Today was a late start sleep in after a day of flying from Hawaii to LA and on to Vancouver. Caught up with blog, emails and paying bills. One thing you can't get away from.

Emailed Richard's cousin Terry who lives in Comox on Vancouver Island to let him know we arrived safety in Vancouver and check prices of cars being offered by Carter Motors where we will be going today and the prices are about right.

Leah Bolton from Carter GM Burnaby (been communicating with her on the Internet) rang to pick us up at 11am to view/test drive some cars. Richard also spoke to a chap advertising a car on Craigs.com sounded interest low kms Grandmas car HA! HA! The struts were replaced and the Pontiac has only done 74,000kms. Grandma must be a racing driver.

Apparently in Canada you have to declare work done and damage to cars when you sell. You cannot sell a disguised bomb.

Richard was upfront with Leah and she was also upfront with Richard seeing she deals with a lot of overseas buyers on the Internet.

Poor Richard had fun with driving a left hand car and driving on the right side of the road. Tried running down cyclists (thought of Glen at Bidvest) and turning right into traffic on the other side. Kept of telling Richard RIGHT, RIGHT and not that far right. Leah was very calm could have grabbed the wheel a couple of times and she parked the cars when we got back to the car yard.

Fab will love the RED 2004 Pontiac Grand AM we purchased. It was interesting watching Richard and Leah (two sales people) negotiating a price and extras. Richard won and we got a good price with four new all weather tyres for the East side of Canada. Will pick the Pontiac up on Saturday when we leave for Vancouver Island.



It was so easy for them to extract money for the car and insurance across the road. We even met the Manager and Owner of Carter GM Burnaby a family run business. We even had a homemade soup with turkey salad toasted sandwich (free lunch) with Leah. Apparently the company provides the food and a husband and wife team run the company Diner. A great setup for staff and customers are also entertained on site they even have a Child Care Centre.

I must say again the Canadians are very friendly and helpful. Leah (Russian, Canadian) also gave us some travel tips she even drove us to an ATM at the local Casino then onto CAA (Canadian Auto Assoc) to organise a Trip Tick (guided route map of our trip). Now I will need to email Bonnie and let her know only CAA members are entitled to these.

It is amazing how a Seniors Card and RAC Card with a smile can get you. One Trip Tick with a mountain of maps and brochures. We had them all in stitches with our sayings and slang. Even got change for bus/sky train back to Vancouver.

We had help everywhere we went (must be my Aussie charm) and it was a breeze getting back to downtown Vancouver to the continuing festival.

Another late entertaining night and you notice a lot of homeless people round the city centre. Richard has that look and they hone in on him for money we had this when we were in China.