Vancouver had collected the lions share of Canadas west coast snow allocation before we got there. 60cm of snow doesn´t disappear very quickly especially when the city its dropped into just isn't used to it. Our week there started with a trip into downtown for Jacquie to have a poke around, and we got to test out our super light (and super budget) rain coats. They proved to be resistant to rain, snow and a short burst of hail. The rest of the week brought more snow and the sidewalks were constantly shifting from easily navigable to covered in extremely treacherous black ice.

This was brought home especially strongly on the morning of the 2nd while we were enroute to my sisters house about 9am in the morning and a lady about 50m from us lost both feet out from underneath her on a patch of black ice and cracked her head on the pavement. Our first instinct was to run to help her but of course the whole area was actually all very very slippery and we could manage no more than a normal walking pace. I ended up being the one calling the ambulance when we realised that though conscious she certainly wasn't all there and that when she did try and move she left quite a patch of blood on the ice. One after the other the police, fire department and then paramedics arrived and all went through the same black comedy routine of:
Bystanders: "Careful its really slippery"
Emergency Services Person: "Oh it's really slippery, Aye?"
Bystanders: "Yeah"

Anyways the lady did promptly get carted off to the hospital and hopefully is fine, but Canada loses a lot of people to winter each year. The news was full of items like '8 dead in avalance' or 'old lady freezes to death outside of rest home'. Add to that all the people that die in car crashes in the often appalling conditions and occaisional bear mauling and Canada is right up there with Australia on the 'Not quite as safe as you might think' list.

Most of the reason for going to Vancouver was to see more family, which we only partially accomplished, but other members of my family wanting to visit at the same time my sisters wee 2 bedroom apartment suddenly seemed rather undersized so we decided to give couchsurfing a go. We had joined up to the couchsurfing website a few months ago and had hosted a few travelers from various locations in our spare room, but this was our first time on the surfing end. We sent out some requests for accomodation over new years and got a couple of yes's almost immediately. Both were near to my sisters house so were terribly convenient, and both were very positive experiences. It was great to talk to some 'ordinary' folks about living in Canada and meeting people is part of what travelling is all about. But I think I find the whole 2 day meet, chat, leave cycle we had going kind of weird. We will probably have another go when we get to Mexico City but it looks like we will be staying in hostels most of the time in Mexico.

We also got to the Aquarium while we were there which is worth the visit if your ever in the neighbourhood, lots of interesting jellyfish, archerfish (who spit prawns off the side of their tank and eat them), and some humongous amazonian Arapaima (fish almost 2m long are a little scary). And lets not forget the Beluga's, some of you might not be particularly surprised that my favourite part of the day was seeing the staff training a beluga to wiggle its melon (overgrown sonar emitting forehead).

We've moved onto Mexico now and are basking in some serious heat all of a sudden, but more about I'll have to write about that another day.