Shuswap Lake

My next Greyhound bus trip takes me north from Penticton, heading for a hostel by the side of Shuswap Lake. Last week Greyhound introduced a directive forbidding all unscheduled stop offs. The scheduled stop is 10km past the hostel in the next town. The hostel owner, Blair, is very accommodating and she says she will pick me up, once she has closed the hostel for the night. So at 10pm I find myself standing by the side of the road between a gas station and a railway siding, wondering if she will come. Fortunatley she is as good as her word and she pulls in within 15 minutes.

Her property consists of an historic general store, with two llamas in the garden and the hostel accommodation which is in converted railway carriages. It is situated right on the shores of Shuswap Lake and is all rather bohemian and rustic, but very charming, in spite of the traffic noise from Highway 1. The trans-Canadian railway runs close by and the sound of the freight trains rumbles through my sleep.

Railway Carriage Accommodation

Inside the Caboose

Shuswap General Store

The lake is right beside the railway carriages  - in fact closer now than a week agao because the water levels are very high from all the recent rain. The dock is floating, whereas in the dry season the water level would be 20' lower. Various communities nearby have had flooding and the trans-Canadian Highway was washed out last week just east of here.

Shuswap Lake

In the morning the guests sit at picnic tables outside, surrounded by flowering orange blossom, while Blair cooks breakfast of delicious fruit pancakes, served with maple syrup.

Blair Cooking Pancakes for Breakfast

I find I am rather limited as to what I can do from here, as there is no public transport and many of the local hiking trails are under water from the recent heavy rain. In my railway carriage there is a Candian woman of about my age, with her 9 year old granddaughter and a family friend. They are going to visit a nearby donkey sanctuary and I am delighted when they ask if I would like to tag along. We find the donkey sanctuary at the end of a beautiful nearby valley. It is a low-key affair and they only have visitors on a few day a week and the lady owner takes time to show us around and introduce us to her 40 or so donkeys. When she finds out I am from Devon she tells me she is a great admirer of the work of Elisabeth Svendson and asks if I know of the donkey sanctuaries in Sidmouth and Ivybridge! There is obviously a world-wide network of donkey rescuers. She has two large white dogs on the property. The breed is quiet and soppy around people, but they guard against bears.

Donkey Sanctuary

Bear Dog

The next day, after the pancake breakfast, Blair is going in the car to a dairy in a nearby town to collect her order and asks if I would like to come for the ride. On the way we chat about lots of things and I learn a lot about what it is like to live and work in the area and something of the native Shuswap people and the problems of integration. The diary makes its own ice-cream in a fantastic array of flavours.  I have an enormous cone of raspberry cheesecake flavour. Now I have 2 enormous pancakes and maple syrup for breakfast and 3 hours later I have had an enormous ice cream for lunch. With this eating and the lack of hiking, I think I will definitely be putting on some of the weight I lost in New Zealand.

We are then going to stop at a local thrift store (charity shop) for Blair to drop off some stuff. She explains that the store is very well supported by the local community. It started after there was a big local forest fire and people had to be evacuated from their homes. Local people donated all sorts of things to help these families and there was enough to fill a hockey stadium. When the evacuees had what they needed there was still a whole bunch of stuff left over, so they sold everything for 25 cents. You could buy a fork, or even a bed for 25c. Now they have certain days where you can fill a whole grocery bag for $2. It is a bustling place where the car park is full of people driving up and dropping off furniture.

Thrift Store

I take a look around and buy a few books - a couple of novels by Canadian authors, as I am getting through my reading material pretty fast on the bus trips and a funny book called, 'How to be a Canadian'. While I am standing by the car waiting for Blair I make a start on this one and chuckle to myself. Here's a few excepts from the first few pages that made me laugh:

There are 30 000 000 people in Canada - all of whom have, at some point frozen their tongues to the side of a chainlink fence or flagpole. Even though their mothers told them not to. Indeed at any given time of year, it is winter somehere in Canada and someone, somewhere is stuck to a flagpole. 'Hap me, hap me. Tumbuddy, pwease hap me.'

In defiance of both Einstein and the space-time continuum, hockey in Canada now lasts sixteen months a year. The playoffs stretch things out even further. Glaciers move faster than the standard NHL season. There are teams with sideburns and disco hairdos still circling the ice trying to finish off the 1974 series.

I could bore you with more, and I probably will later, but for now that's enough because maybe you have to be here, so I'll settle down in a chair in the garden for the afternoon and giggle gently to myself.