Writings from Canada (June 6th-14th)

June 6^th

We went to Montreal for 2 days after Pete’s birthday. Most of the first day was spent traveling, but we did go to the city and it was quite a generic city with lots of nice people in it. Everyone seems to be lovely in Canada! The second day was a free day, so me, Elle, Fiona and Kristen went to the theme park. We thought, as it was a school day, there wouldn’t be many people but we were wrong. It was infested with school children so we only managed to go on 3 rides, but they were amazing! We went on one which was the longest roller coaster in Canada (or maybe the world or something) and that was awesome. That night, we went out in Montreal. The night involved lots of walking and lots of sweets and ice cubes being thrown at each other in some kind of strange, cold, sugary battle. We went to a cool bar where there were sweet dispensers on the table and the bar was made out of Lego. They did cocktails which all came with some kind of sweet. It was great. At one point during the night we thought we had lost the Bulgarian bloke that was on our tour because he said “I’ll be back in a minute” and walked out of the pub. Half an hour later, we were all quite worried and went out to look for him. He turned up a few minutes later, and when we asked where he'd been, he told us that he had gone to get some food. When pressed, he told us that he’d been for a sit-down meal at a Thai restaurant.

We went to Ottawa the next day, which is the capital of Canada. It didn’t really feel like a capital city though; it was quite small. I spent the day drinking coffee and going to an Internet cafe. Very cultural.

June 7^th

We’re on our way to Niagara Fall – very excited!

Yesterday we arrived in Toronto. It feels a lot more like a city to any we’ve been to so far. I haven't seen much of it yet, but the parts I've seen are a bit like London. I think it should be the capital of Canada. Maybe I’ll tell them.

We went to the CN tower yesterday, which is the tallest free standing tower in the world. It cost $30 to go to the top, which I thought was a little expensive, but Pete persuaded me and I’m really glad we did. The elevator (lift to us proper English people) took just 40 seconds to go to the top, which resulted in lots of popping ears. When you got to the top you could walk all the way round the observation deck and see for miles. On the floor down there was a glass floor. It was quite scary and a few people couldn’t stand on it. Your body is shouting “THIS IS NOT POSSIBLE”, but I kept telling it “it’s probably fine”. Everyone walks across it very slowly and carefully as if they could fall off somehow. It was really cool.

We had a BBQ with the group at camp last night. They are all so lovely. We were sitting around the camp fire with Josh, our tour leader, last night and a raccoon came really close to us. All of us were saying “awww, how sweet – a little raccoon!!” and taking pictures of it and Josh just sat there and said “what a bastard” in his American accent. Poor raccoon! Apparently they are annoying things that get into your bins and food here. I still think they're cute. The most spy-looking animal there is.

June 8^th

Niagara Falls was awesome (I say this using the original definition of the word ‘awesome’.) I’d seen it on TV before, but it was just so much better in reality. Massive amounts of water gushing down creating a thick cloud of mist. It makes you feel so small because you can see all these tiny people with ponchos on and they look like ants. It’s the first natural thing we’ve seen in Canada and it was so beautiful. We went on the maid of the mist, which is a boat that goes right into the falls and into the cloud of mist. Very wet and very windy, as you could imagine. I wonder who first thought of doing that? They must have been brave (stupid). When you get to the falls, you go right in the middle, so the falls are surrounding you. Its fun but quite rough and a bit scary!

Me and Elle had frozen yogurt afterwards which was amazing (and OK because it’s healthy!) Pete played football and fell over a lot and it was lovely and sunny.

We are now on our way to Happy Hearts campground. Worryingly it is described as the wilderness. I hope it has showers and, more importantly, no bears.

June 11^th

We've mostly been driving these past few days. It’s been bearable though because the group is so good. We all get on so well and everyone is just lovely. Elle told us about a town she’d spotted on the first day called ‘Mianus’, which produced endless jokes. For example “there’s a big party in mianus” and “theres a congestion charge to mianus”. Very mature.

Between the driving, we went to a lovely lake and took lots of group pictures and we went on a ferry (or fairy as I keep thinking Josh says)

We stayed in a log cabin for a night. That night we had a bit of a party, with music and drink, accompanied by a few arguments and lots of tension with one particular person. Pete had his nails painted, which was a decision he regretted in the morning as he had no nail varnish remover and I wasn't going to give him any. We went canooing on Lake (the largest fresh water lake in the world) but it was a bit rough so we got pretty moist.

We then saw a giant goose. Not a real one, a very pointless and completely unnecessary metal monstrosity. It was in the town of Wawa (which is, clearly, as odd as it sounds) and it was advertised as the largest monument of its kind. Now I've never seen another large metal goose monument before, but I'm sure that that is quite an achievement. It is also the most photographed monument in Canada. I'm not too sure what is classed as a monument in Canada, but I'm pretty sure that this is the only one I have seen so far. But still, quite an achievement I'm sure.

Today, we went hiking. Me and Kristen decided to take the route labelled as the easiest, as we didn’t have the appropriate footwear. It was meant to have a wooden path, and there was one for about 20 meters and after that it turned into a path consisting of puddles, mud and slippery rocks, resulting in us getting lost, very wet and bitten to pieces by all the giant mosquitoes. It would have been bearable if it wasn’t raining or had nice views, but it lacked both of these things. The salt in the wound was when we discovered that the other apparently more difficult route which the others took was a lot easier and a lot less wet and muddy.

I’m enjoying camping – it’s fun! We are staying 1-2 nights at each place, so we have to set up the tents and cooking equipment when we get there and take them down in the morning. I am not very good at mornings (I do have an excuse; my medication completely knocks me out, so I’m like a zombie in the morning) so we’re always the last ones to put our tent away and get in the van. Hopefully the group wont get too annoyed with us!

June 14^th

We went to Winnipeg and I didn’t like it because there were no shops that sold backpacks. I probably shouldn’t judge it on its ability to provide a backpack, but I did. It did have a ‘Second Cup’ – a coffee shop which we have all become addicted to. It does amazing frappaccinos and these ice-blended strawberry lemonade drinks, which is the best thing ever to be put into a plastic cup. We went to a town called Moose Jaw yesterday, where there was another large animal-shaped monstrosity, only this time it was a moose made out of what looked like paper mache. Weird.

Moose Jaw was nick named ‘the little Chicago’ because in the 1920’s and 30’s, the underground tunnels were used to sneak moonshine into Chicago on trains. We went on a tour of the tunnels, which turned out to be more of a show with the tour leader being an actress called Fanny. We had to pretend to be Moonshine smugglers and I was re-named ‘Miss Touchy’ because I apparently touched something which made a secret panel open in the fireplace. She told me to look inside the fireplace and there was a passage. I think there was meant to be something inside the passage that was meant to make me jump because she asked me to look again, but there was nothing there. It was a fun tour!

The wonderful trek family

We stayed in a trailer park that night, which was so much better than it sounds. It had a swimming pool with a couple of flumes. It was so much fun (apart from when Pete came down the flume soon after me and we banged heads. Ouch for him – I have a skull like a rock apparently! The two Korean girls told us our names in Koren, which I have now forgotten and Fred, the crazy Frenchmen kept playing a game of knock and run on every ones doors and insisting it was me and Pete. We got him back though! (I will leave how we did it a mystery.)

We’re in Calgary now and we saw ‘the worlds largest tepee’ today (it wasn’t really a tepee though, just a few metal poles). The long car journey today was improved by the purchase of 20Q and the mystery of how it works and the wonderful sounds of The Beatles. Things are generally awesome.