6 August 2007, 00:12 in Travels
Canada update #2
I’ve been back home in Perth for over a week now and have finally gotten around to uploading the rest of the photos and writing about the remainder of the trip since my last post.
After a few days in Elkford, where we had visited two coal mines, it was decided that we’d go back to the Vancouver office to get organised for the final site visit. We already had a hire car so we decided to do a road trip west through the Rocky Mountains and back to Vancouver. Our journey took us from Elkford to Cranbrook, then through Radium Hot Springs to Banff, then to Vernon, and finally to Vancouver.
For a map showing the approximate journey we took, click here. We traveled a total distance of about 2000 km.
As you can see the scenery was amazingly beautiful… I couldn’t believe how much fresh water there is everywhere! Driving was a great way to see the country.
The weather was surprisingly warm. It was summer after all, but for some reason I expected it to be colder and mainly packed warm clothes. It got up to about 36 deg C! The days are long here in summer; it stayed light until about 10pm.
Once we got to Vancouver we stayed in a hotel on Granville St which is kind of like the night-club and pub district. We were waiting to go on site once various red tape cleared, so we did a bit of preparation and work and met up with the guys from the office, but had to be ready to go to site at short notice. We got free memberships to a nearby gym and it was good to do some exercise.
In Vancouver people are generally pretty trendy; a lot of guys obviously work out, and restaurants and bars seem to employ only attractive girls. Vancouver is very multicultural, like Perth. There are a lot of homeless people around (way more than in Perth).
In any shop or restaurant, prices do not include tax. I find this pretty annoying because you never know exactly how much something is going to cost until it’s time to pay. At restaurants and bars it is expected that you tip. Apparently 10% is a good guide.
We ended up staying in Vancouver for about a week and I spent a large amount of money on food and clothes… had to buy some stuff to suit the warm weather!
To get to site we flew from Vancouver to Yellowknife via Edmonton. Yellowknife is a small isolated town on the northern side of Great Slave Lake. We stopped off there for one night and the annual folk festival happened to be on so we went down to that. Had a dip in the lake, met some friendly locals, and almost got eaten alive by swarms of mosquitoes.
The mine site visit was quite an experience. The site is very isolated (300 kilometers north of Yellowknife) and the geography up there is quite interesting, with small islands scattered amongst copious amounts of fresh water. Being so far north, the days were incredibly long… Dusk was at about midnight and the sun would dip below the horizon while the sky still stayed light, and then by 3am the sun was coming up again.
Being a diamond mine, and also highly safety conscious, there were a lot of rules and procedures to follow! People on the site were very friendly and helpful and the food was great.
Due to the delays getting on site, we had a very compressed schedule as a result we really worked our asses off! Running on a few hours sleep every now and then and working almost non stop, it was kind of surreal… towards the end I sometimes looked at my watch and didn’t know whether it was AM or PM. There were a lot of hurdles and obstacles in our way but we worked hard and did our job well.
The site visit was a good learning experience for me. I went for some rides on haul trucks and saw mine other equipment in operation, and gained some understanding of how mines operate in general.
Due to a misunderstanding, we were late to the check in for flying off site, and our luggage was not allowed on the plane. We had to grab a few items to stuff into our hand luggage and travel light for the rest of the journey… Really annoying! Our luggage is getting sent back to Perth and will hopefully arrive soon.
By the time we left site we were sleep-deprived zombies and I was definitely ready to go home. We stayed a night in Yellowknife, a night in Vancouver, and then I was back home to Perth. Jules went straight to Europe where he had further travel plans.
The trip was an awesome experience with lots of good memories and funny moments. It was a pleasure traveling and working with you Jules!
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