Ireland day 0973. Tuesday 28 May 2024- Honolulu 1

Today’s summary	Drove 30 mins from the hotel to visit the UBC Botanical gardens. Pouring with rain but absolutely lovely. Especially the treetop walk on wobbly suspension bridges, and then tea and sandwiches in the gardeners’ hut. Back to the airport for a flight to Honolulu later in the afternoon.
Today’s weather	Rain overnight and all morning then drier mid afternoon. Light southerly wind. Appx 15c

Today’s overview location (The green mark shows the location of our route)		Close-up location (The orange line shows where we walked) (Click button below to download GPX of today’s walk as recorded, or see interactive map at bottom with elevations corrected): UBC Botanic Garden

Commentary

(Summary blog only. Last full blog was Day 0368).

Our hotel last night had a lovely spa, sauna and pool which guests were welcome to use after their stay. So when we looked out of our bedroom window this morning and beheld the grey skies and pouring rain, that did indeed seem like quite a tempting option.

But not for us. We decided that instead we would rather clamber around some treetops on very wobbly and extremely wet rope suspension bridges, and enjoy our tea and sandwiches in the gardeners’ hut rather than having lunch in a deluxe hotel restaurant.

So that is how we came to be up and out and on the road soon after 10am, for the short 30 minute drive over yet another branch of the Fraser River delta and onto the University of British Columbia campus. Our destination today was the UBC Botanical Garden, which is a lovely gem of a garden, spanning both sides of South West Marine Drive.

The gardens were particularly beautiful today because the rain had deterred most visitors – especially early on – and so we had almost the whole place to ourselves. The staff were knowledgeable and friendly and all the plants were neatly laid out and properly labelled.

We got tea and sandwiches for a late breakfast from the kiosk and the lady serving us kindly offered us the use of the gardeners’ hut while we ate, in view of the poor weather outside. Then we headed back into the rain and tried out the Treetop Walk. It’s a series of about six very wobbly rope suspension bridges strung from the trees about 20m / 70ft above the ground. Getting round in one piece feels like an achievement in itself – and the bird’s eye view of the forest canopy is a bonus. The whole thing is about 308metres long.

So all in all it was a very enjoyable morning out, and one day we would like to go back and spend a bit longer there. But we had to leave all too soon to head back to the airport.

We’re travelling to Honolulu in a couple of hours and just passing the time in the Air Canada lounge (thanks Rob!) before we depart. The whole process of getting airside was very painless – partly because we are travelling hand baggage only, and partly because you can do US immigration pre-clearance in Vancouver airport. So technically speaking we are in the US now – which should hopefully make our arrival in the US-proper later this evening a lot less stressful than it normally is.

Westward ho!!

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


106 years old this year	Tea and sandwiches for breakfast in the gardener’s café!

I spotted this fungus last time we were in Canada – I have no idea what it is, but at the time I nicknamed it the poached-egg fungus – which still seems appropriate	Fascinating part of the garden – especially for Val, as she has worked at Chelsea Physic Garden, mentioned on the poster as the source of many of the seeds used to establish UBC’s own garden, which we visited today

Val checking out the Physic Garden	Back at the airport for the next stage in our journey

A proper Dawson holiday. Who needs the spa, anyway?