Driving western Canada

□ Day 15 (26 Feb) Radium Hot Springs → Vancouver

Breakfast at the Husky restaurant while it was still dark. The sausages were extra thick.

The trip was finally reaching its climax. The last long drive, toward Vancouver. In the morning it was cloudy, but it gradually cleared and the beautiful snowy mountains of British Columbia came into view. We drove along the gentle foothills of the Rockies to a town called Golden, and from here took Trans-Canada Highway 1 over the Columbia Mountains. On the way we also passed through Glacier National Park. Snowy mountains holding glaciers loomed right in front of us; a very beautiful place.

Passing along a pleasant mountain road, the next highlight was Shuswap Lake, a huge lake surrounding the town of Salmon Arm. Parts of this lake were frozen and parts weren't. We had seen many completely frozen white lakes before, but this was the first time in Canada we had seen a lake of jewel-like blue water surrounded by white snowy mountains.

With the Thompson River, which flows out of Shuswap Lake, on our right, we followed the river and reached the city of Kamloops, which we had passed through on day 6 on the way from Squamish to Jasper. We had lunch at a restaurant in this city.

From Kamloops we headed south on Highway 5, the Yellowhead Highway. It's a divided highway and easy to drive, but we saw two cars that had been in rear-end collisions. We couldn't relax until Vancouver. For a while there are few towns along the road, and places to refuel are limited. We left the highway briefly to refuel at a town called Hope. Big lumps of muddy snow were stuck around the car's wheels. While refuelling we cleaned off the dirt too.

While refuelling at the station in Hope, something went wrong with the Jeep. A mysterious liquid sprayed out of the engine bay like a mist. On top of that, while idling, the coolant temperature rose and the gauge pointed at H. The cooling fan had broken in the collision, so the radiator probably couldn't cool unless the car was moving. Very worried, we set off again. After driving for a while the temperature came down, but this time an abnormal metallic scraping noise came from around the wheels. We stopped the car once, but couldn't tell where the problem was. 150 km to Vancouver. All we could do was pray it would make it today. We went back on the highway and kept driving. The metallic noise continued, but gradually got quieter until we stopped noticing it. Maybe the parts had worn themselves smooth.

Around Abbotsford, about 60 km before Vancouver, the feel of the city begins. Just 5 km south of here is Washington State in America. The far part of the view is probably America.

On the roads around here we saw lots of crashed cars. Rollovers, collisions, cars off the road, pile-ups; we lost count. On monotonous roads with many straights, falling asleep may be the main cause. Or maybe it's because places that would have an 80 km/h limit on a Japanese expressway almost all have a 100 km/h limit here.

Before Vancouver we were caught in a traffic jam for a while. The night view in the distance was beautiful. Vancouver was close. But we still hadn't decided where to stay tonight either. From experience so far, we thought we'd soon find a motel. We entered Vancouver and looked for somewhere to stay. But we couldn't find anything. The Days Inn we finally found after searching and searching was fully booked. In the end we stayed at the Cambie Hostel, which we had listed in our trip plan. First, there was no car park. We didn't want to park on the street, so we reluctantly used a coin car park.

It was cheap, but the room was small and shabby, with just simple bunk beds. For now we went to get dinner. The ground floor of the Cambie Hostel is a pub, so we ate there. But the music was far too loud. You could barely hear each other talk. Even when sleeping in the room, the noise from downstairs echoed up until late at night.