Archive for Travels
July 7, 2009 at 8:58 pm · Filed under Travels
Last Saturday morning we loaded our bikes up and took a ferry to Langdale for a ride up the sunshine coast. We were vaguely shooting for Ruby Lake after hearing rumours of beauty and a great Italian restaurant but once in Madeira park I had my foot on the ground that we would stop at Katherine Lake instead (my whole body was almost on the ground and Ruby Lake would be another 20 or 25 kilometres away).
The sunshine coast is kind of cool because it’s this little strip of highway only accessible by ferry. It was not too busy and the people who were around were all really friendly.
The one thing I didn’t like was how so much of the coast has been developed. Houses and houses up and down. At least the lakes are wonderful.
Funny story: We biked from West Vancouver to the Horseshoe Bay ferry terminal. I had taken tent poles from Faron’s trailer and strapped them to the back of my bike because I wanted to help out with the weight (I’m always scared to sneak a lift of Faron’s packs because he usually takes everything for us). About 5 km from the ferry terminal we stopped on the side of highway 1 and I had unstrapped things from my bike to get a snack from my panier. Then I put everything back together and we continued on.
Around 10:35am and after buying tickets for the 11:10am ferry I looked at my bike: “where are the poles?” “Faron did you take the poles?” “Yeah I have them.” (Does he know I took them to carry?) “Do you really have them?” “Yes…let me check.” No poles. Crap. Poles flew off my bike. I can buy new set. Tent company no longer exists, poles irreplaceable. Crap. I’ll bike back and maybe they came off somewhere around the terminal. Ferry boarding in 25 minutes. Seems hopeless. Crap.
I felt so horrible. Horrible enough to get in a cab and drive my shameful face away. And then I realized that was our only hope. I got into a cab and had him drive me back down the #1.
How happy I was to see a long purple sack laying on the side of the road!! We picked them up, return to the ferry terminal, still caught the 11:10am and had a tent to camp in!
The food highlight of the trip: President’s Choice White Cheddar Macaroni and Cheese. It had been too long since the last time I ate it:
Food runner-up: breakfast was pancakes made with rehydrated dehydrated saskatoon berries and shavings of a Fruit & Nut Cadbury chocolate bar, topped with saskatoon berry / chokecherry syrup.
Some things I learned (other than the moral of the whole tent pole ordeal):
- Pedal “cages” are not cages but clips and this is why clipless pedals can be called clipless. (Even though they’re quite clippy no?)
- Translink may refuse to let you take a bike trailer on the bus. Something about it having wheels. Yeah…sure. (Boo.)
- The coffee crisp ice cream at the shop on the boardwalk in Sechelt is not Coffee Crisp as in the chocolate bar but ice cream with crispy coffee flavoured bits.
June 30, 2009 at 10:08 am · Filed under Travels
We chose camping over a hotel. At $3.00 per night per person how could you not camp? The only difficulty was having to apply for permits to camp a few months before our trip. Well, not really difficult at all – you send in a form and money order – but there was some anxiety while we waited for our permits to come back (I admit some lack of faith in the postal system).
The first three nights we stayed at Salt Pond Beach Park (with the cats). The area behind our tent is where salt is harvested from the ocean (the only natural salt pond left in Hawaii):
Campgrounds were different from the ones we are used to here. You don’t get your own private nook in trees with picnic table and a place to pitch a tent. Instead you park off the road and choose any spot in a grassy park area for your tent. The campgrounds were not very busy so we had a lot of room but it was by no means private room.
It was quickly obvious that the public campgrounds are where locals come after work and on holidays to BBQ, play cards, drink, watch tv (somebody brought one to entertain a group at one of the picnic tables), and so on. This was a little unsettling because before going I read and heard so much about how the Hawaiians are not particularly fond of the tourists running around their islands. Driving up in a PT Cruiser and stepping out with marshmallow-white legs, there was no way I would blend in. But during our second night and morning a few men came over to chat with us and that was really good. We were from totally different worlds and lifestyles but they were interested in us and they seemed to enjoy telling us about themselves.
One came to our breakfast table around 8 a.m. We were eating pineapple and mini wheats and he had a beer in his hand. He told us that it’s really tasty to cut up pineapple and put it in your cereal. Then he told us that when they eat pineapple they often dip it in salt (from the pond) to subdue the sweetness so that you can taste the pineapple’s real flavour. You can’t buy the salt in stores but he brought some over for us to try. It was…salty. I think I may have over-dipped but I could taste what he was getting at.
After Salt Pond, we stayed one night at Haena and the rest at Anini Park. All three parks were next to the ocean.
Spending the whole week outside with the exception of car driving time, grocery stores and sitting inside restaurants a few times made sure that we saw most of the early sunsets. From Anini:
And from Polihale Beach:
The Polihale sunset was cool to experience because it’s the furthest west you can go in Hawaii and you really get the impression that you are at an edge, saying goodbye to a day that millions have already had their last words with.
June 24, 2009 at 7:05 pm · Filed under In the Kitchen and Foodstuff, Travels
I lose the right to talk about my Hawaii trip at the end of this month so I’d better hop to it! I continue with my presentation of Kauai in categories. Today we talk about an exciting one: fooood.
If you forget the overpriced Mexican food our hungry souls settled for as a first meal and the cheese and cracker supper later, our first real Hawaiian meal was pineapple for breakfast:
(…and mini wheats with soy milk.)
All winter we looked forward to fresh tropical fruit and we were not disappointed. We found fruit stands on country roads operating on the honour system and masking tape prices:
I learned how to eat lychee (not whole like below):
and was astounded by how bananas grow:
We went to the Kauai Coffee Company to buy green beans for friends that roast their own. The samples we tried were good. Surprising given the coffee served by cafés on the island. It was pretty bad and made us proud of what we could produce with store-bought grinds and a coffee filter held over a travel mug.
On to cooked food…
The first distinctively Hawaii meal we had was the teriyaki burger from Duane’s Ono-Char Burger. Note: when I say Hawaiian in reference to food I don’t mean Hawaiian as was originally on the island but Hawaiian mixed with Japanese and American. Hence the teriyaki burger. We waited for 20, maybe even 30 minutes at the small road-side kitchen with order window. It wasn’t waiting in a line-up, just for a delicious burger to cook so it was worth every minute.
That would have been my fill of burger for the trip but I had promised myself that I would try the loco moco. Oh boy. Rice topped with two hamburger patties, gravy, and two friend eggs. It came in a plate lunch so there was the traditional side of macaroni salad (I substituted a regular salad that was essentially iceberg lettuce swimming in macaroni salad mayo-dressing) and a side of noodles. I ate wondering what people on the island do to burn these calories. Probably something that I wouldn’t be doing that day so I saved half for dinner. My conclusion was that loco moco was tasty and satisfying in a carb-meat-fried-sauce way but I felt really out of character eating it. Like I do if I eat chicken pot pie or other meat and pastry combinations.
Later in the trip we tried plate lunches from Fish Express (a place you have to try if you go to Kauai). I had the kalua pig:
Kalua means to cook in an underground oven and Kalua pig is shredded pork from a salted pig cooked underground all day long (think luau pig). To me Kalua now means the best pig you will ever ever eat.
Faron had the Laulau. This is pork wrapped in taro leaves and cooked in the underground oven. It was tasty but if you try it, don’t eat kalua pig first because the laulau will not compare.
The pink cubes on the side are salmon and tuna poke: an appetizer of marinated cubes of raw fish. Common marinade ingredients are salt, soy sauce, nori, and sesame. Another must try in Hawaii.
A final dish of note was the saimin, a noodle soup dish much like ramen. We had it at Hamura’s Saimin Stand so I assumed it was mostly from the Japanese but it did have wontons in it. Wikipedia: “The dish is composed of elements taken from each of the original sugarcane and pineapple plantation laborer ethnicities of the early 20th century: Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Korean, Hawaiian, Portuguese” Ahh. I was worried that I’d compare saimin to ramen but it stood strong as a noodle soup of its own. Plus the atmosphere at Hamura’s was great. U-shaped counters and closely packed stools always occupied by tourists like us or locals.
Okay! That was a lot of post. I guess we ate a lot of food in a week. And still made room for dessert:
Shaved ice. I think this is the Japanese kakigori but in Hawaii, particularly at JoJo’s Shaved Ice in Waimea (not the newer one run by the punk white guy but the one around the corner), they have perfected ice shaving so that the treat melts in your mouth (of course) but like butter. I can’t remember the name of this combination but it had vanilla ice cream on the button, strawberry cheesecake, vanilla, and banana syrups, and sweetened condensed milk drizzled on top.
I’m waiting for a plane in Calgary. Michael Jackson died and when they show news reports everyone watches. That’s impact.
June 11, 2009 at 2:47 pm · Filed under Travels
During the cold and snow of this past winter Faron suggested a surf trip to the Hawaiian island of Kauai.
It took 3 seconds for me to respond “Yes”, we booked our flights and that’s how I made it through the long stretch of dark evenings and frosty roads.
Faron’s choice of Kauai was informed by his sister who lived there for a period and learned how to surf from a man name Ambrose. Ambrose has a shop on the East side of the island where he builds, paints, and rents/sells boards. He’s also a pretty wicked artist as you will see below.
We rented two boards from him that we got to pick from the surfboard tree:
While we were choosing, some other guy dropped by to check out a board that Ambrose was working on for him. The artwork was incredible:
I was pretty jealous and thought, “if it means being able to eventually ride something that looks like that, heck I’m gonna be standing up by the end of this week!” (I would also browse skis at MEC to motivate myself to learn.)
The swell was fortunately on the smaller, beginner side. It was also so so nice to be out there without a wetsuit and to look into the water and be able to see the coral-covered bottom.
But the coral could also be a bit of a hazard – a number of times I wasn’t careful getting off my board and my feet got pretty scraped up. I’m still not able to stand but my paddling and catching waves and general relationship with waves are all getting better. It was a little sad leaving Hawaii not fully “able to surf” yet but it will come.
June 8, 2009 at 9:27 am · Filed under Travels
The week before last on a sunny Friday I went straight to the airport after work and boarded a plane to Portland. Part of me was hoping for rainy weather that I could say a satisfied farewell to but in the end I was lucky for the amazing view.
Mount Rainier:
Mount St. Helens:
Alaska Airlines serves complimentary microbrew and wine. I counted the contents of my airline snack to make sure they were not skimming the fat elsewhere to make up for the cost. Nope, it all looks good.
We double thanked them on a comments card, blinked two more times an then we were in Portland.
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