Vancouver

In keeping with my current year, many of my plans fell through within the first three days of my arrival in Canada.

I had booked a guided tour of the Canadian Rockies for my time in Canada and was very excited to spend two weeks hiking and camping in the mountains. Unfortunately, I discovered while packing for my trip that I had somehow lost my passport during my move from Hamilton back to Hawke’s Bay. I picked up my expensive emergency passport the day my flight left Wellington. In addition to this, I had been trying to sell my car for a few weeks before leaving and had been unsuccessful (I got scammed a few times – I’m unfortunately pretty gullible). Safe to say, I started my international journey with rather limited savings. Despite the money problems, I arrived in Vancouver with high hopes for my Canadian experience. I’d been dreaming of visiting Canada for years and was also very excited to start my international trip.

I had allowed myself two nights to recover from the 13-hour flight and jet lag and was staying in a hostel called Hi Vancouver Downtown. On my first night in the hostel, I went out on a Pub Crawl around Gastown and made a bunch of new friends, who I would go on to spend the entire weekend with. Whilst on the crawl, I discovered not only had I somehow misplaced my phone within 4 hours of being in the country, a friend also told me my Rockies tour had also been cancelled due to wildfires in Jasper National Park. I then proceeded to drink my stress away and ignore the fact that I had no way of contacting anyone I knew, and no transport or accommodation for the next two weeks.

The next morning, I managed to find my phone, only to find out my bank had locked me out of my account, even though I had told them I was going travelling. I ended up spending the last of my very limited Canadian money on a burrito and a block of chocolate.

Luckily, there were many upsides to my time in Vancouver. I met the sweetest Kiwi guy on my first night in the country, went for a bike around the gorgeous Stanley Park, saw some beautiful fireworks down at the beach at English Bay, took a trip over to Granville Island for lunch and got to explore the charm of Vancouver seaside life, which involved sun, snow cones and homemade lemonade.

I had heard that one of the most important traits to have as a traveller was flexibility in your plans, but I had no idea how true this would become for me. Canada was only just the beginning!