In which Roz and Layla revel in cheese conversations and get lost in a Vancouver forest

by Roz

I’d dreaded my first Transpacific flight from Tokyo, having had visions of sitting upright for a zillion hours whilst everyone else slept, and then of having terrible jetlag.  Perhaps unsurprisingly, the reality was very different – I slept perfectly well and felt distinctly cheery as we arrived into Vancouver.  And even more cheery when I discovered that the Vancouver Airport experience was distinctly un-North American, and within half an hour of landing we were on a train into town. 

As part of our plan to combat jetlag, we had sworn to try and get some exercise before evening came.  So, first off we went for a swim in the hotel’s pool.  (I should note that our hotel experience was slightly more exciting than normal: Layla’s friend had access to a cheap hotel deal and had booked it for us.  This meant the hotel was consistently expecting a male guest to turn up, and looked at the two of us somewhat askance for being the two lady companions of this presumed male guest. Ah well, as Layla unkindly pointed out, it was unlikely that our charming appearance after an overnight flight might have led anyone to mistake us for hookers…) 

After checking in, it may have felt to us like morning, but in fact there were only a couple of hours of the day left before dinner and so we determinedly set off on a walk along the beautiful Vancouver coast.  We got slightly carried away, went further than we intended and then had to gallop back in the direction of Gastown ahead of meeting Layla’s friends who live in Vancouver for dinner.  Our destination was a delightful wine and cheese bar called the Salt Tasting Room that we remembered fondly from our previous trip here.  We revelled in the array of cheeses, and our ability to ask numerous questions of the server in a language we understood with ease whilst Layla’s friends looked on bemused that anyone could have so many questions to ask about cheese choices.  But you see, if you spend most of your life living in a country where successfully explaining that you don’t eat meat or fish feels like the epitome of waiter conversation glory, the opportunity to have more complex conversations feels like a treat. 

After dinner, we headed back to our hotel, assuring ourselves that we would stay up and watch a film or some such to ensure we slept properly.  Of course, we completely failed on this, and I was nodding off to sleep all too quickly.  So it was hardly a surprise that I was then awake from 2 till 4am…but a joy that after that insomniac interlude, the next thing I heard was the chambermaid trying to get in to clean the room at 10. 

After a hurried late breakfast in the room, we set off to pick up a picnic lunch and then to catch a bus.  As we’d researched Vancouver ahead of our trip, we’d found that there were a ton of good hikes accessible by public transport and so we were off to a place called Lighthouse Park where there were a number of linked trails.  This proved an excellent plan: the scenery was beautiful in that very West coast Canadian way - lots of big sky, big fir trees and pretty sparkling water.  We ate our lunch on a rock overlooking the sea and congratulated ourselves on feeling almost normal and on being somewhere lovely before continuing to hike. 

As the trails were coming to an end we began to flag and decided to mooch back in the direction of a bus.  Though the buses are infrequent (Lighthouse Park is a bit off the beaten track) we were in much luck as a bus turned up the very moment we reached the main road, before we even had a chance to sit down at the bus stop.  On the bus we planned the rest of our day: back to the room for Layla to do some work whilst I acquired tea and cinema tickets for us for later.   Layla was still going strong on the work front when I got back, so I went for a swim and read until I was able to lure Layla out to the cinema to see Ghostbusters.  This was as silly and charming and pro-women as everyone had said and we were happy to be part of the zeitgeist of enthusiasts.  We went to a cheery Lebanese restaurant for too much food afterwards, and finished off the evening with a glass of wine in a pretentious supermarket (which was more fun than it sounds). 

Next morning, we congratulated ourselves on having almost beaten jetlag and on Layla having done all her work, and set off on our second hiking daytrip.  On this occasion the bus deposited us – somewhat to our surprise – in a very cheery holiday town called Deep Cove.  We’d not anticipated the charming restaurants, shops and such like and so felt somewhat silly for having brought some squashed falafel (from the night before) and a sandwich or two with us.  We tried and failed to go paddleboarding – everyone else had been more organised than us, damn them, and made advance reservations – but it was fun to see people setting off in kayaks and on boards from the pretty cove.   We had an ice cream and squashed falafel (what could be a better combination) and then set off on our hike.  The start of the trail was very busy and I felt two conflicting emotions: “oh so nice that everyone here wants to hike” and “damn them all, walking at a different pace from me and getting in my way”.  I’m afraid that I’m often not a nice person…  But in reality it was fun to do what was clearly a classic route for Vancouverites. 

Less than an hour into our hike we came to Quarry Rock viewpoint where we (and everyone else) stopped to rest and such like.  Our original plan had been to hike into the forest for several more hours.  I tried to tempt Layla by pointing out that we could rest for a while, read our books and then head back into town.  Unfortunately she is a determined girl who likes sticking to a plan, so she looked at me with amusement and dismissed this idea.  All too soon, we were hiking alone (everyone else had turned back) along the Baden-Powell trail (so named because boy scouts had originally made it).  This was really fun for ages, until I made the fatal mistake of wondering aloud why I’d read that people sometimes got lost since “the path is so well-marked”.  This was of course tempting fate, and within ten minutes we’d completely lost our way. We stood there, gazing at trees in every direction and debating whether to retrace our steps (which is what we should have done) or to press on and hope to find the trail again (which is of course what we decided to do).   Perhaps unsurprisingly we never found the Baden Powell trail again.  Instead we walked for hours without encountering signs of civilisation, until finally we encountered cryptic trails marked with signs saying “Forever After more difficult” and other similar inspiring comments.  We reassured ourselves, “This will be a funny post for Facebook… from our hotel… when we get back…” But we were beginning to get quite anxious – we’d been hiking for about 3 and a half hours and our water was running low… When we bumped into three boys and blurted madly to them that we were seeking a road, any road. They gave us some authoritative-sounding directions, disappointingly up a large hill.  These directions turned out to be not exactly accurate, but led us to bump into two other boys on bikes who supplied us with water, directions and kindness.  When we eventually found ourselves back on a road with houses we were both very relieved indeed.  “Civilisation!”

Though underneath our relief was also some anxiety. My understanding was that the last bus back was around 4.30 and it was already 4.40 and while we were literally out of the woods, we were still two kilometres from the main road and so still very much in the figurative woods. There was only one clear option: we pressed on to the main road “just to see” if we could find a bus stop and a bus. We knew that it was our last sensible hope. Without the bus, we would have to hitchhike… or ring the bell of a random fancy house and ask to borrow their phone to call a taxi. Wearily we dragged ourselves down the road in the baking sun, got to the bottom, made an arbitrary choice to turn left instead of right, spotted a bus stop, and – like a miracle – precisely as we did so, the very last bus of the day rounded the corner. Apparently it had been late or had taken a circuitous route from the place we’d originally planned to catch it.  We leapt on it with joy and Layla desperately emptied her wallet to find enough change for two tickets to our hotel. We were smug and relieved and spent the journey into town downing all of our remaining water without a care in the world and every so often pointing back at the dense forest on the receding hill and reminding each other, ‘imagine, we could still be lost in these woods!’.

Back in our hotel much earlier than we feared, and still with no idea how we managed to lose the trail, we showered and got ready to set off for Granville Island.  This is a somewhat touristy but very pleasant place, requiring a ferry (which gives a sense of occasion to any evening out).  We had dinner in a food market before going to a really good cinema-themed improv show.  After that we went to watch fireworks (and tried and failed to find Layla’s friends who were also there) and then walked home via a cool 20s-style cocktail bar.

On our final morning in Vancouver, we went for a quick swim (which later proved an unfortunate plan since we then left our swimming costumes behind, having hung them up to dry in our hotel bathroom) before heading to Stanley Park (the huge park at the tip of Vancouver) where we meandered passed lakes, along the beach and through overgrown trails – and shrieked at a racoon encounter.  Since it was Pride, there was a fun atmosphere as we went back and we poked our noses onto the Parade route to try to spot Justin Trudeau.  After that it was lunch in a café, and then we walked to the port with our luggage for the next leg of our journey (and one of the most exciting): it was time to board our boat to Alaska!