A week in Boston and Cambridge

We are writing this from Antigua, Guatemala. We will save any Central American stories until we´ve been here a bit longer, but we will say that this place is beautiful and and the Guatemalans are warm and welcoming. Boston was beautiful as well - but in a totally different way.

It is a stately, somewhat reserved place. Obviously, being there for only a week, we could not really get a true feel for the place, maybe partly because of its reserved nature. Not to say that the locals aren´t friendly and helpful, but they somehow didn´t seem as forthcoming as in Canada, and indeed here in Guatemala. Every now and again, though, someone would go against this general perception . For instance, once when we were clearly looking for a particular place, a woman yelled directions at us from her car in a thick Bostonian drawl. If you´ve never heard this unforgettable accent, think of a statement like "I´m going to park my car", dramatically elongate the "a" and hardly pronounce the "r".

We stayed with Eva´s long-time good friend Kate and her fiance Daniel, who generously gave us their study as a bedroom. Unfortunately, we stupidly neglected to get photos of our hosts, except for this one:

which was taken during a picnic at an outdoor concert where an orchestra comprising mainly medical professionals gave us renditions of Mendelson, Tchaikovsky, and John bloody Williams (yes, the performed the Harry POtter suite. We left shortly after the start of it - we couldn´t take it, especially when the conductor declared Williams to be a modern-day Tchaikovsky...). Possibly the best thing about this concert was the location - it´s always nice to be outdoors, and the Charles River provided a particularly pleasant accompianment to a spectacular stage:

This venue is referred to as "the shell", or "half-shell".

Earlier that day, we had gone on one of Boston´s big tourist ventures with Kate, who had kindly organised it beforehand: The Duck Tour.

These amphibious vessels are modified WW2 vehicles which were used for transporting supplies to troops on the frontline - they´re basically army trucks enclosed in a water-tight hull. They are now used to cart tourists around Boston´s streets and the Charles River on tours which point out sights of significance.

This was our driver - known as "Salty Magoo." We suspect that the Duck Tour drivers are primarily employed for character (which Salty had in abundance) rather than driving skills - as you can see, anyone can drive these vessels!

(Although this kid did almost steer the thing into the riverbank...and then almost into the bridge when attempting to correct an oversteer...)

Some things we saw on the tour -

This shows one of the "shakers" on the bridge known to locals as the "Salt and Pepper Shaker Bridge".


The Robert Gould Shaw Memorial, celebrating the first wholly African-American army contingent which fought in the American Civil War and demanded equal pay to the white soldiers:


And, bringing memories back from Shayne´s childhood, the bar Cheers, which was used to film the sitcom of the same name:


The Duck tour was really helpful in giving us an idea of places we´d like to explore. First on the list was Back Bay, which was literally the Back Bay of Boston - i.e. beach, until they filled it in the late 1800s. Now it´s a trendy yet beautiful and refined district. We spent most of the day on Newbury St., a trendy shopping street which is mostly out of our price range, except for the second-hand and factory seconds chain "Second Time Around", a which had two stores on the street, both having a 70% off sale. Eva bought a $10 skirt at the first one; not to be outdone, Shayne bought a decidedly more expensive GAP leather jacket at the second (still a big bargain, however...)

One of the most stunning features of Back Bay is Copley Square, which is the site of two incredibly impressive buildings. The first is Trinity Church:

which was once quoted as "deservedly regarded as one of the finest buildings in America." It certainly is magnificent; a possible rival stands opposite, however:

Not so much the outside, perhaps, but the inside...


Studying never looked so good...and when you´re sick of being indoors, there´s this courtyard:


There was an exhibition of WW2 propaganda posters inside, which provided a fascinating and sometimes frightening insight into the mindset of the American government at the time. For example:

But if any of them were going to work on us, it would be this one:


And we finished off the day with a great Tapas dinner, followed by incredible ice cream.

On a stinkingly hot and humid day (which was one degree Farenheit off the record for Boston) we set out to explore Harvard Square. We didn´t get very far before we sought refuge in the air-conditioned Harvard Natural History Museum, which turned out to be one of the best museums we´ve ever been to. One of the reasons we liked it is that it was geared towards more students than tourists. It also had some really unusual exhibits, like one on Glass Flowers, which were botanical models painstakingly blown and painted by some very dedicated botanists in the late 1800s. These things look amazingly real:


Yes, these things are ALL glass...

Penny, THERE WERE ROCKS!


We started to get a feel for the sorts of cultures we were gong to encounter on our Guatemalan trip in the adjoining anthropological museum, which had an exhibit on Latin American peoples, contemporary and ancient.

We were particularly taken with reproductions of a Mayan artefacts:


Back in Natural History section, we saw lots of examples of animals, extinct, nearly extinct, and thriving.

The Right Whale (this ugly thing is its MAMMOTH head):


and this Kronosaur, which spanned the entire room (and has a home flavour - it was dug up in Queensland. Why these buggers have it, we have no idea...):


And finally for your viewing pleasure, on our second-last day in Boston/Cambridge>: The Cambridge Carnival.

This was a completely different experience to anything we´d encountered in Boston so far. This was more like the Brazilian-style Carnivale, but with an African/Carribean flavour. So much for your reserved Bostonians...there was a huge street parade in different national sections. The first section was Trinidad and Tobego, and the theme seemed to be something to do with birds, although we´ve never seen birds move like that to pounding techno beats...

Basically a lot of chest-thrusting, booty-shakin´, gyrating madness. By contrast, the next group, called Queen of the Nile (but they didn´t look Egyptian...), were highly choreographed and skilled dancers in formation:


These guys (not sure where they´re from), did what seemed like a traditional dance, except they kind of messed it up. The leader went off in a huff at the end.


After that we gave up on the parade as it was going to go on forever, and went in search of food, which was plentiful and varied. We ended up having Mexican, largely because there was no queue...

There were several bands performing during the day, including this samba-like band, complete with Vegas-style belly dancers.


To end up, we had a classic pub meal, with a classic New England "delicacy"...clam chowder.

It tasted much better than it looks, trust us.

So those were some of the highlights of our Boston/Cambridge experience. Again, if we´d had more time, likely we would have got a much better feel for the place.

Next post - Antugua, Guatemala!

Exploring (some of) Canada's natural wonders. And other stuff.

Today is a sad day. Tomorrow we leave Canada for the foreseeable future and head off to Boston for a week, and then Guatemala for 5 weeks. The reason for the sad? We've both had a great time here. It's a cliche, but we love this country. We could easily see ourselves living in Toronto, if not for the fact that we'd miss family and friends back home.

We last left you with tales of Montreal, written in Vancouver. True to style, we now give you tales of Western Canada...from Mississauga.

Vancouver
The city of Vancouver didn't grab our attention immediately like Montreal did. Perhaps, like Melbourne, it takes longer to reveal its secrets and real character. Plus, we were staying in a pretty seedy part of town. Before we even got to Vancouver, we were told by two Vancouver dwellers to stay away from the corner of Main St and Hastings St. Turns out we'd already booked accommodation on Main, four blocks away from that notorious corner. We overheard two more natives issue the same warning to others, one of them being a bus driver who stopped his bus specifically to warn a couple heading in that direction.

We never did find out just why we shouldn't go there, though Shayne was curious...

Speaking of seedy, a warning to anybody who's heading to Vancouver - avoid the American Backpacker's on West Pender. For God's sake. The $10 a night fee may be tempting, but that price buys you potential bedbugs, one unisex toilet (which broke), two grotty unisex showers, a nagging feeling that your stuff just isn't safe, and one extremely rude, chain-smoking hag as manager, who barged into the men's dorm at stupid o'clock in the morning to yell at one of the poor saps staying here. This row proceeded to travel downstairs, with both parties yelling abuse that probably woke the whole hostel, possibly the surrounding buildings too. One upside to this place: the hilarious signs in broken English by management that are plastered absolutely everywhere on the walls, doors...any space, really. For example:

Just Oriental girls???
and...

I'm terrified of them spy-sniffing people. Where do I apply?

Not to say that we didn't find some special things in Vancouver, like (among other things), this amazing second-hand bookstore on West Pender street:


a nice Chinese garden in the middle of Chinatown (on a less grand scale than Montreal's, but FREE!), and the fact that you'd be on a gritty downtown street, and then look between some buildings and see a view like this:


We also spent our last day there in a place called Stanley Park, which was set aside as parklands early last century after they logged it almost to death. It has made a remarkable recovery. One's first impression of the place is: green. Purest green. Enough Blackadder references. This green is surrounded by the ocean, making the park a peninsula off downtown Vancouver. We took a free shuttle around to the top of the peninsula to the Lion's Gate bridge, which links the park to northern Vancouver.

(As you can see, we didn't have the timer function on the camera worked out yet...)

From there we headed into the forest for a nice stroll through the middle of the park:

towards a place they call the Lost Lagoon:

Shayne found it for them.

That's about it for Vancouver, except for a note re: their public transport. They can't have a subway system unlike most major cities in Northern America because they're right at sea level, so instead they have what they call the SkyTrain, which is actually a..."Monorail! Monorail! MONORAIL!!!"..."Mono...D'OH!" (with apologies to The Simpsons). They also have these strange hybrid creatures:

which Eva maintains is the result of an illicit affair between a bus and a tram, many many years ago, resulting in a new species of public transport known as the (wait for it): BAM-TRUSS.
Yes. For the extended version please see Eva's vivid (i.e. weird) imagination (i.e. delusions).

After three days in Vancouver, we departed for...

The Rockies
The first two days of this trip was spent travelling through British Columbia to the Rocky Mountains. The train is called the Rocky Mountaineer, and although we initially baulked at the cost, we would recommend it to anyone.

This only shows about a quarter of the train - it was pretty impressive. The only downside is that you don't stop anywhere, although they do slow the train often, and we had plenty of stops in the second part of the trip via bus.

Ivan was our attendant/waiter/guide/conveyor of knowledge and hilarious anecdotes for the journey:

He had a wealth of stories. Two of our favourites were:

Canadian Pacific versus Canadian National
CP was the first rail company to lay tracks through this part of Canada, and later CN tried to break their monopoly. Competition grew fierce, and vicious. Both companies engaged in sabotage of each other's tracks (we're talking dynamite here), which were on opposite sides of the mighty Fraser River, which runs throughout B.C. At one point, CP decided to change sides of the river, forcing CN to go to the opposite side of the river. This means that there are two bridges in pretty much the same spot. The CN-built bridge, the Cisco Bridge, looks like this:

...and it's two-tone because during its painting, the unions went on strike, and it was never finished.

The Naked Cowboy
We didn't get a picture of this (probably a good thing), but apparently there are signs on the tracks with a "W" on them. This tells the driver to blow his whistle (no euphemism. We promise) to ensure that animals get off the tracks. One disgruntled farmer, however, hated the fact that he was hearing this piercing whistle all the time, so he wrote to CP to get the sign taken down. Of course, they took no notice. So he started shooting his BB gun off at the passing trains. This included the Rocky Mountaineer. You can imagine that the railways weren't too happy about this, so they warned the farmer to cease or they'd bring legal action against him. So, seeing that he had no other recourse, he decided that more drastic measures were needed.

His property was flush against the train tracks at a corner. So when every passenger train came around that corner (at all times of the day, rain or shine), he would appear. On horseback. Wearing his hat and boots. And nothing else. Oh yes, and carrying his BB gun. As you can imagine - they took the sign down pretty quickly...

We saw an incredible transition of landscape throughout the journey, and some amazing sights. Shayne had an itchy trigger finger on the camera. The whole time. Thus we have a lot of photos. We won't inflict them all on you - here is a selection.

Just outside Vancouver there is lush farmland:


and as we travelled into the interior past the coastal ranges, we got into the so-called "Desert Country," characterised by landforms like Rainbow Canyon:


and these things the First Nations (current PC term for Native Canadians) termed "Hoodoos" (not sure of the spelling):

The story behind them is that they were women who had been turned to stone because they never married. Shayne reckons they were ugly to boot.

One slightly distressing thing about the B.C. countryside are the dead pines that pepper the mountainsides - and they're dead due to the actions of one voracious beetle, the pine beetle.

They attack older trees and kill them within a few years. They're part of the forest ecology and are usually kept in check by the arrival of winter. However, as Western Canada has had fairly mild winters in recent years, probably due to global warming (whether or not you believe it's caused by humans, it's definitely happening!), the beetles have gone nuts. If the mild weather continues, B.C. could be pretty brown in a few years.

Most of the train journey followed rivers or lakes:


The impressive green hills were replaced by majestic rocky alpine mountains, such as this glacier-capped beauty (the name of the glacier escapes us):


and the granddaddy of the Rocky Mountains (or one of them...) - Mount Robson:


On the train we met a delightful English couple, Mike and Emma. They stalked us (or we stalked them, depending on whose story you believe) for the rest of the trip.


Now we really were in the Rockies. This is a typical peak of the area:

which is created by the tectonic plate being pushed up, and as the mountains are being erected at the same rate as they're being eroded, the height remains pretty constant over millions of years.

In Jasper, Alberta, we said goodbye to the train and began our 3-day bus leg of the journey. On this part of the trip we travelled from Jasper to Lake Louise, then Banff, back to Lake Louise, and then a marathon drive back to Vancouver.

Highlights included:

The Columbia Icefields

Which Shayne conquered:

While Eva drank the pristine waters running off the glacier.

Shayne had way more fun.

Sulphur Mountain Gondola Ride at Banff
Where Shayne captured this view of the town of Banff with shaky hands while battling his terror:

and Emma, who was even more terrified, reminded Mike that she loved him, just in case we all died. Awww.

Moraine Lake

A beautiful glacier-fed lake, typical of many dotted around the Rockies. A moraine is a pile of ground rock left behind by a retreating glacier, and there is a huge pile of rock next to the lake (that we climbed) which geologists fought over for years as to its status as a moraine or just a pile of rocks caused by a landslide. Common opinion now favours the latter theory, yet the name remains. The intense turquoise colour of these lakes is due to glacier-ground rock (extremely finely ground, known as rock flour) suspended in the water.

BEARS!
We saw black bears. Well, Shayne saw two. Eva only saw this one (which Shayne took a picture of as we cruised by):

This was a young fella, adolescent, completely ignoring the multitude of tourists snapping away from the safety of their vehicles while he ate his little heart out. Shayne wanted to see him attack a tourist...with the exception of him. Or Eva.

Lake Louise
Which is much like Moraine, except bigger and more touristy. The mountains surrounding it are known as the Ten Peaks, for obvious reasons...

We hired canoes there at exorbitant prices ($CAN40 for a half-hour), but it was worth it to paddle out to the middle, closer to the mountains and away from most of the people.

Here ends out much abridged summary of our trip to the Rockies and surrounding areas. It's really something you have to do for yourself, and we would highly recommend it. However, if we ever get a chance to do it again, we'd like to do it by car, at our own pace, and maybe closer to the off-season so there aren't so many tourists. And possibly also go to other places that are a bit off the beaten track that not so many people know about.


Yesterday, almost a week after our return from the West, we saw one of Canada's most-visited natural wonders:

Niagara Falls
We took another bus tour, this time a day trip through a international students' organisation. We think we prefer travelling with older, more refined people. Yes, we are getting old, jaded and cranky. Not just Shayne.

For those of you who don't know, there are two falls which straddle the American/Canadian border.
The American Falls:

Pretty impressive, huh? Well...

Then there are the Canadian (or Horseshoe) Falls:

No guesses as to which we were more enamoured with.

We went on the Maid of the Mist, a boat which takes you quite close to both falls. There's a reason why we needed to wear this:


When we were at the falls, it was hard to get a good shot up close, as Shayne was afraid the spray would screw up the camera, but here's a nice one. If only you could feel the power of this water through the photo...


Later, we went up to the Skylon Tower (which is like mini version of the CN Tower, although the Skylon was built first) and took a good look at the surrounding area. The whole town of Niagara is touristy and tacky as hell, but the history of the place and how it developed into what it is today is quite interesting and laid out for you on little cards at each viewing point. Something you may not know: Ontario gets a fair chunk of its power through hydro from the falls. Makes sense. Also, in the 50's (or thereabouts), they built this concrete structure in the river upstream of the Canadian falls:

to prevent erosion of the falls, which as you can imagine is normally quite fast due to the sheer force of the water. Apparently around 70% of the water is diverted from the falls. Can't imagine what it would look like if they let it run its course...

So. That's it for the natural wonders of Canada.

Tomorrow we say goodbye to Shayne's aunt and cousin, Margaret and Twiggy, pictured here with us:


Apart from our wonderful hosts and the other people we've met and hung out with here (such as Ian), we will also miss certain things. Such as the subway system and the recycling program of Toronto and Mississauga, where you can recycle just about everything. Even organic waste is composted rather than just dumped into landfill. Eva will also miss maple products such as maple tea, maple nut cereal, and of course real maple syrup. Shayne still misses Coopers...

However, we do have some mementos to remember our time here by. Shayne welcomes a new member to his family of guitars:

Say hello to Cora the Canadian (blame Twiggy for that moniker). She's a second-hand, Quebecian-made parlour guitar.

Shayne also got himeslf a Dream Theater tour t-shirt, as a souvenir of the truly awesome concert we attended on the weekend. Mindblowing...even Eva reckons it was the most atmospheric concert she's ever been to.


Not to be outdone, Eva got herself....some slippers.

As temporary replacements for her beloved Ugg boots. These were exactly what she was looking for, Chris, so don't worry that you couldn't knit them. It's nice to have some from Canada.

So, again, if you're still with us after that BEHEMOTH of a post, you get a cookie. Thanks for keeping up with our travels so far.

Next stop - Boston!