Manning Park (Dec 2011 - Mar 2012)

Manning Park is a small Ski resort a couple of hours west of Vancouver.  This is where we spent our first Canadian winter and basically it was a party with some work involved.

Our household at the Bears Den, left to right: 'Papa' Louis (French Canadian), Me, Luc (Frenchman), G, Will (Kiwi), Marissa (Canadian), Dev (Canadian Hippy), Paul (Kiwi)

Great people all, have kept in touch with most of them.  Our house held the best parties of the season and was the most functional of all the houses. 

Ricky (Canadian), Georgie and Jens (German)

G and I started off in housekeeping I ended up splitting my time between housekeeping and working the breakfast shift in the restaurant, G spent most of her time in housekeeping but ended up doing some maintenance type things too. 

A view from the Manning Ski Mountain

I discovered I was not a huge fan of snowboarding or skiing I felt there were better things to be doing when it was that cold out, most of them inside.  I managed to squeeze in a few fighter trainings, heading down to Lions Gate (about 2hr drive from where I was) and bashing the guys there, I also fought in a tourney. 

During our stay at Manning we took a 3 day sojourn to Seattle, it was the weekend and they saw the first snow of the season.  We stayed at The Green Tortoise backpackers in town, a good place that I would recommend.   The drivers were all panicky on the road and no one was out and about in town that wasn’t crazy or a junky.  We spent our time wandering the streets and laughing at the crackheads screaming at each other, they sounded just like cartoon characters.  At the zoo we saw a wallaby in the snow looking rather put out. 

We left Manning on good terms with the old ‘if you want to come back next season you would be welcome’ but my eyes were blazing and my heart a fire, Estrella War was calling.