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Canada & Vegas & Mexico 2017

July - August 2017
A 42-day adventure by Ashleigh Read more
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  • Ashleigh SpannerCanada & Vegas & Mexico 2017
    1
    Day 41

    Playa Del Carmen

    August 17, 2017 in Mexico ⋅ ⛅ 30 °C

    To end our amazing 7 week holiday we headed to Playa Del Carmen, about an hours drive from Cancun to spend the last 5 nights relaxing. And that is about all we did and we loved it! We started most days with a sleep in and then would head up to the hotel buffet breakfast and then would sit by the pool with a cocktail.

    We loved Playa Del Carmen! The town is a bit smaller then Cancun and not as touristy, the streets look a little bit more run down then Cancun and at first Jay and I didn't know what to expect however once we checked in and walked the streets we felt very safe and more at ease then we did in Cancun. In Cancun you can't walk down the street without being harassed by people trying to sell you things. This did not happen in Playa Del Carmen nearly as much. It wasn't a huge issue for us in Cancun as we had a beautiful big resort that was right on the beach and had everything inside that we needed.

    In Playa though we decided to stay in a small hotel a few blocks back from the beach so that we could experience some of the more local restaurants and it was great! The hotel reception recommended some local places to go for dinner that were a short walk from the hotel and Jay and I went to this one place about 3 times! Menu all in Spanish, restaurant filled with locals, great food, great service and very cheap. We also did some exploring of the town, checked out the beach and the famous 5th avenue markets and shopping.

    We loved our time here and enjoyed spending the end of our trip fully relaxing. At the end of our week we started our long journey home, 30 hours of flying and 3 planes later we arrived. Thank you to our amazing travel buddies and our Canadian family for hosting us for so long! Also thank you to Flight Centre Byron Bay where my amazing friend works who organised the second half of our incredible holiday - I could not have booked everything without you and I would highly recommend flight centre to anyone looking at overseas travel!    Read more

  • Ashleigh SpannerCanada & Vegas & Mexico 2017
    Day 35

    Cancun, Mexico

    August 11, 2017 in Mexico ⋅ ⛅ 29 °C

    After 5 weeks of holidays and let's say a little bit of partying Jay and I needed some down time so off to Mexico we went. We stayed in Krystal Cancun for 6 nights and took advantage of the beach front resort style living. We spent days laying on beach chairs drinking margaritas and swimming in the bright blue ocean. It was amazing! Mexico weather reminded us a lot like summer back home, hot and humid so we spent a lot of time in the water but unfortunately despite our efforts we both got a bit sunburnt.

    While in Cancun we also had a few tours booked to see the local culture and one of the 7 Wonders of the World. We went on a tour to see the amazing Chichen Itza, our tour guide was incredible, a true local who showed us the local side of the Mayan culture taking us to small towns where we could speak to the locals and purchase gifts knowing that the funds where going straight back to the Mayan families. He also explained a side of the history of Chichen Itza unlike the popular stories online which was refreshing to learn.
    We also visited the beautiful Ik Kil Centote, this was one place I had on my bucket list. An amazing swimming whole inside a Centote.

    One of the other tours we did was swimming with whale sharks!! Wow what can I say, swimming with these beautiful gentle giants was very humbling. Again we were with a very local tour guide on a small boat with a group of 6 other people. We put our snorkel gear on jumped off the boat and swam along side these amazing creatures - amazing!

    Best part for me about being in Cancun was that all of our tours, accomodation and car transfers (between tours, airport and hotel) was booked through Flight Centre and every company we dealt with was great. All the tours and transfer people were locals and made us feel very safe and welcome.    Read more

  • Ashleigh SpannerCanada & Vegas & Mexico 2017
    Day 31

    Las Vegas

    August 7, 2017 in the United States ⋅ ☀️ 35 °C

    Las Vegas baby!! How do I explain Las Vegas. Wow this place is out of this world! The structures of the different casinos are amazing and the lights at night are beautiful! Such a crazy place though, you can walk around through the streets with alcoholic drinks and everyone smokes cigarettes inside the casinos. The streets and casinos are packed with people at night time and then empty in the mornings until about lunch time.

    We stayed in New York New York and loved it, out of all the casinos we would choose this one again. There are definitely newer casinos but for what we were looking for this was perfect.

    While in Vegas we experienced all the Vegas must do's, we hired a Mustang and drove to the Grand Canyon Sky Walk - driving through the desert was unlike anything we have seen before and the canyon was amazing to see in person, and of course the Mustang was fast and very comfortable.

    We also went to a shooting range and shot a few guns! Jay had the full package shooting 5 different guns while I shot 3. This had our adrenaline pumping!!!

    One night we also went and saw Cirque Du Soleil show 'O'!! Both Jay and I had never experienced a show like this before, it was breathtaking and beautiful! We both walked out afterwards feeling like we hadn't blinked in 2 hours! I would highly recommend this show!!    Read more

  • Ashleigh SpannerCanada & Vegas & Mexico 2017
    Day 23

    Ucluelet Vancouver Island

    July 30, 2017 in Canada ⋅ ☀️ 16 °C

    Vancouver Island, wow I think this has been my favourite place yet! From Vancouver we caught a ferry with our rental car over to Vancouver island and drove across the island to ucuelet to stay for the week in our air BnB. This place is seriously amazing, chilled laid back and very much like Kuranda back home. A short 30 min drive took us into Tofino the main tourist attraction town. The beauty of having an air BnB apartment meant that we could go food shopping and made breakfasts, lunches and a few home made dinners at home which after almost 4 weeks travelling we were very happy about!

    We spent a day surfing down at Long Beach, we had to hire wet suits because the water was so cold. We also decided to splash out for a day doing some tourist tours - we chartered a sea plane for us 4 to take us to Hot Springs Cove!! Wow this was a highlight and would recommend to everyone - we booked the sea plane for 5.30pm which meant everyone on the tourist boats was leaving the island as we got there so we had the amazing natural hot springs to ourselves! The hot springs ran down a natural rock formation with little pools of water that you could sit in. The water was very hot but luckily the rocky pools ran down into the ocean so as high tide came in the lower pools received some cold water from the ocean. We could tell the strength of the water as it stripped the silver from Katie's anklet but our skin felt amazing after!

    We also went on a whale watching tour in an open zodiac boat. Wow how lucky are we - the boaties said this was one of the best days this year! We saw a killer whale which was very rare for the area. 2 gray whales, sea lions, Inlet porpoise, bald eagle, sea otters!! Amazing!

    We then also experienced some of the very old big trees and rain forests in the area. We took a water taxi over to the Big Tree Trail on Meares Island, this trail was beautiful and had so much history. Vancouver went through a very big tree lopping stage many years ago and this island forest ended up being saved by the local protesters so some of the trees were over 1200 years old! It was such a beautiful thing to experience this kind of forest and history - absolutely loved it!

    Wish I could post more photos because I took about 500!    Read more

  • Ashleigh SpannerCanada & Vegas & Mexico 2017
    Day 18

    Whistler

    July 25, 2017 in Canada ⋅ ☀️ 24 °C

    After adventuring around Banff and Jasper we drove back to our base home in Vancouver. Time to spend some more time with the Canadian family. Jays Aunty has a good friend how owns a holiday apartment in Whistler so we packed our bags again and headed off with all of the family. We squeezed 11 people into this apartment so it was bound to be a big sleepover party. We stayed two nights here and had an absolute blast, it was great getting to know the family in a relaxed atmosphere and enjoying the sun while having many drinks. We walked around whistler town, enjoyed a beautiful refreshing swim in the lake, and also did the amazing 'peak to peak' gondola ride up the whistler mountain and across to another mountain. This was amazing! It still blows me away how it can be so sunny and warm and then once you go up the mountain its cold and snow everywhere! Of course us Aussies had a snow ball fight! ❄️ We also experienced some traditional Canadian drinking games that the cousins encouraged. First of all shot gunning a beer is huge in Canada, after 3 weeks Jay has finally been able to successfully do this. The cousin also brought out a snow ski which has been turned into a shot glass ski, the ski has 4 shot glasses glued to it. We then introduced the family to some Australian drinking games and all had a ball!Read more

  • Ashleigh SpannerCanada & Vegas & Mexico 2017
    Day 16

    Jasper

    July 23, 2017 in Canada ⋅ ☀️ 19 °C

    From Banff we drove 3.5hrs to Jasper for 2 nights. Jasper is a much smaller town then Banff but beautiful for wildlife and scenery. We stayed right in town and loved just driving around and exploring the town! On the trip in we saw some elk on the side of the road and also a massive glacier which we walked up to, it was so cold! We then took a gondola up to the summit in jasper which was 2400m high, very cold for us! While hiking up the summit we noticed how thin the air got. Up the top we saw a marmot, a very cute animal that wasn't afraid to hang around us. After 2 nights we then took a very long drive home back to Vancouver.Read more

  • Ashleigh SpannerCanada & Vegas & Mexico 2017
    Day 13

    Johnston Canyon Falls

    July 20, 2017 in Canada ⋅ ☀️ 19 °C

    After our first very busy day in Banff our second day was much more relaxed having breakfast and coffee in town and strolling along the markets. We then ventured out to see the Johnston Canyon Falls! This was a 2 hour trail along the Bow Valley river and was much easier then the hike the day before. The trail went along rock walls above beautiful blue water! If it wasn't so cold we would have loved to go for a swim. At the top of the trail was the Falls and we were close enough to feel the cold mist coming from the Falls. After a quick outfit change we headed into the town of Banff to have a few beers at the local distillery, best beers we have found in Canada so far! We then changed again and went to the hot springs to warm up before heading back to Canmore to make a home made dinner in our beautiful air BnB apartment.Read more

  • Ashleigh SpannerCanada & Vegas & Mexico 2017
    Day 12

    Lake Louise

    July 19, 2017 in Canada ⋅ ☀️ 7 °C

    One thing on my bucket list was to visit Lake Louise and it did not disappoint. A beautiful bright blue lake surrounded by mountains. The lake itself was freezing cold and very busy with tourists everywhere so we decided to do a 4 hour hike the 'Plain of 6 Glaciers' up behind the lake passing glaciers and arriving at a Tea House on the top of the mountain. Wow this was amazing and I would highly recommend it to everyone! It was the most amazing hike with absolutely amazing views! We walked over a glacier, played in some snow and then had tea and snacks in the cute tea house on the top. The tea house is so remote that they don't have a fridge so there is no dairy or cold food. The shelf food and tea is dropped off by a helicopter and the staff hike up on Monday and stay in the little huts built around the tea house for the week. We saw some beautiful wildlife and also witnessed 2 little avalanches of snow falling from the mountains above.Read more

  • Ashleigh SpannerCanada & Vegas & Mexico 2017
    Day 11

    Kelowna

    July 18, 2017 in Canada ⋅ ☀️ 22 °C

    A short drive from Penticton we stopped in the small town of Kelowna for a night before our big drive to the Rocky Mountains. Kelowna is the main town in the Okanagan Valley known for its wineries and fruit orchards and is on the shore of Okanagan Lake. We visited 4 different wineries tasting all the local wines and after having some cheese and wine for lunch we brought a few bottles to take with us on our journey up the mountain.Read more

  • Ashleigh SpannerCanada & Vegas & Mexico 2017
    Day 11

    Banff

    July 18, 2017 in Canada ⋅ ☀️ 14 °C

    After about a 5 hour drive we arrived in Banff. The drive is normally very scenic however there were some very bad forest fires in the area so the sky was filled with smoke however luckily it cleared up for the next 2 days so we got to see the amazing rocky mountains. We stayed in Canmore which is short drive from the town of Banff. We visited the birth place of Banff National Parks, a cave that had been discovered many many years ago with hot sulphur water flowing from the ground and rocks. We then did some exploring through the forests and bright blue lakes in the area trying to see some of the wildlife.Read more

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