The Big White

We've had a fairly eventful ten days. We left Vancouver and made the move to Kelowna last Monday and while the snow was fun at first, Kelowna did grow a bit boring, especially in a hostel with about ten other people. The city was nice though and we had a good time, the hostel was a lot nicer and cleaner than Vancouver, and although having ten people made it a bit antisocial, the silver lining was that it was quieter. Matt and I had a dorm to ourselves and we were very comfortable. We also both got sick again, I only had it for a couple of days but it hit Matt pretty hard, he's on the road to recovery now thankfully. Despite our illness we decided to brave a nearby mountain and hiked to the top, which was a mission but it was good to get outdoors and do something. Walking through the snow was pretty tough and even coming back down was hard because the path was pretty icy and slippery at times, it was like walking on loose gravel on a steep decline. However it was worth it for the feeling of accomplishment and the view up the top was pretty great.

Downtown Kelowna, our hostel is just to the left of that bridge, for some reason we thought it would be a good idea to walk back there after the hike down.

Then on Sunday morning we departed Kelowna to make our way up to Big White. I'm writing this at the end of day two here and so far we're really enjoying it. We've both had two skiing lessons already, Matt's a bit better than me at this stage. It's a lot harder than it looks and you have to contort your legs into some pretty weird shapes. My problem at the moment is controlling your speed as you go down the hill, which you do by turning to wipe of some the speed you accumulate going downhill. I'm fine on the practice slopes but when we tried a proper run today I spent most of it on my arse.
The whole village is pretty awesome though, they have an ice climbing wall, a huge natural ice skating rink (frozen lake) and a tube slide. The place is bigger than I thought it would be but it's mostly rich peoples chalets with their fancy hot tubs on the balconies just rubbing it in your face with how rich they are. The main sort of street has the rental places, a day care, market and a handful of food places and pubs. The downside though is that our hostel is a nightmare, unfortunately it's the only one in town so we don't really have a choice but we're in a dorm of 10, the bathroom facilities are pretty poor and the whole place just isn't that nicely kept. It's only five nights though so we'll live.

The main street

We've made the decision to go to the US early, so we only have two weeks left in Canada now. We were planning to get jobs on Big White but have changed our minds for several reasons:
- It's hard to get a job this time of year
- If we didn't get a job with a ski pass, we'd spend a fortune on paying for use of the mountain, as there's nothing to do besides ski/board.
- If we did get a job with a ski pass, we'd have to wait 2-3 weeks before they even give it to you, leaving us only 2 weeks to use it anyway.
- We'd have to find accommodation, which could take time, which means having to stay longer in the hostel, and renting for such a short period of time would be difficult.
- Our planned US trip was pretty crammed anyway, this will give us an extra 20 days to be able to do things at our own pace, make detours etc.
So we will go back to Vancouver some time next week, maybe check out Vancouver Island for a few nights or possibly Whistler. Then on January 31st we head down to Seattle for a Muse concert, and start the trip from there. We're working out details tonight but we think we're going to fly down to San Francisco (domestic flights in the US are cheap), spend time there, greyhound it to LA and once we're done rent the RV from there and do Las Vegas and the national parks and continue on. That's all for now, we'll update again after we've hopefully become ski pros.