Monday July 5th - Monday July 12th 1999

One of Vancouver's leading tourist attractions is the Capilano Suspension Bridge. Over 110 years ago, a Scotsman, George Grant Mackay, discovered the location to the north of Vancouver. He liked what he saw, and built a cabin for himself and his wife. Then, with the help of local natives and a team of horses, he constructed the first bridge of cedar planks and hemp. The bridge towers over the Capilano River valley at a height of 230 feet (70 metres) and spans 450 feet. The bridge has been rebuilt several times since, most recently in 1956.

Veronika on the Capilano Suspension Bridge

The bridge is somewhat unsettling, especially for someone as nervous of heights as myself, since although the 13 tons of concrete supporting the structure provide a high degree of safety, it sways quite vigorously as people walk across it. This has the dual effect of disturbing some people crossing it (we saw a number of people who crossed it as quickly as possible, including one kid who continuously repeated to himself the mantra "this is not cool, this is not cool" all the way across) and of making photography extremely difficult, since even if you have the steadiest of hands (which I don't), the bridge is swaying underneath your feet, making it treacherous to let go of the cable long enough to take a picture. Nevertheless, after a bit of adjustment, we managed to take some pictures.

The view from the Capilano suspension bridge

The bridge itself is complemented by a "Living Forest" attraction, which consists of a walk through a series of forest trails, with a number of information panels providing some background on the various species of tree and plant growing in the area. I was however slightly disappointed by the misleading promotional leaflet, which advised visitors to come fact-to-face with a giant slug. Instead of some freak species of slug as I was anticipating, I was annoyed to discover that in fact the giant slug was merely a cheap plastic outsized model of a normal sized slug. Not that I'm a hige fan of slugs, mind you, it was more that I was expecting some outlandish example of Canadian gigantism. After all, some of the trees around the park were extremely tall, with some reaching nearly 300 feet.

Tourists holding on carefully to the bridge's cables

This shot gives an idea of the scale of the bridge - yes, those are people walking across

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