Today we woke up in Kelowna. The hostel, which is much more friendly and informal than the others we’ve stayed at, had a keg party last night (think of the old Party 7 cans and make it bigger). Anyway, although it was on the deck outside our bedroom window, everybody had kept really quiet because of the two small children (seemingly an unusual occurrence hereabouts!). So we weren’t disturbed, and this morning we were up with the larks. Unlike everybody who’d been at the keg party. (I’ll share the secret we found out later in the day – to make sure that they didn’t wake the girls, they all went to the beach and played in the park, until they were chased out by the police at midnight (the park closes at 11pm. Then they found a hot tub in the back garden of a retirement home, and bubbled away in that until 4am.)

Mat, Steve and Patsy turned up at 10.00, intending to go straight off with us for some filming, but they thought the hostel was too good to believe. So out came the camera and sound boom, and they filmed us cooking pancakes for breakfast, and then us buttering sandwiches for lunch, all the time asking questions about different hostel experiences etc. And then they got some footage of the other hostel guests in their various states of composure.

One of the staff members, Rodney from Bath, woke up pretty late, and walked into it unawares – but played the role of a hungover backpacker brilliantly for us (imagine the conversation “Mum, I’m going to be on TV” ; “Wow” ; “Yes, on BBC Holiday” ; “Wow – what are you doing, running the hostel? Tour guiding?” ; “Aah, well actually Mum, they kind of caught me on a bad morning” etc)

Then after an hour of chaos in the hostel (it’s pretty small and compact inside), we went down to the city park, which had a fantastic water park, with pipes spraying water all over the place. The girls loved it (Mat didn’t like it quite so much, because of the limits on filming he can do around children and swimming pools). Then we hit the beach for a picnic, but not just any beach. Patsy ‘the fixer’ had friends at a resort beach in town, so we gate crashed that beach, had a paddle in their kayaks and generally relaxed. Unfortunately Charlotte got some sand in her eye, and it put her on a downer for a while.

Then it was off to the winery, to film a tour. It’s not really a typical backpacker thing, until you remember that a winery tour ends in a free tasting, so maybe it is! (The hostel runs a 5-winery minibus tour, which is pretty popular!). By sadly, it was too dark in the winery to film (because this is supposed to be ‘reality TV’ it’s just a camera and sound, no lighting), so we ended up just having a glass of wine and admiring the view from the deck (although it started to rain, so we had to move indoors). Anyway, from the picture on the left you can admire the view too – it’s kind of mid-west America meets France!

Then it was back to the hostel for a quiet night – Charlotte went to sleep at 7, although Emily managed to hold out until 9. The girls are really whacked after 7 days hard work with the crew, and we’re amazed they are holding out so well. Tomorrow is a quiet day too, just driving 5 hours, which is good as it encourages them to sleep. Then we’ve got a jam-packed full day in Vancouver as our last Canada day!