While in Vancouver, I stayed at the HI downtown hostel. The great thing about this hostel is that something was organized every day. I decided to sign up for the Capilano bridge tour. At 9AM I met our guide Erik. From that moment it was already clear that the tour was serious business. He had a little table with a sign up form and all seven of us were neatly registered.
We walked along the seawall and Erik took us into the aquatic center and pointed out some interesting things along the way. Suddenly he got all excited. “Wow. Would you look at that! This almost never happens. It only happens in December and June when the tides are bigger.” We are staring at a flooded walkway. Apparently this part of the path was built too low and occasionally floods for a few hours. Today we hit one of those floods, according to Erik something very unique. He even wanted us to send him the photos.
We walked all the way to the roundhouse where we took the skytrain to the waterfront. What a cool thing that is. You can look through the front since there is no driver, and thus you can see the metro tunnels as if you were driving it. At the waterfront we took a ferry to North Vancouver, where we hopped on a bus. Our destination was the Capilano forest. I have no clue where exactly we got off, but we were close to the Cleveland dam. It was a dreary day, but this gave us great views from the dam, with a mysterious mist surrounding the forest.
We walked through the fir tree forest and slowly made our way down. Erik stopped every now and then for some information or personal history. We were like a school class, with Erik letting us know time after time that we were meant to listen. The recent rain made the forest come alive. The sunlight was reflecting in all the raindrops. It was magical.
Our walk ended at the salmon hatchery. What a fascinating place! It sounds incredibly boring, but the salmon basically have to jump up a bunch of stairs that have a waterfall coming off them. They really jump and flip to get up to the next level. For a few levels they’d made a viewing area like in an aquarium. It was hilarious, and very exciting to try to catch one on camera. Mission impossible it seemed.
After lunch and salmon entertainment, we had another short walk through the forest to get to the Capilano suspension bridge. It is a real tourist hot spot, but luckily for us it was a rainy fall day, which meant less crowds. You pay an entry fee to get into the park and then you can walk over the 70m high suspension bridge, the cliffwalk and up a walk around the tree tops. It is cool to get up high, even though we saw the same things as on our walk here.
I was really happy that we had the forest walk as well. It added a lot to the experience. It was also amazing to see all the weird Halloween decorations on the houses in this suburb. The bridge itself is a must-see, but don’t forget to go out in nature, as this is equally, if not more, spectacular!
