Banff

Today we had a half-day tour of Banff, which is a quaint and pleasant little town with a population of 7500 which rises to 10500 in the height of tourist season. It is not surprising why it is so popular. It has a charm and beauty to it and is surrounded by even more beauty and stunning scenery. Every other shop is a gift or craft shop, or an outdoor pursuits equipment shop. These cater for skiers, snowboarders, mountain bikers, skateboarders, hikers, walkers, campers – but no hunters! All the streets are named after animals; Muskrat St., Moose St., Lynx St., etc., apart from the main road running all the way through it, which is Banff Street.
Waiting for the bus I noticed the thermometer on the hotel porch way was showing 2C – and it felt it – so it was a good job I was wearing my Southend United woolly hat!

Our first stop was the Cave & Basin. This is the historic site where three rail workers found a near equivalent to liquid gold – hot sulphur springs! After staking a claim on it and turning it into a heath resort the government decided water was not a commodity one could claim and took it away from them – they did pay them $675 each, which was enough for them to retire on at the time. The other claim to fame for this particular spot came later on – in the 1920’s in fact – as the habitat for the Banff Springs Snail. This is the only place in the world where it is found and still survives. I did get a couple of pictures of one, but it was safely underwater crawling across a rock and very small. The basin is a small rectangular pool approximately 10 centimetres deep and was the original pool built when the health resort first took off. The cave was exactly that with a small bubbling rock pool at the end of it and smelling very strongly of sulphur. The pool is fed from an underground spring and has a temperature of 47C.

After departing the cave & basin we headed up to the Banff Gondola. This is a mightily impressive piece of machinery and was North Americas first two cable lift. The cables are just over a mile in length and it takes 8 minutes to get from bottom to top, or vice versa. The view going up is amazing and from the top it is stupendous. Where some of the clouds where lying low in the valleys one could look down on them from the observation post. It was breathtaking (almost literally due to the altitude) to just walk around the rooftop observation area getting a full 360 degree view of the world! Going down was quite fun as well, as I got a whole car to myself.

The next stop was Bow Falls. This, apparently, is the second most photographed spot in Canada – yes, you guessed it, after Niagara Falls. It is very picturesque and gushes white water over a tumble of rocks strewn between two sheer rock banks. It almost frames itself, which also makes it very easy to photograph.

Our penultimate stop was Surprise Corner. This is so named because it is a 270 degree turn around a blind bend – hence the surprise! One doesn’t know what is just around the bend until one gets there, be it pedestrian, moose, or bear. It does also offer a superb view of the Banff Springs Hotel across the valley.
Our last stop was The Hoodoos. These are a set of wind eroded stone pillars which resemble a small group of people huddled together and watching over the valley below. The First Nation people believed them to be spirit watchers of the land – hence the name.

After this we had the choice of being transported to our hotels or dropped off in downtown Banff. As my hotel was a ten minute stroll form downtown I elected for the latter.

As I have said the downtown part of Banff Street – both road & pavement (or pavement & side walk) are being totally resurfaced & renovated so the whole thing is closed off to vehicular traffic, and cordoned off to pedestrians, which leaves an uneven surface alongside all the shops much restricted in width. The reason I detail this is to set the scene for:-

*WARNING* Racist slur about to occur. The easily offended should skip the next two paragraphs.

Now, I would like to make some very true – because I have experienced these more than three times, and had them confirmed and amplified by others I have mentioned it to – observations about the Japanese. I exclude Masa from this slur on his country folk because he didn’t display any of these – possibly because he was on his own and not affected by the pack mentality. The Japanese tourists are the most arrogant, ignorant and oblivious in the world. They have absolutely no special awareness at all! They do not have a clue about what is going on around them, only in front of them or their camera lenses! The “yellow peril” travel in packs (quite often they have a whole tour bus to themselves) and descend on any tourist/beauty spot like locusts. They emerge from the bus door in a swarm jabbering away and make a direct line for whatever vantage point or viewing platform has been created for people to enjoy. They then colonise it by jostling, pushing, or just interposing themselves between anyone else who was there and whatever barrier there might be to hold people back safely from a potential hazard. [I am ashamed to say that on more than one occasion I was hoping for some “engineering failure” to cause the barriers to dissolve, give way or otherwise collapse in order to get an uninterrupted photo-opportunity back!] There then begins the ritual dance of photographing each other in front of the said beauty spot – whose peace has been destroyed by the constant yammering coming from them all (and we thought Americans didn’t know when to shut up) and it is then that one begins to realise what a harsh and guttural sounding language Japanese is. In a nutshell: one gets very pissed off with them very quickly!

After suffering multiple patience testing; stopping suddenly in front of one, barging out of shops into oncoming pedestrians, barging across ones path to get into a shop, spinning around in an arc trying to get their bearings (or to spot another kamikaze unit to link up with) being unaware or uncaring of what the huge backpack behind is colliding with, just milling around blocking the limited pathway to have a loud conversation with your fellow invaders, being unable to talk on a cancer ‘phone whilst walking and see in a forwards direction (true of most people using cancer ‘phones in the street – but the Japs have made this an art form) and being able to completely stop a flow of pedestrians in both directions at once! I then encountered another of these blockages. People either side of me where tutting at the “Little Yellow Wall” but I had had enough. Saying “excuse me” in a very load voice I extended an arm into the Emperor’s Children stepped forward and pushed a bunch of them aside! It must have been a bit like that fiction story about the Red Sea – except this was yellow – but it did work. The rest of the Pacific Fleet followed me through! I am rather ashamed of this in hindsight, but at the time I was bloody annoyed – not to mention hungry – and had already had dress rehearsals at Emerald Lake, Natural Bridge and Bow Falls. They also have no respect for peace and quiet.

Anyway, after enjoying a nice lunch I decided to go in search of The Whyte Museum which details the lives of Peter & Catherine Whyte. This was a lovely love story which resulted in a local boy from Banff and medal winning ski jumper (Peter) meeting and falling for a debutante in Chicago (Catherine) and bringing her to his home town which she fell in love with, as well as Peter, and became a very integral part of. They did some wonderful things putting Banff on the map and became fully integrated with the First Nations tribes of the area. It was most interesting and, needless to say, I had to get thrown out when the museum closed. (It’s alright this didn’t happen forcibly – I just used all the time available!)

After this it was back to the hotel in time to get all my things packed up ready for the train journey to Kamloops. It was going to be an early start (set alarm for 6:00) so I wanted to get an early night. As it was I started updating my blog documents and downloading my photographs, so it turned out to be quite a late night. And I had to get Spank in from the tree outside. I made the mistake of letting him out on the balcony and he just had to have a swing in the trees!

All packed up and ready to go I crawled into bed.