Now that Ellen & I are finally in a proper routine of work (and Ellen got her first paycheck YAY!), we are really living for the weekends! This weekend, we had a couple of friends from Oaklands visit us – Angus & Anto. I went to primary school with Angus, and Anto is his one true love 🙂
There is an abundance of hikes around, so every weekend we are a little stressed about where to start, but on Saturday we decided we would head up to Joffre lakes, which is about a 2.5 hour drive from Vancouver near the Whistler area. Joffre is very very popular for good reason apparently, so we knew we wouldn’t disappoint our guests!
But first, on the Friday night I went out to watch some baseball with some work friends, the team are called the Vancouver Canadians. The team is really bad and they are about 3 divisions below the Major League, but it was still a lot of fun. Lots of bonding with work colleagues and I finally understand the rules of baseball! The stadium is huge compared to other teams in the league. Apparently this is because the team used to be only a division below the Major League, but over the years they keep getting relegated… I don’t understand why, a city of over 2 million people is last on the ladder in a low division league. Whattttt?
On the Saturday it was a 5:30am start to Joffre! Ouch, my head! We drove out of the hustle and bustle of the city and into the nice mountain ranges. We stopped at our favourite destination on the way, Squamish, for some breaky, then kept going all the way to Joffre lakes. This was also the first real test for Ellen’s brand spanking new car! Jokes, its a 2003 Toyota Echo, aka ‘The go cart’. Nonetheless, we made it to Joffre lakes with no car mechanical issues for a change, and man on man, the main car park was already full with around 100 cars! Absolutely bizarre. Its 9am in the morning folks, calm down!
After finding a park down the road we headed to the trail head and straight up to the top lake. It is about a 4km one way trek with 380m of elevation, so not too strenuous compared to the other mammoth mountains around. Angus thought it would be so easy he decided to do it in his Birkenstocks lol.
After dodging a few slow pokes, and 1.5 hours of hiking we made it to the top! It was a bit of a cloudy day but it didn’t take away from the blue lake dwarfed by a beautiful glacier peaked mountain. We discovered that it is possible to camp up the top, but booking about a year in advance is necessary! Hooooooly doooooly people are keen here in Canada.
We hung out here for a while, people watching and snacking before heading back down. We flew down the mountain, only taking us an hour or so, before quickly jumping in the car and flying home in the go cart! The drive home was nice, blue sky’s were out as we came back into the big city of Vancouver. We had a very quiet night in, eating cheese and drinking Chilean wine, much to Anto’s disgust – she is from Ecuador. We were all a bit tired from the big drive and hike!
The next day we had a snooze in and we got out Vancouver tour guide hat on. We went for a bike around the False Creek Bay Area where we live and headed into Stanley park for some Pitch & Putt golf. For those that don’t know what Pitch & Putt is, it is a form of golf where each hole is between 30-50m long, so it is super social and built for nuffie golfers like me.
After this, the day was just about over so we headed back home to meet our housemates who just got back from a 3 week Canada road trip! They saw 5 grizzly bears fighting over a elk carcass, so crazy! Beers & wines & cheese again, fair to say I was not very productive at work on Monday, but before you shame me, is anyone ever productive at work on Monday?!
Thanks for visiting Gus & Anto!!
Justin & Ellen's travels 