Don’t Tell Our Parents

After our big hiking effort last Friday, we had a very relaxed Saturday. At the start of the Garibaldi lake trail, we had met a french couple eating English muffins in the car park. We had chatted to them and told them about our favourite place to eat breakfast. On Saturday morning, we found them in our spot! Clement and Floriane have been in Montreal for nearly two years on working holiday visas and are now doing a final road trip in their Dodge grand caravan before heading back to Europe. We enjoyed a good few hours chatting and were very jealous of the size of their car/camper. Next, they are planning to move to Sweden – so we were also jealous of their EU citizenship. 

On Sunday, we visited Cheakamus Lake for our coldest swim so far. This may have been because we chose to swim right next to where an ice cold stream fed the lake… On the way up we bumped into some fluffy favourites from our previous holiday to Canada, the pikas! Whenever we walk past a rock-fall we shout “squeak!” and listen for them shouting back.

On Monday we arrived at our latest workaway, just north of Mount Currie. It’s a beautiful location and the work has been interesting. Our routine is great, with two hours work before lunch and then two hours in the evening after dinner. In our morning shift, we’ve tended to some conventional (but new to us) crops such as blueberries and raspberries. The evening shift is spent processing a less conventional crop (don’t worry, it’s legal man). We’ve quite enjoyed this experience, it is unique to Canada and certainly different to our day to day lives back home! Just don’t tell our parents…

The food here has been a huge step up from our camping dinners of Mr Noodles and baked beans, with plenty of homegrown vegetables again. Our hosts are very friendly and fun too. On Thursday they took us out on their boat on Anderson Lake and we spent some time perfecting our diving skills. With so much downtime, we’ve managed to fit in some beautiful and relatively untrodden hikes and lake swims around the area. Ollie has also started to enjoy beer, so we made a trip to the Beer Farmers where they grow their own ingredients as well as brewing the beer.

We were glad to have Elsie to sleep in for the first few nights at this Workaway, as we quickly realised we were sharing our cabin with a large pack rat. On the first night we saw its head poke out of the sidewall. Rosie instinctively hissed at it, channelling her inner Milky/Vinnie and causing both the rat and Ollie to scarper. Our host set some traps the following night, but the clever rat managed to eat all the food without being squished. However, Rosie awoke Wednesday morning to find a fluffy little present.

Next week we have a few days off to explore some of the area between Pemberton and Kamloops, before starting a new workaway at another organic vegetable farm on Wednesday. We are pretty sure it’s actually vegetables this time.