Salty Bear

All I did last week was hang around at the hostel, play some Ultimate Frisbee at the Halifax Commons, and went on an unsuccessful hunt for The Time Machine by H.G. Wells (the only place that had it was the library). On Friday, I set off on a 4-day tour with an adventure travel operator called Salty Bear.

(This is a long post, so you'd probably want to take some breaks and look at new photos.)

Day 1 (Walking round the room singing stormy weather)

I woke up very early on Friday morning, and it soon became apparent that I was the only person staying at the Halifax Backpackers (the "other" hostel in Halifax, apart from the HI) going on the Salty Bear tour. I was picked up by the tour guide, Keltie, who then drove over to the HI to pick up the rest of the travelers. I won't lie, the weather was pretty terrible when we set off. The forecast said that it might clear over the weekend, but that was for Halifax, and the weather patterns at Cape Breton Island was not necessarily the same. Despite that, all of the people on the trip were still pretty excited about the next few days ahead.

The first major stop for the trip was Antigonish, a small university town, where we stopped off to stock up on supplies for the next few days. It was at this point that the rain started to get really hard, and by the time we finished our shopping, we were getting soaked on our way back to the van. There was a lot of names that suggested Scottish influence in the town, a theme which is commong throughout Cape Breton Island (which Antigonish is close to) due to British settlers coming predominantly from Scotland (although some from Ireland too). The Gaelic names were particularly common throughout Cape Breton Island, and apparently a lot of kids from Scotland are sent to this region to learn Gaelic because it is a more old form of the language as it has suffered less contamination from other cultures.

After Antigonish, we stopped off at a little place at the side of the highway that did go-karting, mini-golf, bumper cars, and had a baseball machine. Unfortunately, the machine wasn't in operation due to the rain, and nobody really felt like go-karting, so we just had lunch and left for the beach. The beach stop wasn't too long. All we really did was socialize and skip some rocks. We were all eager to head over to the operator-owned hostel to drop off our stuff and then do some kayaking.

Unfortunately, once we got to the hostel, we were told that the kayaking was most likely not going to go ahead due to the adverse weather, and the only other option was to do a hike. Only two people felt like doing the hike, while the rest of us hung around the hostel and drank. It was BBQ when the people from the hike got back, but the propane tank was unexpectedly out of gas, so we ended up just frying burgers on a large pan. It was still good, though (I may be a bit biased because I prepared the patties).

Day 2 (Dipping into the Atlantic)

The entire second day of the trip involved doing the Cabot Trail, a highway that loops around the north side of Cape Breton Island, covering the outskirts of the Cape Breton Highlands national park. Before entering the park, we stopped off at Chéticamp for a Tim Horton's coffee break. At this point we had pretty much lost all hope of a sunny day, and this was evidenced by the ominous fog covering most of the view from an apparently good scenic viewpoint (presumably on a good day). We did see a young black bear on the side of the road though, which was really cool.

The first activity of the day was a hike on the Skyline, which proved to have the same sort of views - a whole lot of white. Again, I'm sure it would have been good on a good day. We then headed over to Pleasant Bay to do some whale-watching. This was probably the highlight of my sea-related tours so far. Before we even left the jetty, the captain of the ship point out a bald-headed eagle sitting on top of a tree. I hadn't seen any eagles before this trip, so this was a real treat (I actually saw one flying overhead on the way to Pleasant Bay). After 10 or 15 minutes of nothing, we finally spotted some whales. It was a pod of pilot whales, who came pretty close to the crab fishing boat that we were on. I thought this was pretty cool, but I was even more amazed when we ran into another pod of whales. This time they stuck around for quite a long time, and even started to play around after a while. Sadly, my camera ran out of battery just before they started doing really cool stuff.

I was really hungry by the time we docked back on Pleasant Bay, and while some of the others had taken the opportunity to order some cheap snow crabs for a meal for later at the beach, I hadn't gotten anything as of yet (I get a slight allergic reaction from shellfish). The plan was to stop at a diner in between Pleasant Bay and Black Brook Beach so that the people who didn't order crab would not miss out on a small meal. When we got there, we saw a sign hanging on the door saying "closed from noon on Saturday". Keltie pointed out that this was a regular occurrence on Cape Breton Island "people would shut their store down for the day because their daughter was getting married or something." We ended up just getting some snacks at the convenience store.

Black Brook Beach was a nice little beach on the eastern end of the national park. It wasn't that big, but it wasn't bad, and there was a small waterfall on one side of it. I decided that, despite the coldness of the water, I would take a dip in the beach for a few minutes just so I can say that I've swam in the Atlantic Ocean. This soon turned into a "who can stay in the cold water the longest" competition. I was going pretty well, but after about 5 or 10 minutes catching some waves, I caught one badly and got smashed head-first into the sand, the side of my head and my neck copping a fair beating. I still have whiplash from that. I figured that I should probably get out of the water after this happened. It was a strange sensation getting out of the cold water and actually feeling warmer.

I noticed that a bride and a groom had shown up on the beach to take some post-wedding photos. I ignored it at first, but Keltie got really excited and started talking to these people. It turns out that these were the people that worked at the diner that was closed, which was a really strange coincidence after what she had said about things closing.

Dinner was fajitas, and again we finished the night off with some drinking. Carman, the owner and sole operator of Salty Bear, showed up late at night, and was surprised to see everybody still up and having a good time. In fact, he was so excited that a group had stayed up all night on the second day (apparently this had not happened before) that he offered us some of the rum that he had brought along. He was a really cool guy doing something that he seemed really passionate about, which was great. I ended up sleeping really late, which would turn out to be my undoing for the next morning.

Day 3 (Crossing over)

I woke up feeling rather tired from the whole free alcohol thing from the previous night, so I decided to opt out of the kayaking, which was rescheduled from the first day. Instead, I hung out back at the hostel, and read the start of a book called Freakonomics, which I found really interesting, and I definitely plan to read the rest of it some time in the future. After the others finished kayaking, we hurried along over to Caribou, where we were to catch a 75-minute ferry to Prince Edward Island, famous for two things - Anne of Green Gables, a popular fictional character, and the Confederation Bridge. On the way to Caribou I had a chat to Rachael, who joined us on the second night, and it turns out that she was heading over to Invermere, the closest town to Panorama (where I worked for the winter), which was another really freaky example of the whole 'six degrees of separation thing'.

I was lucky enough to get a small amount of sleep on a bench in the ferry, and we landed on PEI, where there was red sand and green fields as far as the eye could see. The population of PEI is pretty small, but they get about 2 million tourists per year, so the service industry is huge. It is the smallest province in Canada, and was also the "Birthplace of Confederation" due to the first meeting involving the confederation of Canada (in Charlottetown), eventually leading to the Articles of Confederation being signed. On our way to Charlottetown, we started to play a game called "tractor", which had people yelling out "tractor!" every time they saw a tractor during the drive.

Charlottetown was quite possibly the first city that lived up to the "small city" image that I had coming into the eastern provinces. Halifax and St. John's, while both fairly small, were still both fairly large in that they had a substantially-sized downtown area, with many surrounding neighborhoods and a large overall metropolitan area. Charlottetown had a downtown area that could be explored in a very short period of time, and the outlying developments didn't give that sense of "largeness". It was really cool, though I couldn't imagine myself staying there for a week. Our accommodation for the night was a university dorm, where we were split to two people per room. It was spacious and clean, and I was very impressed overall by the accommodation that was picked out for the trip. We ended the day with dinner at a local brewery where we were once again joined by another traveler, filling up the van to full capacity.

Day 4 (Green Gables - The Ride)

Anne of Green Gables is a really famous novel that documented island life (it was based on PEI), and was published way back in 1908. Due to its (seemingly unreal) popularity, Anne of Green Gables is one of things that makes PEI a tourist attraction, and some people go out of their way to visit the place. Keltie was telling us that our first stop of the day, Cavendish, being the place where Lucy Maud Montgomery (the author of the famous book) grew up, was so popular that she once met a woman who was doing a 4-day tour of the whole of Canada. Her 4 stops were Banff, Lake Louise, Jasper... and Cavendish. This blew my mind, seeing as I had never heard of the book before coming to Canada.

Our main activity for the day was a bike ride around Cavendish, which was really fun and quite beautiful in that rural kind of way. We also had a stroll around the beach once we finished the main trail. Some people also wanted to check out the Green Gables museum, but this involved a fee, so a lot of us just stayed in the parking lot and played around with a Frisbee.

We left PEI via the Confederation Bridge, which was a 1 billion dollar construction project connecting PEI to New Brunswick in the mainland of Canada, and is supposedly the longest bridge crossing over ice-covered waters (in winter) in the world. The toll for crossing the bridge seemed incredibly high ($40.75 for a 2-axle vehicle), though I guess that crossing over wasn't really an everyday activity for people. On the other side, past the viewing area for the bridge, were some moose models that somebody had made using only driftwood, which really odd.

Our final stop of the trip was the Masstown Market, which is just what the name suggests - a marketplace at a place called Masstown. What made this place special was that they sold local produce (apparently good quality), and had an ice-cream shop that had some phenomenal tasting ice cream. Michael and I had won ourselves a free large ice cream after we were both declared winner of "tractor" by virtue of the fact that we were the only ones that persisted with playing it throughout PEI. After the ice cream and shopping break, it was time to head back to Halifax. We hung around at the Economy Shoe Shop before finally heading our separate ways after one of the best guided tours I have ever been on.

Salty Bear tour overview

Days spent: 4
Salty bears: 0
Tractors: Lots
Theme song/s: Gogol Bordello - Start Wearing Purple

The 'lost' photos

There was a moment in St. John's when I had forgotten to insert a memory card into my camera before going out sightseeing. As a result, I had to use the limited amount of space in the camera's in-built memory, meaning I could only take a total of four shots at high quality. These pictures are what I refer to as the 'lost' photos, since they're still on the camera, and I've been far too lazy to dig out from my bag the cable to connect the camera to the laptop (I currently use a card reader to transfer all my photos). If, some day, some photos turn up that seem out of place, this is the reason why.