Day 9 - Prince Rupert

Late yesterday afternoon I caught the ferry to Prince Rupert. It's a 23 hour ferry ride and we left port at about 5:30-6pm yesterday. There are cabins on board but I thought I wouldn't bother and save some money and just crash in the public lounge area (like several others do). What I didn't know though, is that the place really isn't heated very well, and I have been half asleep, half awake for most of the night. Luckily, I tried to get some sleep from about 10pm and the cafeteria opened at 7am so I got a decent amount of kip, but I dunno exactly how deep it was. No matter, I just might have a bit of a long sleep tonight and try and forgo the pub (hehe maybe!).

Well, since I have been sitting here trying to type this blog post, I have been side-tracked, chatting to a elderly Canadian chap who is on his way home from Vancouver, back to his home in an area north of here called Terrace. He was a nice chap who liked to talk a lot, so I got to listen while drinking my first coffee of the day. Then, the father of an Australian family (first Australians I've actually seen) came over and the three of us chatted about different things, like the Internet, Wellington and the new Australian Prime Minister. Not a bad start to the day really.

At about 7:45am, the sun started to come up and I have been getting a bit of a first look at where we are. I think it's time I put in a pic into a blog entry so this is the type of thing I am looking at...















It's like we are going up a wide channel as were are surrounded by islands in every direction. Sometimes we get pretty close to the shoreline which is all forest. I'm expecting to see bears frolicking in the treeline haha but I haven't seen any yet :-) I will have to keep watching.

We are due to dock/land at 2pm which is in 5.5 hours time. Then I probably have a 3km walk into town, maybe I can hitch a ride or a taxi or bus or something, no matter, I will see how the gods roll their dice for me.

UPDATE:
Well it's 11:30pm here for me in Prince Rupert. I'm lying in bed because this town is a bit boring and like NZ, it closes down pretty early on a Sunday night. I did have quite a nice night though to be honest. I met a French girl (Alexandra) on the ferry this afternoon. English was not her first language and she admitted to not really paying all that much attention in class at school. So the conversation was rather difficult, but good fun as we both were trying to decipher what the other said - honestly a 10 second, 3 line conversation took about 5 minutes for us. It was 'boss' as someone I know would call it. haha. Anyhow, Alex had to catch another ferry 6 hours after disembarking off our current one, as she was going to Alaska. The ferry terminal was right next door to the one we landed from, so that was pretty easy. She also has a blog of which she gave me the URL and her email address. I felt sorry for the poor girl - she had been travelling for several days straight (From New York) and was going pretty much non-stop to Alaska which was 2 more nights/3 days of non-stop travelling. So I invited her to my hotel room, so she could use the free wireless internet connection and have a shower. She accepted so like a gentleman I left the room key with her, took my belongings and went down to the hotel pub and drank a few heinekens. I gave her 20 minutes and went by the time I came back she had showered and was working on her emails and blog.

A little later we went out for dinner. She liked sushi, so we found a local and ordered several kinds of sushi. Man, the salmon sushi I had was MAGNIFICANT!!! It was sooo nice I have to try something 'salmony' for breakfast tomorrow hehe. We both agreed that it was a very nice meal and so we walked back to the hotel where she got a cab and drove off to the ferry terminal. It was very nice to have someone to 'talk' to whilst having a proper dinner.

After that I tried to go to the pub but there was a damn hockey game on (there's always a hockey game on) which basically just sent me to sleep. There was no one in the pub except for the waitresses and me, but there were married and weren't bothering to even pay me any attention so I called it quits after 2 beers and went for a walk around town. About 1 hour of walking later I had found nothing (everything was closed) and came back to the hotel. So here I am, lying in bed,

updating my blog once again, about to go to sleep and wake up for tomorrow. I have an 11 hour bus trip to Prince George. It starts at 9pm and goes through the night - so at least I will save money on a hotel room haha.

Cheers
Matt