Uplifting Moment in Time

It has been two years since we last hugged our grandchildren. While we were able to see them however briefly on Skype visits, they did not prepare us for what we encountered on our first face to face meeting. In October 2019 they were children and we interacted with them as such.

 

Who we found in October 2021 were not children anymore but little adults. Our childish ways were no longer cute as their expectations of how grandparents should act had been raised to a new bar. 

Week one resulted in one word replies to our questions, week two, four or five word responses and by the time we departed whole conversations with opinions and ideas that is when they weren’t glued to their cell phones. We have successfully reconnected.

We have now vowed that barring a nuclear war, we will not allow what ever life throws at us to let more than a few months pass between visits. The icing on the cake is that Peterborough is lovely place with lots of things to entertain us and with the kids in school we had plenty of time to explore till we had to pick them up.

 

We spent a lovely morning in the small town of Port Hope on Lake Ontario to watch 20 kilogram Chinook salmon attempting to climb a fish ladder around a small hydro dam. 

It was mesmerizing watching these huge fish make attempt after attempt to reach their spawning beds. It was not a simple leap of faith as some ignored the ladder and tried to make their way up the sluice walls.

 

A round of disc golf closed out the afternoon.

 

We spent a Sunday morning cruising the Otonabee River and on into the Trent Severin Waterway.  The waterway is a 386 kilometre long canal that connects Lake Ontario all the way to Georgian Bay on Lake Huron. Started in 1833, the last section of the canal into Georgian Bay was finished in 1920. There are 44 locks, many over a hundred years that allow boats to avoid the rapids and falls along the way.

 

The waterway served as the super highway for trade and transportation in 19th Century Central Ontario and the early years of the 20^th Century. A wider Welland Canal completed in 1932 replaced it as it could handle the larger ships that had begun entering the Great Lakes system. The Trent Severin continues to operate today as a marine park moving pleasure craft around the many lakes of Central Ontario.

 

The big draw for me was the chance to ride a 117 year old elevator for boats.

 

This lift lock would lift our boat over 64 feet in the air in about 5 minutes. 

At this speed, it would take you over two hours to get to the top of the CN Tower in Toronto.

 

This was all done hydraulically as they hadn’t invented electricity when it was built.  The view from the boat on our return trip was very trippy. 

 

We also shoe horned in a visit to the Canadian Canoe Museum. Can you get any more Canadian?  Our planned 30 minute visit grew into 90 minutes so don’t get me started about canoes unless you have 90 minutes.

 

Between dropping off the grandkids and picking them up from school we made a run out to the Whetung Ojibwa Centre, part souvenir shop/museum on the Curved Lake First Nations Reserve. The Ojibwa (known as Chippewa in the US) are one of the largest populations of Native American peoples. We are always on the look out for a new addition to our aboriginal frog collection. We found nothing of note but we did score some cheap gas for the rental car.

 

As previously stated, we will not allow life to get in the way of frequent visits with our grandchildren so readers, be prepared for more.