The trees they do grow high

May 2nd: Day 3

Fire seems to be following us around; we were woken at about 6am by sirens which we later learned (watching the news in bed - how decadent!) was an old house about 4 blocks away burning down; I don't think anyone was inside. The weather today was on the side of the firefighters - a steady light rain.

We spent the day walking round Stanley Park geocaching. When we'd seen Stanley Park on the map we imagined something similar to Hyde Park but with more trees. In fact it is surprisingly hilly and the forest astonishing. Some of the trees are massive; here I give a sense of scale.



It's a shame that the tallest have been topped at something over 100'; goodness knows how tall they want to be. Old trees have been felled leaving stumps about 8' high; leaf litter forms on the tops of the stumps and new trees seed themselves into this and eventually their roots eat away the remains of the stump leaving a new tree growing independently but with its roots starting way up above the ground.



To take a bit of shelter from the rain we visited Vancouver Aquarium where they have everything from jellyfish



and treefrogs



and an injured porpoise (who seemed to be as curious about us as we were about her)



and rather tragic beluga whales.

We found eight caches, failed to find two, and must have walked about 10 miles - I wonder how stiff our legs will be tomorrow! We also saw two black squirrels and a very pretty bird which behaved very like a blackbird. I later found out it was a North American robin, which is indeed in the blackbird family.



Finally, with the help of Eddy Chau at the hotel reception, we've sorted out the cock-up by either the travel agent or, as I suspect, the tour company, and we now have our vouchers to show we've paid for the hotels and ferries for the remaining part of the holiday, which we'd been told would be waiting for us in Vancouver - and they weren't. I feel a strongly-worded letter of complaint will be written in due course - we could have done without the stress.