Driving western Canada

□ Day 5 (16 Feb) Squamish ⇔ Whistler (4)

This morning's breakfast was a typical Canadian family breakfast? I don't know if it is, but: cereal with milk, lettuce and cauliflower salad, and fruit with yoghurt. The red cabbage left over from yesterday's okonomiyaki came out shredded, but raw it was a bit... Very unpopular.

Today was our last day at Whistler. Clear skies. Sunny all four days, it's hard to believe. There seems to be no rain-bringer in this group. I'm a bit worried for the other group. To make the most of our last Whistler day, the snowboarders Naoto and Shinoda went to Blackcomb, and the skiers KEN and Horibe went to Whistler. We expected fewer people since it was Monday, but that wasn't the case. At 9:00 there was a huge queue at the gondola, a 25-minute wait. And for some reason there seemed to be lots of children.

The skiers headed for a huge cirque on Whistler Mountain, "Rhapsody Bowl". Around here the lifts and runs all have musical names: "Symphony Express", "Harmony Express", "Adagio", "Flute Bowl" and so on. This area seems to have especially good snow and fewer people, a bit of a hidden gem. It's certainly a long way from the top of the gondola, somewhere you can only reach by checking the map carefully and changing lifts. On top of that, the entrance to Rhapsody Bowl is hard to find. When we finally reached the top of Rhapsody Bowl, there was almost nobody there, and a vast snow-covered cirque spread all the way round. Unlike the Blackcomb Glacier, set between towering rock walls, this cirque spreads out in gentle, beautiful curves. For a while we were so moved by its beauty that we couldn't start skiing straight away. First we traversed across the slope and moved to a spot few people had skied. From there we skied straight down to the bottom. The snow was very soft. It flew up easily and our bodies were wrapped in powder. It isn't groomed at all, so it's a bit bumpy. And here came another accident. Horibe fell where the snow rose up and hit his elbow hard. For now we decided to wait and see, and took a lunch break.

Lunch was at a restaurant on the mountain. Starting to miss Japanese food, we ordered the "Japanese Miso Soup Noodle" and a sushi roll called the "Dynamite Roll". The miso soup noodles weren't like miso ramen; they were ramen in a purely Japanese miso soup, with tofu and bean sprouts. The Dynamite Roll is a prawn tempura roll with avocado. The seaweed is rolled inside. It tasted nostalgic. Canadian restaurants mostly serve sandwiches and burgers full of cheese and meat. But Japanese food has definitely taken root in Canada. Many of the other Canadian customers seemed to be eating noodles and rice bowls skilfully with chopsticks. We rested for a while after eating, but Horibe's elbow pain didn't ease much, so the skiers came down here.

The two skiers decided to wander around Whistler Village until the snowboarders came down. We strolled about buying souvenirs. Then we found "Sushi Village", a sushi restaurant a Canadian on the lift had told us was good. But it wasn't open yet.

After meeting up we went round the shops in the village and went back to Squamish. As an end-of-skiing celebration we bought some alcohol today. In Canada the law says you have to be 19 or over to drink. Dinner was seafood pasta. Oysters, mussels and clams sautéed with vegetables and butter, on top of pasta. Thanks to a huge amount of pasta someone else in the kitchen gave us, saying "We had too much", it was a mega portion. We drank wine and liqueur cider too, and filled both our stomachs and our hearts. I think we'll sleep well tonight.