This Canadian region is home to vineyards, a desert and prettier lakes than Italy

With its blend of desert landscapes and lush hills, plus a burgeoning dining scene, the Okanagan valley is unlike anywhere else in Canada

I am somewhere around Barnston, on the edge of the deserted car lot, when the doubts begin to take hold. I’ve been driving from my luxe and excellent Vancouver hotel – L’Hermitage, in downtown (I strongly recommend the dirty martinis on the secretive fifth-floor bar) – but I’ve been motoring for over an hour, and I still seem to be in Vancouver.
And not good Vancouver, either. This endless, outer eastern Vancouver seems to consist entirely of car parks, dreary malls, vast warehousing, humdrum office developments, and snakes of freeways that coil and lurch towards lofty green mountains that tantalise… but keep receding. This is not the amazing and surprising Canada that I was promised: the British Columbia of astonishing landscapes. I’m beginning to wonder if they exist.
And it all began so well. For the last few days I’ve been tootling around the brilliant city of Vancouver. I went to the market in Granville, built on a reclaimed industrial island in the harbour. I did a fabulous food tour, where we tried cinnamon chai from the “Hogwarts of tea” (the GI Tea Company), charcuterie from “the most diversely talented meat man in north America” (according to the New York Times) and the lightest doughnuts on the Pacific coast (Lee’s Donuts), which were snaffled in the blustery sunshine on the waterfront gazing up at the glittering skyscrapers and the snow-sintered Cascade mountains looming blue and silver beyond.
I also spent happy hours strolling the seafront on all sides. I sank Oregon-style fruit beers as I watched yachts race under the Victorian bridges. I ate dainty, dollar-a-pop Malaspina, Nootka and Royal Miyagi oysters from the pure waters of the Canadian Pacific fjords. I took a trip to maybe the world’s most beautiful university campus: UBC, which sits on a magnificent green promontory in affluent western Vancouver, and gazes over the serenity of Burrard Inlet to Bowen and Vancouver Islands. 
From there, I toured their world-famous Museum of Anthropology, with its astonishing collection of First Nation totem poles, feasting canoes and sacred raven masks, gathered from across western Canada. And now properly and worshipfully curated.
In other words, the city of Vancouver – a city I have never seen before – was as I expected: supremely liveable. Walkable in a way many North American cities are not; safe, prosperous and perfectly located between mountains and ocean. It was like going to Paris and finding everyone wearing berets, shrugging, being slightly rude, then feeding you fantastic onion soup as you fall in love with the wrong person to the sound of an accordion. There should be a German compound noun for a place that fulfils all your most cliched travel expectations. 
What Vancouver was not, however, was surprising. I am here for those promised surprises, and as I gaze along the freeway my mood begins to lift. The groaning traffic belatedly thins, the freeway divides, the last car park dwindles away and I am ascending into richly thick, deeply green pine forests where signs warn me of elk. 
My first overnight stop is a tract of wildness called Manning Park. I’ve never heard of it and I’m not expecting much. I buy a chunky smoked cheese sandwich in the park’s Visitor Centre and then heft my luggage to the quasi-Swiss hotel, which feels a bit rundown. I don’t think many people stop here. However, the late summer sun is out – the sky is that pure, hard, mineral blue you only get in North America – and I feel like I should do something.
I ask the bored receptionist for suggestions. He shrugs and says: “Well, we have some lakes just up the road.” I nod. “Are they nice?” Another shrug. “Yeah, if you like lakes?”
Hopping in my car I drive five minutes uphill, to quite possibly the most beautiful lakes I have seen in my life. I stride the lake shore alone for three perfect hours, uplifted by the heady perfume of sun-warmed pine, and just-sawn larch. The September sun catches the yellowing coronets of the swaying spruce trees, which bend in chorus, like they are slowly dancing to unheard music. They are reflected with perfect clarity in the turquoise waters. Magical.
OK, it’s not a shock that British Columbia has beautiful lakes and forests, but it is news to me that they have so many and that you can visit them alone in perfect weather. Next morning, rejuvenated, I continue east and, after two hours of winding and descending roads, I reach the real and genuinely gob-smacking surprise.
A desert.
I’m not joking. Canada has its own little desert: it is ecologically part of the Sonoran Desert which starts down in New Mexico and then – incredibly – stretches all the way up the western Rockies, and bellyflops over the border into Canada, with a series of sunny lakes, and hillsides brimming with groves, vines and orchards (the mix of lake mud and volcanic soil makes for super fertile land). 
I am in the Okanagan valley, which boasts Canada’s “best” climate (proper hot long summers, mild winters). This fact might be unknown to most of the world, but Canadians are very aware. That is to say, you will find a lot of development, especially at the southern, more desert-like end of the lake. Happily, however, much of the land still belongs to the Crown – which means plenty of lake-scape has been saved, in all its pristine beauty. At their very best, the Okanagan lakes can look like Lake Como or Lake Garda in Italy. But with better wine – and cacti.
A good place to get a sense of the Okanagan is the tremendous viewpoint of Anarchist Mountain, about 10 minutes’ drive up from the southerly town of Osoyoos. This gives you a sense of both the scale and strangeness of the place, the mix of real desert and lush greenery, like a Rhone valley on a verdant moon or a strangely wide Rhine winding through a fecund Namibia. This unique valley stretches for hundreds of miles, between soaring mountain ranges, all protecting that precious micro-climate. 
A great place to sample the wine which benefits from that climate is at Nk’Mip, one of the first winemakers owned and run by indigenous Americans, and conveniently at the foot of Anarchist Mountain. Try the merlot. Or the pinot. Or the blend. Or any of the prize-winning whites, frankly.
Such is the unique fertility of the Okanagan vine-scape, they can grow basically any grape they like. I learn this, in no uncertain terms, when I visit the upmarket Quails’ Gate winery with its modernist tasting lodge, gazing over the lakes and beaches. I ask Petra, the German-born sommelier, if climate change is responsible for the viticultural abundance. She scoffs.
“Nope, they’ve always been able to make great wine here. The first winemaker was a Catholic priest in 1850, who needed a bottle for communion. It was probably terrible. But in the 1980s they finally applied some science. Now, we can grow some of the finest wine in North America. Try the riesling.”
I try the riesling. It is brilliant. Likewise, the sparkling wine, the shiraz, the Okanagan river fish, the buttercorn, the “hot red fox” mustard, the ice wine, the blueberry juice, the artisan bourbon, the Russian garlic, the Roma tomatoes, the apricots, the elk steak… 
On every corner of every road in the Okanagan you will find stalls selling the munificent bounty of the region, and trendy (and expensive) restaurants further up the lakeside, dishing it out to discerning diners.
All these calories need to be shifted, and you could do it by swimming, sailing, kayaking or hiking. But, to my mind, the best way is by heading into the hills to the Kettle Valley Rail Trail. It might sound like an average walk near Swindon, but in reality it is the rescued bed of a mighty British imperial railway which, via stunning trestle bridges and echoing tunnels, smashed through the Monashee mountains in the early 20th century, linking east and west Canada. 
Now, it is an exhilarating bike ride, gratifyingly flat (it was a railway, after all) but also nicely bracing, if not terrifying – there are no fences, and those are 2,000-ft drops. Try not to skid on your hired bike (£25 for three hours).
My time in the Okanagan is done, but my itinerary promises one more major surprise. For six tranquil hours I arrow north and west, through endless majestic pine, peak and lakeside scenery, to Whistler. The surprise here is that Whistler was built, expressly, as a snowy sports resort (for the Winter Olympics of 2010). It was actually named for the “whistle pigs”, technically “hoary marmots” – small mammals that inhabit the grand and icy peaks that surround the town.
And yet, in recent years, Whistler has also become a summer resort, with fantastic cable cars that swing you through the dizzying summits, then deposit you right in the Disney-ish little downtown, where you can join more food and wine tours – caviar to chocolate apples, turbot to rye whisky tots – until your affable guide says: “Do you want to see something really surprising? Upstairs we have the coldest vodka tasting room in the world.”
Well, of course they do.
Discover the World (01737 428307) offers a nine-night tour of British Columbia, including stays in Vancouver, Kelowna and Whistler, food tours, wine tastings and fine dining. From £1,995 per person; flights extra. For more information and inspiration on exploring British Columbia, see www.hellobc.com. 

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