We got up early this morning to pack as we were checking out at 11am but we wanted to make the most of our day as we weren't catching the bus until 9pm.

Again we had a lovely sunny day. We headed over to the place where we had to pay for the trip we'd booked up and asked to get an earlier shuttle bus so we could do the cedar trail first. We were then informed that it was a 7km walk just to the base of the trail and then about 4 hours to walk after that!! Not only did we not have time for this quite frankly I don't think we could have been arsed even if we did! The guy told us we'd need to put aside at least 8 hours to do it! The woman at the activities centre who we booked with was obviously trying to push for a sale by leaving this vital piece of information out, but we'd have booked the Monkido anyway. We asked if there were any shorter trails around the Monkido site but they were all roughly 5 miles to get to the actual start point and a bear had been spotted on one of the main trails so we probably wouldn't have been allowed up there anyway. We had a few hours to spare so decided to do another walk by Whistler Village but on a different route to yesterday, so we followed the signs for Lost Lake. It was so beautiful and completely calm and peaceful. The water was such a lovely shade of blue and it was surrounded by woodland and tree covered mountains. We picked a spot by the lake to sit and have our lunch and were joined by a beautiful Blue-Jay. Apparently a British Columbia bird, it is to BC what the eagle is to the USA. It's blue feathers were so vivid and he came so close to us (hunting for scraps). We were also joined by butterflies and dragon-flies and the odd pesky wasp!

After our lunch we were ready to head to the base of Cougar Mountain to start our Monkido adventure. We were strapped into a harness and shown how to use our equipment. We then had to pass a demo course before we were allowed to continue. The course was split into 4 sections- each one getting higher up and more difficult. There was a choice before the final stage to either stop and come down, carry on to the end or miss out the most difficult section and pick up at the end stage. I couldn't give up even though at this stage I was so knackered. It was so challenging- both on the body and on the mind and I am so proud of myself for completing the whole course- both physically beacuse it is so draining, and also emotionally because I don't particularly like heights or the thought that I could fall. To be honest though you don't really have time to think about that. I really loved the ziplines :)

Another reason we booked the trip/adventure was to tire us out so that hopefully we would fall straight asleep on the bus as we had almost a day's travelling ahead.

We headed back to the village to buy something for dinner and although we had checked out of our rooms before 11am they kindly stored our bags and we were able to head upstairs to the kitchen to make ourselves dinner.

We caught the 9pm bus from Whistler Village and after about 10 minutes I already felt sick. I tried to go to sleep to keep myself from throwing up. I fell asleep and after a couple of hours we were back in Vancouver where we had to get off and wait an hour and a half for our bus to Banff (it was leaving at 12.30am). Not only did we not know we were coming back to Vancouver, we didn't know we had to change buses! Whilst queing for our second bus a big part of both of us did not want to get on it and we almost considered trying to head back to out first hostel. We'd heard some stories, it was late at night and I think we were just feeling a bit anxious. We got on anyway and began our very long journey to Banff.