Day 2 - Vancouver - Lynn Canyon Park

Vancouver is really small - way smaller than I realised, and I actually felt like I'd done as much as I'd wanted to yesterday, so signed up to one of the recommended excursions from the hostel, a trip to Lynn Canyon Park and Suspension bridge.
I've heard about Capilano suspension bridge being a place to visit, but they were saying at the hostel that the Lynn Canyon one is a shorter bridge, but the whole trip only costs 10 Canadian dollars, compared to the 65 Canadian dollars for the Capilano trip. We'll see if it was worth it.

I was met by tour guide Barbie after breakfast (sorry, that's a bit mean...but she was very enthusiastic and had this permanent happy smile and energy), and her British friend who I later learned grew up in Twickenham and went to Waldegrave. Small world eh??

It didn't take that long to get out to the park, like I said Vancouver is really small. It was really nice to see some of the more suburban houses as we made our way there. Definitely American house meets alpine chalet, very pretty.

Lynn Park is over 617 acres and apparently is a second growth forest (which means that when the settlers arrived they chopped all the trees down and this is what has happened since the world realised that re-planting trees was actually a good idea), with the trees aged between 80 and 100 years old.
Rainfall has been good which means there has been lots of fungi and moss - signs of a healthy forest apparently. Here is a cool-looking mushroom. Speaking of cool, there are also these yellow slugs called banana slugs, which if you lick them, they have an anti-septic property. A couple of people did this...but I'm not one for the bush tucker trials so passed on this. I also felt rather sorry for the slug, which doesn't die as a result but didn't exactly seem pleased to be the centre of attention. Whilst eating lunch, we did get stalked by another creature who did not have such problem and was definitely keen to pose for photos...









The suspension bridge itself is 50m above the canyon and there's a nice view down too. We also had the chance to swim in the water although only one brave northerner from Britain decided to do so, as this was water from a glacier!

Anyway, it was a nice and restful way to spend the day although I did find out that the Canadian PM has called a General Election. Grrrrrh. There was me thinking that I'd escaped politics for a bit!