Thursday 31 May 2007
Calgary, Canada
Oil-town!
This morning we took a quick detour out from the Rockies and headed off to check out Alberta's capital: Calgary.
It immediately reminds one of Sydney, and in particular the pristine yuppy centre of town resembles the Rocks area of Sydney (a very affluent part of the town indeed).
The state of Alberta is the most wealthy in Canada on account of it's vast oil reserves, and nowhere is this more apparent than in Calgary. Everywhere you go, people in expensive Armani suits jump out of chauffeured Mercs to meet up with associates for a "power lunch".
It's all very "new" and even the "old style" buildings were only built in the last few years. The oil was only discovered in the 80s apparently.
It's not so posh that it's stand-offish though: we encountered a very cool open area centred around a large 200m sq shallow pool with water-fountains spraying out of it at various points. Random people were wandering through the water with their rolled-up trousers (it was exceedingly hot - as it has been all week!). We thought this was pretty funny so we decided to jump in too.
Not only is the city full of yuppies, it's also cowboy central, with lots of peeps walking around wearing the large Stetsons. Of course, this meant we HAD to have some local steak. It was delicious!
Lunch done, we decided we had enough of the city-life already and were homesick for the Rockies, so we headed back west and then drove back up north to Lake Louise again to camp.