Driving western Canada

□ Day 11 (22 Feb) High Level → Manning

After the same free breakfast as on the morning of day 8, we checked on the Jeep we had crashed yesterday. The coolant seemed to have stopped leaking. Or rather, the area around the radiator was frozen solid. When we tried the engine it started first time, but we thought we heard a slight odd noise. We set off for now. At first it seemed fine.

The car was towed to Manning Collision Repair, a collision repair company. To continue our trip, we had to reach Vancouver in this car no matter what. The repair staff were keen to fix it, but said it would take about a week. That would mean we couldn't go back to Japan, so we started negotiating, with the company's boss joining in. Our English was poor, so we negotiated with help from the simultaneous interpreting of Sompo Japan's overseas support service. We also needed a decision from the rental company, Alamo, so the interpreter was simultaneously interpreting between the repair company, Alamo and Naoto. After long negotiations, they agreed to repair it just enough for the car to run. But today was Sunday, so the repairs would start tomorrow. The boss told us to bring the car to the workshop tomorrow morning, so we decided to stay in Manning tonight.

We decided to stay at the Manning Motor Inn, a motel similar to the one in High Level. But it was 11:30 at the time. We wondered if we could check in at this hour, but it was OK. We had lunch at the café in the motel. We ordered one big platter. The amount was just right for four, but it was mostly fried food and felt a bit heavy.

There wasn't much to do in the room, so we passed the time napping, playing cards, reading books and so on. When we turned on the TV, curling was on. It seemed to be a Canadian inter-provincial championship. Even if we couldn't understand a word of the English, sport is universal. Curling is something we only watch during the Olympics, but it was fun to watch.

Maybe because lunch was heavy, or because we'd just been lying around, we didn't get very hungry even in the evening. At around 8 o'clock we all went to a convenience store, bought sandwiches and other light snacks, and made do with those tonight.