View from Banff Bridge
An enforced day off, woo hoo I hear you say but I am gagging to get my skates on and get stuck into some playing! We unfortunately don’t get the key to our hut until tomorrow and so I take my jet-lagged body back to bed in the morning as I try desperately to adjust to the 7 hours I have gained. Feeling very odd, perhaps it’s the altitude and the thin air but I am exhausted and am even nursing what feels like a bad hang over!
Temperatures are dropping this week to -32 which oddly I’m quite intrigued about, so far it’s reached -17 and we have only managed to stay outside for a maximum of about 15 minutes! We took the short 10 minute walk from The Banff Centre through the woods to Downtown Banff. Every single street name is an animal, Caribou, Elk, Moose, Grizzly, Wolverine, they have them all, Squirrel, Beaver!
As we wondered along the main high street, Banff Avenue we stumbled across a lovely family who invited us to join them by the fire, drink some hot tea and try traditional Canadian Bannock, a bread dough cooked like marshmallows on the fire. They told us stories of their ancestors and explained about the traditional clothing and how best to stay warm. These people were obviously true pros at being outside for so long and although the fire was lovely and warm, we bid our farewells and headed for home.
Tomorrow we begin the immersion into our music making journey here and I am so excited! We have a busy schedule mapped out for the next 3 weeks with concerts to perform, concerts to go and listen to, (including African Drumming and a Puppet Show tonight!) notes to learn and we are recording in our final week. We plan to do some exercise every day (we kick started today with a swim, although it nearly killed me!) and we also plan to stay alive, not freeze to death and not get in the way of any crazy Elk who are huge, have big antlers and apparently can be quite unpredictable, eek!