Hey Vancouver

Marc

Try the guys on this web site http://www.roverlanders.bc.ca/ and I am sure someone will hook up with you guys!

Chris

if you go downtown avoid the granville/davies corridor. As you come north into the city, youll cross the bridge and they are basically the first couple streets as you cross into downtown vancouver. I rolled in on a friday night and the only room we could get was on the corner of granville and davies. Its a little rough during the day, but at night its like a meth addicts den. of course the disco was way to tall for parking garages so she had to sit in an alley off the corridor. i thought for sure there would be no disco left, but the only thing taken was a mini weber off the roof.

also.. head into north vancouver, thats cool. stanley park is cool to if your bringing bikes, theres some odd history in there. for a cool drive, take the 99 north out of vancouver, the scenery is intense. there is also a pretty cool "green zone" in the blocks around the corner of w. broadway and macdonald if your into that scene. also.. watch out in the old town/chinatown area at night, shit down there gets crazy.. the bad crazy. have fun man its a cool city.

I have never been to Vancouver but, if there is a French Canadian section like there is/was in Montreal I'd stay away from that also.. For some reason the French Canadians in Montreal are the biggest bunch of A-holes that I have ever met in any of the places that I have gone. Once they find out your an American they instantly hate you.

Marc,

I'm in Vancouver frequently and find that it has to be the most beautiful large city in North America.

Last month when I was there I rented a 04 Disco from Hertz (C$99/day), but my schedule didn't allow me to get away. In any case, one of the managers at the hotel I was staying at was an avid off-roader (Billie at the Fairmont, Vancouver Airport) and he lent me his copy of "The Backroads Mapbook" for BC (http://www.backroadmapbooks.com/index1.php?series=bm). I would suggest you pick-up a copy.

BTW, French is rarely spoken in Canada west of Manitoba, so no chance that that will be a factor in any of the hostility due to your nationality

Victor

Marc,

These guys:

http://www.offroadacademy.com/

are located in the West Vancouver area if you want to check them out for some wheeling stuff. They're LR guys there.

Stanley Park is a beautiful park and very large. The Vancouver Aquarium is there too. Downtown is full of stuff to do so just head there and I'm sure you'll find more than enough to keep you busy but I suggest staying away from W. Hastings at night. It's pretty rough. You'll see what I mean if you see it during the day. At night it's way worse. Other than that, you're ok. Granville Island is very cool, the Public Market there is fun to hangout in. The sea wall is nice too. If you want to do some skiing/snowboarding, you have Whistler Mountain and Grouse Moutain nearby. Whistler is by far the bigger of the two and a world class resort.

Make sure you bring some rain gear with you (light raincoat and a baseball hat or something like that) and sweaters. January/winter is typically rainy season there. They don't get much snow, a little, but mostly rain. It gets rather chilly during rainy season believe it or not. Vancouver is a beautiful city so no shortage of stuff to do. If you want to go whale watching, just head to the harbor and you'll come across something or just walk into any hotel and ask them about it. They'll point you in the right direction. There's also a lot of guiding companies if you want to do ocean kayaking (although it might be a bit cold).

If you rent a car there (I'm assuming you plan to), you can go with a big truck but my experience is a smaller vehicle gets you around better there. Especially downtown area. I rented a little Mitsubishi Outlander when I was there and it was perfect what I needed. Oh yea, it's definitely a LR city. You see lots of them there. Mostly Discos and RR but you do see D90's and D110's around every now and then.

Oh yea, almost forgot, go to Robson Street. There's lots of bars, pubs, shops, etc. there. Very cool place.

This is a cool link if you want more info:

http://www.discovervancouver.com/

Hope that helps. You'll have lots of fun there.