Pictures say more then thousand words!

A Mid Summer Dream

At the moment I’m spending my precious time on the airport from Houston. I flew out of Vancouver this morning at 8am, so that means I left my bed at 5am, landed here at 2.30pm and will not leave before 10pm. My journey will not be over then, because I’m flying to Paris first, where I have to wait another 4 hours to catch a 2 hour flight to Hamburg, aaarrggghhh!!!!

I shouldn’t be complaining because after all it is a very cheap flight (about 100euro), but still I’m losing more then 36 hours just to get over the Atlantic ocean (even longer then flying to Australia). After my nice, isolated summer in the Rockies a big change coming back to civilisation. The first shock I had when I arrived in Vancouver after a 14 hour bus drive. Again a big and modern city, but at least here you have the ocean and the mountains close by. It’s a beautiful, multicultural and relaxed city and I can see why a lot of foreigners get stuck here.

My last 2 weeks in Lake Louise were grand. We closed the hotel on September 15^th, my official last day as housekeeper, with a nice dinner and some drinks with all the staff of west Louise. The last days at work were really relaxed and chilled out. We cleaned up the hotel, scraped the paint of the balcony’s (even started painting but came that then to the conclusion that doing it by hand would take us way to long, so we’ll leave it up to the machinery) and all sorts of other small jobs. Going on hikes wasn’t really planned anymore, first of all because of the weather change (winter has started in Lake Louise and even on the day I left it was snowing on ground level as well) and because of the lack of interest (or maybe energy after a long night) of certain people J. I still did my share by walking to Lake Louise from our hotel or back, which is about 13km.

More isn’t there really to tell, I can just say that the money I saved during the rest of the season was easily spend these last weeks (in the bar unfortunately, but hey you do have to say goodbye to everyone). I made some good friends and had heaps of sun, even so good that they convinced me to change my winter plans. Yep again some changes, I did a really lousy job in planning my whole year ahead and now I know why I shouldn’t have bothered, because there’s always something that changes, you’ll never know what the future might bring.

So when I fly back in November I’ll spend the rest of my working holiday in Lake Louise, but this time it’s gonna be even better. I got a good job offer which at least allows me to earn some money, a nice room where I can stay the whole season, fun people around me and a free ski pass for the whole ski area in the Rockies. I know Whitehorse would have been a nice experience as well, but this was difficult to refuse and this year is not only about seeing Canada, it’s also about meeting people and having fun with what you do.

I’m looking forward to the winter now, but also to catch up with some of my friends and family, we’ll all have some stories to tell.

The end is coming near, only 2 more weeks to go before I’m moving on, it seems time is just racing by and still so much things to see and to do, aaaahhhh!
Off course together with the end of a season also come a lot of goodbye party’s or any other good reason to drink and eat J
We had a Mexican night, soft ball finals celebrations (lost or won) in the bar (some local teams have a kind of competition during the summer), birthday bonfire and barbecue, … hangovers, and more to come.
I managed to do another couple of walks, this time a bit more relaxed. I walked along the ice line trail of the Yoho valley, where you actually just walk next to some glaciers. You can see waterfalls forming out of the glaciers and off course spectacular views and some climbing is involved. Another hike was to rockbound lake, a lake hidden between steep edges and behind Castle Mountain (a mountain range not far from Banff). Our guides were a bit confused about the name in the beginning, but we found it. I just walked back from Lake Louise to our lodge, which is about 14km and goes straight through bear country. Tomorrow is Lake O’hara on the agenda and Friday probably a sleep in day. Work is getting more and more quiet anyway, so lots of times we can finish earlier then normal.
What happens in 2 weeks, well I’m making a city trip to Vancouver and then I’m flying on to Germany. Yes that’s back to Europe again, but I had an almost free flight and this way I can save some money for the winter. I can pick up some missed European culture, like the Oktoberfest, just the Belgian beer, catch up with friends and then prepare very well for the hard winter that awaits me end of November. More about that later, now I’m going to enjoy the last bits of summer!