Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Toronto

So we finally catch up to now, we have been in Toronto since last Sarah's birthday last Wednesday.
Its a really cool city, really easy to get around and you can walk everywhere.

We have spent the last few days looking for houses and jobs and stuff, but we did take some time to sightsee.

We went down to the water first, Toronto is not near the sea, but its on a huge lake. You can't see the other side.
Its also home to the world largest free standing structure and tallest observation tower. The CN tower.

The view up there is badass.



They also have a glass floor if your brave enough to get on. (Sarah wasn't)

I didn't see this guy up here though, apparently he was the first person to climb the tower. Judging from the Lycra and mullet is must have been a while ago.
I also made another discovery today that made me extra glad that we came to Canada!
They have xxxx, in the ol' skool can and all. Its still not the same, but it will do!

Vancouver

So the boat came back to Vancouver and we had a couple of days there as well.
The city is in great spot with water and mountains all right there.

I think it has the best city park ever, Stanley park is massive, right in the middle of the city and parts of it are full forest.
spent some time wandering there too. (sarah likes taking this photo)
Its spring here, so there was tons of wildlife.


There was apparently supposed to be beavers and racoons as well but we didn't see them!

The park couldn't really save Vancouver though, there was so many homeless people here it really ruined the city. They are everywhere, as bad as the US. Apparently the Canadian government ships them out there in Winter because its the warmest place in Canada.

Lazy

Hey there, our computer has been on the blink and we have been busy in Toronto looking for houses and jobs and stuff. But I am going to finish off the photos from the cruise in this post!

The last town we visited was Skagway, this was a tiny place that was started during the Yukon goldrush in the 1800's. Today the towns population is only about 500, although it triples in summer. The main street is pretty much been restored to the way it was, with wooden footpaths and old buildings. It was really cool.


We did a trip out to a mushing camp and went dogsledding for the morning. It was pretty cool.

There were so many dogs out there, maybe 200 or something. They pulled us along a trail through the forest on a sled with wheels.

The dogs were all stuffed at the end and had to lie down.
The ones that weren't racing were all sitting on top of their kennals, must have been the warmest place for them.
The best part of all was getting to hold the puppies!


Sarah didn't want to give them back.
The camp was in a awesome spot, about 20 minutes from skagway.



It was damn cold though.

When we got back to town we did a little pub crawl, little cause there is only 4 bars in town.
This is the only one open during winter.
We finished at the red onion, its an original bar thats about 130 years old. It used to be a bar and brothel, its like a bar from a cowboy movie.


Even though it was a short crawl we still had a good time!

Friday, May 23, 2008

Phones

On another quick note. We both now have phones, Sarah can be called on 647 829 8937 and mine is 416 4768 846. The country code is +1, so i guess its +14164768846 for me.

Mobiles are a real rip off here. We have to pay to recieve calls between 8am and 7pm monday to Friday, so please don't call us then. Anytime on the weekends or at night is fine. Brisbane is 14 hours ahead, NZ is 16 hours (I think) ahead.

Juneau and the Glaciers

Ok So we are slowly catching up on everything. The next lot of photos comes from Juneau. Its the capital of Alaska, but it too is only accessable by boat and plane. The population is about 30,000.
Unfortunatley the weather was really bad the day we were there.

We did a city tour and went out to the Mendenhall Glacier, it was quite spectacular.
This is the ice that has melted and broken off


For any one that doesn't know, a glacier is a frozen river. They are thousands of years old and flow really slow, like a couple of metres per year.

The water is the purest in the world because it was frozen before there was any pollution. There are also huge valleys left behind once the ice melts, this is how the inside passage in alaska was formed.

In the afternoon we went to a salmon hatchery. Fish farms are illegal in alaska, but to keep stocks up they hatch the salmon here and relase them into the wild. They even have a fake freshwater river for them to swim into and spawn. They also had the best collection of native alaskan fish. it was like a tropical tank!


They also had this critter.
In the afternoon we sailed down Tracey's arm and to the Sawyer Glacier. Sawyer is melting into saltwater so its melting even quicker, but it was cool to see ice in the ocean, unfortunatly we couldn't get too close because of the ice.

Tracey's arm was formed by sawyer glacier carving it out of the ice, now that its melted and filled with water you can sail down there, but its a tight squeeze.




But the Glaceier was amazing!




We couldn't stop taking photos, it was awesome.