The waiting game. I called Aaron and yet again woke him up and told him we were relying on this to sort our lives out. As we couldn't do anything more we decided to go out for the day. We attempted to hitch to the Kokanee Glacier, where the beer's from, but it was shut and no-one was driving up there. So we decided to go down to Balfour and on, apparently, the longest free ferry ride in North America, to Kooteney Bay. It was quite a nice trip but very cold, I was glad I had my new ladybird hat. We got back to the hostel and I called Aaron again, he had delivered the message so now all we have to do is wait for Al. The problem was he wouldn't probably go back to his van until after the pub at 2am and so we wouldn't necessarily know until tomorrow. After much deliberation we decided that we would go back to Tofino and get a van there. Then the woman from Glacier called and offered, get this, both of us jobs. Now we were really confused, but we stuck to our guns, and we're going. We've made signs and everything! We spent the evening reading, catching up on my diary and turning down jobs.
Tomorrow we are yet again diving into unknown waters. It's going to be chilly!
Sunday 26th October
We got up quite early but only because the clocks went back. We actually left the hostel at about 9:30am after I'd called home and explained to them what was happening. Luckily I spoke to Mum about it and didn't have time to discuss it with Dad. They seemed OK though. We walked from the hostel to the highway and started hitch-hiking. Unfortunately this was our first encounter of hitching in the rain and I was glad that I had bought my jacket. The person who stopped gave us a lift to the Castlegar junction and no sooner had we put our packs down but someone else stopped. His name was Brad although we didn't find this out until we said goodbye. He was driving to Osoyoos, just under half-way to Vancouver, to meet a friend who was selling him a drum kit. I fell asleep during the journey, surprise, surprise!, but we reached Osoyoos at about 1pm. We went to Dairy Queen, yet another Canadian experience, and had a 99c burger and later a Blizzard. The guy Brad was meeting left at the same time as him, 10am, but had 100 extra kms to go and was driving a van against a Honda Accord with Cruis Control. He finally turned up at 3:45pm and they swapped drums and us (!) and we were on our way. Unfortunately the van was lacking glass in the window and I was sitting in the back. I had my coat, hat and gloves on which was fine but my bums and thighs were icy. I made up my mind that at half-way, 195km to go, I would swap seats with Claire. This was much nicer and even better when Darren agreed to take us to the door of Sally's in Kitslano. We had a little difficulty getting the hang of the intercom but we sorted it out in the end and were invited in. Only Sally and John were there, the others had gone ice-skating, they made us feel very welcome as we made our beds on the floor.
Monday 27th October
I didn't sleep too well but woke up relatively early, 9am. I jumped in the shower and then sat around and ate breakfast and called the bus and ferry companies and Aaron. Aaron has agreed to pick us up tonight right by Tim Horton's at about 12:30am-1am. We arranged to get the 1:21pm bus and the 2:30pm ferry. So we set off to the SWAP office. We got there just before it opened but unfortunately I didn't have any mail. We caught the bus and are right now on the ferry.
We are about half way on the ferry, 3:15pm, the plan is to go into Nanaimo to see what it's like then go up to Tim Hortons where Aaron is to pick us up, apparently there is a movie theatre there so we can go watch a film while we wait.
We attempted to walk into Nanaimo but started hitching quite rapidly. A girl eventually picked us up and thought she knew where we had to meet Aaron and took us to McDonalds. We had a couple of 99c quarter-pounders with cheese and made them last about 2 hours. Then we started walking towards where we though we had to get to. It was about 7pm and already dark and I really wanted to find the Tim Hortons. Eventually we got picked up and a really nice bloke gave us a lift to the movie theatre opposite where we had to get to. He also gave us a loaf of bread! We waited at the cinema and bought a ticket to see "Playing God". This may have been the worst film I've ever see but it killed a couple of hours. We then walked across to Tim Hortons and made one coffee and 65 "tim bits" last 2 hours. Aaron arrived at about 1am and we bundled into the cab. It was great to see him and he seemed to be happy to see us. We chatted the whole way home and got in at 3:30am. Claire immediately took the car and went to see Al. I had a shower and when to bed.
<these are extracts from my diaries written whilst travelling and working in Canada and the US in '97-'98>
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