Hiking with Liv and Klara

Ridiculously beautiful. Garibaldi National Park - just 1,5 hour drive from down-town Vancouver.

Mango and Chris and the mountains. Mango seems to like trees, maybe it's the light making pattern through the leaves?

What you can't see on the photos are the flies... Zillions of evil flies, maybe even horse flies. Here are Klara and Mango at a life-saving stop in a cabin on the way up the mountain.

Three tired hikers nearly at the top.

This cabin, a self maintained cottage that can house about 25 people, is surrounded by mountain peaks. We stayed one night, played cards, cooked noodles, slept on hard beds and ate oats as breakfast. The best feeling was possible that first swim after having climbed the mountain during the hottest day of the year...

Klara and Liv visit Vancouver

Klara and Liv visited us for a week. It was great to have them here and to see them with Mango.

It was the hottest week of the year. All kind of weather records for the warmest, driest etc. Mango held out but enjoyed wet towels and baths.

Mango, Malin & Klara on our balcony (note the herbs in the background!).

The earth on its way to the water with Klara...

Ben Harper!

Ben Harper is one of our favourite artists so when we saw he was going to play at a festival in Burnaby we decided to go for his show but stay outside the fence not to have to pay the 250 dollars entrance fee. When we get there the guard asks if we want to come in... If we want to?! In order to make the sponsors look good they wanted more people and gave away thousands of tickets. So we enjoyed a Sunday night on the grass listening to Ben Harper and his new band (though we were kind of glad not having to pay since it wasn't as good as his older stuff unfortunately).

Vancouver Island - Victoria

We spent Friday night at Chris and Areli's place in Victoria (capital of British Colombia). Amanda and Eric joined from Vancouver for a weekend on the island. Here are Areli, Malin and Amanda with proper wine jugs from Peru.

Areli and Mango playing the "tongue game" with Amanda cheering.

We spent Saturday touring Victoria city - very cute. Chris Yeomans, Amanda, Eric, Mango, Chris, Malin and Areli at this great cafe where they make mean pies (oh yeah! we had blueberry, raspberry, coconut...).

Vancouver Island - Lake Cowichan

Then we met up with Areli and Chris Yeomans for camping at Lake Cowichan (still Vancouver Island). We camped at a beach spot and here the water was a lot warmer = many swims.

Chris Yeomans, the master chef, prepared a great barbecue

Areli and Mango on the beach

Vancouver Island

We spent five days on Vancouver Island, starting with 2 days at Long Beach. We camped between Ucluelet and Tofino and made hikes to the amazing beaches (cold water!) and forests (big trees!).

We enjoyed a romantic dinner at a restaurant by the beach in a national park.

But Mango was clearly not so impressed...

The restaurant

A really nice "vacation from the vacation" for the three of us.

Portraits after 2 months

Oh yeah!

Hike around the lake

Mango with his friend Nathan going on a roadtrip


Chris, Mango, Adam and Nathan at Sasmat Lake.

Saturday night

Malin's family from Sweden at the restaurant Bridges on Granville island, close to where we live. Sunset over the city, great seafood and amazing flarn dessert (we had to order more...).

Malin's sister Maria wishing she could liven up Mango's dull menu with shrimps and white wine...

Garibaldi Lake

Pretty proud after his first hike - 9 km up hill in a baby bjorn carrier.

Garibaldi Lake in front of snowcapped mountains and glacier. The stunning view was worth the sore legs, blisters and mosquito bites.

Did we mention sore legs...?

Some brave swimmers

Gittan (Malin's mum) and her husband Sandy

Camping

Just to set the stage for our camping...

Sandy, Maria & Gustav in a teambuilding exercise

Father and son sharing stories around the camp fire

Mango's first night in a tent

Whistler - Olympic Games 2010

The new "Peak-to-Peak" Gondola that takes you between Whistler and Blackcomb mountains. It holds like 4 different world records that we can't remember but are all about being high and big and long.... We had a great afternoon taking 2 lifts up, this one over and another one down while enjoying amazing views.

Whistler is gearing up to be the main venue when Vancouver is hosting the Olympic and Paraolympic Games in 2010. Here are the olympic medalists in family fun - gold to Anna, silver to Gittan and bronze to Maria.

Brandywine Waterfalls, 70 meters

Grannies

Chris childhood home / parents' house in Surrey

Two proud grannies... or as they call themselves: "oma" (german) and "mormor" (swedish)

Sleeping beauty