HEIDI'S PLACE

The weather in Vancouver reminds me of the weather in Melbourne. That is four seasons in the one day. When I went to bed last night the sky was bright and starry with not a cloud in sight but when I awoke this morning the weather was bleak with drizzling rain. Some parts of Vancouver even received a dusting of snow.


The rain continued for most of the morning and then all of a sudden the sun appeared and the Vancouver city was swathed in bright sunlight. The temperature rose and all was good with the world. But as the afternoon wore on the temperature dropped, clouds hid the sun and it once more became a bleak, cold city. No doubt it will rain again sometime soon only for the weather to radically shift again.


We had set off from OK Falls on Tuesday morning a half an hour late and had to rush to make the 10am deadline for the boarding kennel. Matilda, our dog boards with a lady called Heidi and she runs the kennel with Germanic precision. If you aren’t on time your dog can’t stay. She often boards up to 20 dogs at a time in her house and the place is always spotless. You enter the house and are presented with a group of free range dogs, but no mess and no fighting. If a dog does transgress retribution comes quickly.


Matilda has been there three times now and loves the place. Heidi says that she is a bossy dog but generally well-behaved. That lasts for about an hour when we reach home and she is soon back to her old tricks. I think Matilda needs constant doses of Heidi boot camp to keep her in check.


The four hour trip here was an easy one over the Rocky Mountains with no fog and driving snow this time, only bright sunlight all the way. It got down to -6c crossing the Rockies but the snow is slowly melting and in some places on the Coquihalla Pass there are spots that are now devoid of snow.


Our hotel is in central Vancouver just a few streets back from the main thoroughfare, Robson Street. Even so it is a little on the seedy side with several shops within view of the hotel offering peep shows for 25 cents. The streets around this part of town have quite a lot of homeless people begging or just hanging around. Today walking around the area a few were even sleeping outside a shop which is something that you don’t expect to see in downtown Vancouver.