In case anyone is wondering I am not in Europe anymore, I'm in canada. I can't say that my time in Vancouver started well. I endured one of the longest days of travel as I woke up at 4 something am in london to get to heathrow airport. Then I got a plane to frankfurt and another plane that travelled for over 10 hours over the arctic and northern canada . The view of Greenland outside the plane window was very dramatic as pink and violet coloured ice shelves and snowy mountains rose from the calm steel coloured sea. I could even see icebergs floating in the water. Baffin Island was another beautiful place that we passed.

Once we finally arrived in vancouver the problems began. Terrible rain and traffic were our enemies and then we arrived in our hostel which was just the worst place we have stayed at yet. Just horrible....VERY dingey and noisy. After all the travel and being awake for so many hours, me and shean decided that we would grab some water from the convenience store and get some sleep. We went across the rainy street and just as I was about to put away my umbrella and enter the store, a homeless guy lunged toward me and hit me in the middle of my chest with his elbow and then proceeded to attack me. Luckily shean was just 2 metres away and so when he heard me scream and struggle, he wrestled the guy to the ground promply. Once shean overpowered him and was about to beat him up I asked shean to stop since i was worried about how messy things would get, particularly how we would explain to the cops that shean had beaten some one up within a few hours of entering the country. The crazy guy then ran away. It was all rather shocking and he didnt say a word the whole time, he just had a wild look in his eyes. I am not sure if he was trying to rob me as he didnt grab at my pockets or anything. who knows. The real victim here was my poor umbrella that suffered major injuries as I used it to fend off the crazy guy before shean could help. I have to admit that I have been very wary off homeless and scruffy looking people since and unfortunetely Vancouver is just swarming with these types. I now know that Vancouver has some serious housing and crime problems.

Since then I have travelled to Tofino on Vancouver Island and rode through the glorious but largely inaccessible Pacific rim national Park. The forests were breathtaking...20+metre pines and huge orange and yellow maples cloaked in green moss, with streams rushing along side them, pine covered mountains mirrored in vast lakes..... Unfortunately, when we got to tofino the local bus had ceased its service and the rain just hammered down with more than 150mm of rain per day, so even though we were very close to amazing places I could'nt go hiking amongst it. I have definately had some bad luck here in canada. Very different to my first trip here which was good in every way. Hope I have I better time in hawaii!