Letter from Vancouver

CHRIS, JANE & FAMILY

Chris Jones was waiting for us at Vancouver airport when we landed at 4.30. The flight was long, over six hours. We'd lost three hours en route so it felt more like evening than mid-afternoon. The drive from the airport to the home of Chris and Jane in the suburbs of Langley takes a good hour. We sat back in Chris's new Ford Escape 4x4. Very nice too! We supped at home on pizzas.

Saturday dawned bright and sunny at the end of a damp week. Chris (and Jonesy) led us up the highway to a small marina on the mighty Fraser river that runs down to Vancouver from the mountains. Us was Jane and me in her car, along with their two boys, Luke and Dave. They had arranged for us to go up-river on a jet-boat excursion.

The boat waited at the quayside, along with Thomas, our guide, a relaxed Canadian in his thirties who had spent much of his life on the river.

We clambered on board. As we swung out into the river, Thomas gave us the low-down on the craft. She was 23 foot long by 8 wide and drew a mere 8 inches of water – less at speed.

A rumbling inboard motor put out some 350 hp, hauling the bow high out of the water as the skipper opened the throttle. Rain had been falling all week; the river was running high and fast. A wall of foam spun out from the boat's sides as she gained speed and a deep wake swelled out behind her.

Forgive me if I have quite a lot to say about our excursion; we have such great memories of it and pictures to go with it.


We cruised upstream at around 30 mph, keeping an eye out for logs and steering around the small islands and barely-visible gravel beds. Although the river was wide, the channels were narrow. Thomas occupied the skipper's forward seat in the small cabin. I made myself comfortable on one of the two air-sprung seats on either side of him.

On the side of the river, huge rafts of logs were anchored, waiting to be floated downstream. Houses and cabins were dotted along the banks, some of them reachable only from the water. A number had boats tied up at their jetties. One had a float-plane. Now, that's the way to travel.

Our first stop was at the Rainbow waterfall, a couple of miles above Harrison Hot Springs. Thomas expertly brought the boat alongside the jetty.

We climbed off and made our way along 100 metres of damp, twisting path through the woods to the falls that came tumbling down from high up the hillside above us.

The luminescent glades around us shimmered in the spray that filled the air. It was like a scene from Walt Disney – a very damp scene, mind you.

We lunched on toasted bagels at Harrison Hot Springs, a small resort a couple of miles downstream. Then we headed back down the river. Since we'd seen everything on the way up, Thomas entertained us on the return by showing us what his craft was capable of. He gunned her over the whirlpools generated by rocky banks and swept down narrow channels, banking late in a cloud of spray.

It was exciting stuff, although not half as exciting – Thomas insisted - as shooting the rapids or trying to ride the turbulent waters of the narrows at Hell's Gate. We assured him that we were perfectly content with the way things were.

On the Sunday, after a stroll along the beach and lunch at White Rock, Chris dropped us back at the airport for the flight to Calgary and the final leg of our trip.