Kelowna II

None of my pictures come close to doing justice to the beauty of this place. When Anne mentioned the lakes in the comments, I just had no idea how spectacular they were.

I reached the point today when I had to say 'yep, this is no longer like Germany.' I also now understand the desert thing. It is a definition based on precipitation. Although there are trees around and plenty of greenery, there is also evidence of dryness and not just in the soil, the air is dry. Kevin had told me, as had other people, that when you go to the desert, in spite of the intensity of the heat, it is not oppressive as it can be in Britain and Vancouver. The temperature today was set to reach 40 here and it certainly does hit you like a wall when you go outside, but I don't feel sweaty and sticky all the time as I am used to in the summer. Well, apart from my habit of constantly slathering myself in suncreme.

We are here to celebrate the 90th birthday of Kevin's great uncle, Des. Astonishing, and his 89 year old sister has travelled with us from Surrey. As well as awe at the landscape I am awed by meeting Des who was present at the D-Day invasion on Juneau beach.

The First Nations band local to here have apparently made a good job of managing their lands on the west bank of the Okanagan and they also preserve their traditions. It is my understanding from speaking to a variety of people, that this is not true of all bands. If we were going to be here longer, I would have liked to go and see the museum which they have set up and maintain themselves.

For my British friends, the Okanagan valley is also an important wine-growing region for BC, giving us a range of good table wines plus the famous ice-wine, which I tried ironically for the first time the last time we went back to England - although we had taken it with us.