Intro
I'm currently sitting in a camping trailer near Golden, British Columbia, looking at the poplar trees outside that are gradually turning golden. We have been here for a week at a family where we are helping to build a wooden cabin in exchange for board and lodging. I actually wanted to start a blog a while ago, but apart from traveling, taking photos and processing impressions, I never really had time. It would be impossible to write down everything we have done and experienced in 5 months in one post, so I will start with an entry in which I only briefly describe our itinerary so far and add a few pictures.
Heavily laden with two backpacks each and a large bag full of food, we left Zurich by train on May 2nd. Overnight and with only an hour's delay (which nonetheless ruined our connection) we arrived in Hamburg, from where we continued to Hirtshals on the Danish North Sea coast. The next afternoon we boarded the ferry for Iceland. Four days later we arrived in Seyðisfjörður, which is on the east coast of Iceland. To reach Reykjavik, from where we flew to Vancouver 6 days later, we still had to get all the way to the west. So we combined this trip with a short tour of Iceland and rented a medium-sized car in which we folded down the seats in the back and inflated our camping mats. Equipped like this, we explored the south coast of Iceland along the ring road. Among other things, there were really cute puffins and seals to watch, glacial lakes to marvel at and secluded hot springs to enjoy. Sleeping in the car wasn't super comfortable, of course, but with Icelandic accommodation prices it was an easy choice, especially as our savings should last for a few months or years.
The Canadian border officials at the gate in Reykjavik were just as annoying this time as they were 10 years ago at the US/Canadian border. The fact that you enter Canada without precise travel plans, without a job in your home country and without a home at all is something they find really weird and they are probably immediately worried that you will never leave the country again. I had already expected that they wouldn't just let us in without further ado, but Lisa was a bit more shocked than I was. Well, in the end they were convinced that we were trustworthy and gave us a little green sticker on our passports. You couldn't have boarded without it. They obviously hadn't thought that you could simply scrape it off someone else's pass and stick it on your own. The whole thing was kind of a joke. But definitely a first taste of many moments to come when we were still thinking while traveling in Canada: This is a nonsensical, chaotic way to organize things.
By the time we arrived in Vancouver, we had planned most things months in advance - bought train, ferry and plane tickets, rented an AirBnB and a car. From here, however, everything was open. We had a tentative plan to buy a car and drive north, but nothing more. In the end, we bought a medium-sized SUV in Vancouver (2007 Hyundai Santa Fe) and put a bed in the back, in the same style as we had done with our campervan years before, this time in a slightly smaller format. We first took it to Vancouver Island and the Southern Gulf Islands - a group of islands between the mainland and Vancouver Island - and spent time on the road in our new home and at Workaways.
Then we headed north to the Yukon. The drive from Vancouver to Whitehorse (the capital of the Yukon) takes around 27 hours by car - about 2400 km. Along the way, we went on the occasional hike, spent the night in our car by turquoise-blue lakes, sometimes stopped off at a Tim Hortons (the Canadian version of Starbucks) to get some internet and download a new radio play for the road.
We then spent almost two months in the Yukon (with side trips to the North West Territories and Alaska), including a nine-day hike in Kluane National Park and Reserve (which covers an area half the size of Switzerland), two weeks canoeing down the Yukon River, helping a family with dogs and horses around the house, watching the Northern Lights, swimming in the Arctic Ocean and watching grizzlies fishing for salmon. In the end, however, it got too cold at the beginning of September to live “out of the car” for much longer. If you're forced to be outside all the time apart from the time you're lying in bed or driving, it gets exhausting when the temperatures drop and the days get shorter.
With a heavy heart - at least for me - we left the Yukon and headed southeast through northern BC into the Rocky Mountains. Along the way we saw bears (both alive and dead), caribou, bison, beavers and even a lynx.
But even here in the Rockies, the increasing cold is slowly but surely overtaking us, with the first snow already covering the mountain peaks and temperatures dropping below freezing at night. That's why we're making plans to travel further south to Mexico.