Saw Thomas for the last time...

Before we left Canada, on one of our shopping trips we did run into an Old friend, Thomas was there, lurking in the Rainforest Cafe... (inside Joke)

Brisbane State School

Well on the way back to Toronto courtesy of my Aunt Jackie, I discovered a strange place I call Brisbane. How could I deny myself the oppurtunity to take a picture of the best place on earth... Well it was a bit of a let down, but it reminded us that we were only 1-2 months away from home...

Final CLV Party for Phil

This was the evening we all said our good byes to the majority of the people left in CLV. From here, people were either heading East, West, South or staying here. Was a great night, but it still had an edge of sadness about the end of the era.

Above: Me, Al & William Right: Martina, Al and UTAHHHH (Jutta)

Above: Some German men, too many to name... ;) Right: Nicolas the Frenchman...

Above: Al, Fabio, Sarah and Nicolas. Right: Lutz and a smart girl at the party.

And Finally, the English mob. These guys were special apparently, as we had to go to the pub to see them off. I do believe I reinforced for the last time the Ways of the Aussie drinking songs... And then I had to go home and pack as I was leaving at ridiculous o'clock the next morning.

Good Bye Jesse

The Pictures below are on one of the last few evenings in CLV, and Jesse was leaving to go back to Scotland. After her final exam at 10pm we gave her some fairwell tea and Sven took a picture of his crotch... Very Strange night indeed.

Above: Thomas and Daniela Right: Jesse and JM
Below: The Crotch.

Camping in Canada

Over the weekend, Thomas, Bea and myself went hiking for three days in the Canadian Wilderness. There was certainly a subtle difference about the Canadian Wilderness when compared to that of Australian, first of all, the only animals we saw were sqirrels and birds. Also for our second and third day, we were lucky to be walking on ground that wasn't 1-2 feet of snow thick, thats right even in mid April...

On Friday we headed to Rattlesnake Point, a small reserve just west of Toronto, the walk was a 14km round trip down into a valley and back up the otherside to look over the desolate post Nuclear winter surroundings that Canada has to offer at these times of years.

Interestingly, even in the off season, there is a person manning the gates of the park, waiting to take off of you an entry fee for taking a walk in there surrounds.

You could have probably picked me out easily when compared to my walking counterparts, these two hardcore Swiss hikers that I walked with had Austrian made walking poles to help them over the "rougher" parts of this oh so dangerous bushland.

That evening, we headed just North of Toronto to my Canadian Aunty's house for an evening of relaxing after the long trek. Relaxing here involved not only living in a nonstudent house, but enjoying the spoils of a giant hottub for our weary bones, eating Belgium chocolate courtesy of my Uncle and eating a great dinner thanks to my Aunty consisting of a roast chicken and slow cooked roast beef!

With an early start the next day, the three of us made a trip north to Algonquin Provincial park, if you see the map down the left side, it's the big green patch North of Toronto. We chose the biggest day hike that they had available taking the 14km Mizzy lake trail, after about half way however the path turned into deep icy water and we were forced to make a U turn, Bea was happy about this after being the one to discover this and wearing plastic bag socks as a result of her non waterproof shoes.

As I mentioned earlier, Algonquin had MUCH more snow than Rattlesnake point and in many places, you couldn't even see dirt. Furthermore, if you walked off the track onto the unpack snow, you ended up with snow up to your knees, and in your shoes. At a guess i think it happened to us about 10 times each... maybe more...

Above: Me in deep !#&@, Bea checking the snow for herself.

Above: Can you see the wooden boardwalk that were walking on? Right: Hrrmmmm Wet shoes!

In the end though, it was worth the trek!

Setting up camp was fun, first find a site that had been plowed once or twice, secondly, find a site that wasn't filled with water and mud. We found a reasonable one, and set up camp and a nice warm fire! While there was still light we had our BBQ sausages and aussie damper, (tasted bitter thanks to our attempts at making our own Self raising flour with baking soda) and fire Potatos.

Overnight it was cold, got down to a low of -5, but once the sun was up, it returned to a bareable 6-10. The puddle besides us even froze overnight! After a nother couple of short treks we made the drive home, and we were greatful to be in a house again.

To see all of the photos from this camping trip, or any of my other trips see:
http://www.philipnye.com/gallery/gallery.php

Toronto in a day

Today I went to Toronto for the purpose of purchasing a new Back pack for my upcoming trip through Europe. Fabio joined me and we caught an early Greyhound bus into the city. Things i learnt while here was:

KFC in Canada is terrible!
Australian KFC is many times better, we have seasoning on the chips, they don't, we have full chicken breast patty's, they have fake chicken patty's, also the service was terrible, they forgot to put any meat at all on my burger...

Good backpacks are expensive, an arm and a leg later, I have a nice piece of nylon shaped like a bag...

People treat you differently when you walk through a city with a backpack, particulary when you walk into a pub and ask for "2 Fosters Mate!" (It was awsome! (Bugger that was clearly Canadian)). Something you Aussies may not know, Fosters here in Canada and also in England apparently is brewed under license locally, as a result, It's actually considered as a domestic beer, and a cheap one at that... Go Figure... (see the Blackboard below for proof!)

Anyway that aside I had my first ever Fosters with a Swiss Bloke, and later had all types of beers with some of my Rellies here in Canada at the local Bier Markt.

Canada

Well, as my time here in Canada draws to a close, I decided that perhaps a little memory of my time here might be appropriate. I initially made it with myself in mind, however I am sure most of you can get something out of it.

Download it here:


HIGH QUALITY (18Mb)

LOW QUALITY (5.5Mb)

If anyone wants any of the photos I used in the Movie, let me know.