Goodbye Idaho, hello Canada. Welcome to Misadventure.

My next phase of my adventure holiday is cycling a walking.Today I head back to Canada to ride some of the Kettle Valley Rail Trail.
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The drive out was in a direction due north.  The scenery was superb, passing by rivers and over rolling countryside.  The traffic volume was low making for a stress free drive. I stop occasionally at for example this town McCall and enjoy a massive ice cream (2 scoops and you have a pint !) - it was  a hot day.

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 The river country and its beauty carving through the hilly terrain,

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is polluted by our need to hold on to remnants of our infrastructure of days gone by.

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At Lewiston Hill, there is a sign boasting of pioneering achievements with the introduction of cars and better roads. The view is fantastic, I am wondering if the grassy hills were once forests - not much different from home I  suppose - we chopped down all our trees too.

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I am going to digress here a bit. This map shows a journey to the USA / Canada border. Little did I know that it closes at midnight and re-opens at 8am. I thought I had plenty of time and decided to tidy up the car, get a bit of a wash before leaving the campgrounds. Silly me I left my wetsuit booties on top of the car waiting for them to dry. Anyway I left at around 11:00am. With all the stops I got tired and had a bit of a snooze and didn't arrive until 3:00am.


I was non-too-happy but took it in my stride. There was another border patrol and a bit more scenic driving.

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I was having difficulties knowing all this because the phone company I was using in their wisdom closed off my account ( thank you Freedom Mobile). I paid for two months prepaid and only got one. I was also having issues with my credit card (thank you HSBC) because they thought someone was it was fraud: despite my repeated assertions it was OK. This time the stop credit occurred where I had no phone and the phone was connected to the credit card - AHHHHg !!


Now there was another issue: my car.  When I arrived at Osoyoos, with a lot of cajoling I managed to sort my phone out - fat lot of good anyway given that I only have a week left of my trip and I lost a week. After that, the messages came in.

Breather:- how's this lake I stopped by for a cuppa on the way to Osoyoos ?

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Apparently my car is overdue and needs to be returned immediately, otherwise it will be reported stolen. I tried ringing Budget and I got diverted to Avis. Avis gave me another number and that number got me to Budget customer support in Mexico. Mexico could not support me so I had to ring the place I hired it from - Vancouver airport. Vancouver airport is busy so I was diverted back to Mexico. I wasted a couple of hours getting nowhere stuff this, I decided to go to a rental depot.  Great the next one is in Penticton which is an hour away.

So off I go and drove to Penticton. The guy at Budget there was really good. Old feller who thrived on customer service. He said that the company he was working for was actually a franchise and it was out of his jurisdiction. He did not let go though and after a few phone calls he managed to sort the issue out. It boils down to Avis taking over Budget, corporate confusion along with my blocked HSBC credit card - which was fixed by me using my spare back up CBA mastercard.  I was so tired I nearly wept with the stress relief, thanked him profusely and set off to get some accommodation.

YH - youth hostel in Penticton had a vacancy so that front was sorted out. A walk and a cooling beer put in the frame of working out the next adventure and there in front of me at the craft brewery was a cycle hire place.

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Location: Penticton, BC, Canada

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