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Published: February 10th 2006
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The Salty Bear Gang goes sailing!
I love how it looks like Vivian in the front is in the spotlight because everyone else is in the shade. Salty Bear begins
Nova Scotia, PEI
Little New Brunswick.
I had an 8:30AM start this morning meeting up with the Salty Bear tour company. It took about a half hour to get everything sorted out and soon enough we were off and running. The beginning of the tour was mainly driving on the highway, so it was not all that exciting.
It did give us a bit of a chance to get to know one another a little bit better and we also got a bit of a run down from Carman, our tour guide/driver. We're a small bunch. 10 people on tour plus Carman. So there's Duncan and Olaf. Duncan is Carman's brother and Olaf is Duncan's friend. Tania from Australia. She's been travelling and working the last 18 months or so. She’s been through SE Asia, worked in London for a bit and this summer was working in Georgian Bay (which is apparently in Ontario) at a resort or something like that. Katja from Mannheim. She's been in Toronto since May studying there for one school term. Cathy from Kingston. She arrived in Halifax for her friend's wedding and thought she should check out some of the
rest of Canada. She's an avid canoer (is that correct??) Mandy from just outside Hamburg. She's just on a short vacation in Atlantic Canada for a couple of weeks. She's a social worker back home in Germany. Amanda from Sydney. She's been in Toronto since about January just working. She still has a couple more months before going back home to Sydney. But from the sounds of it, she will continue her travels and might go to Thailand and eventually back to London sometime next year since she has dual citizenship. Amelia is from Melbourne (well actually Torquay) and has been working at a ski resort out in BC all year. She drove all the way from BC to Halifax with two of her friends in just 6 days! That's a crazy amount of driving! But will no doubt be etched in her mind forever and full of great memories. And then Vivian from Montreal. She describes herself as being spatially challenged and says she is definitely not a domestic goddess. If there is music she'll dance for you! lol
It's nice to know that the next four days I'll be hanging out with an easy going bunch. So
after a couple hours in the morning of highway driving and admiring all the wonderful colourful leaves we stopped of at a grocery store to pick up some food for a picnic lunch at the beach in Antigonish. It was a bit breezy so that meant that there was a lot of sand everywhere. Thank goodness for me I didn't end up with lots of sand in my salad unlike some people who were making sandwiches for lunch. Crunchy. haha
After eating Carman suggested a pick up game of Ultimate Frisbee. We all sort of balked because we had just finished consuming our lunches but Carman made the playing field pretty small so there wasn't much running involved. Excellent! I'm in. lol It was interesting to see how competitive Cathy got! Yikes, was not nice being on the opposing team.
Some people did not secure their garbage so instead of running for the frisbee they took off to try and retrieve their garbage before it went too far out to sea.
Then there was a quick little drive to the go-karting place but it was a bit disappointing that they were not set up. Usually Salty Bear only stops by on Thursday's so they were not ready for us since it was only Tuesday. And being the off season they're actually only open on the weekends and by special appointment. So we'll have to wait a couple of days before having some go karting fun. So from here we set off for Baddeck and our booze stop...not that I got anything. lol
In the parking lot Carman saw the local guy that runs a sailing ship and asked him how much it would be for us to all go out sailing this afternoon. So when we're all in the liquor store we find out it'll only be $15 for 1.5 hours of sailing in the sun. Score! That sounds like an awesome deal! So we got our act together, piled into the van and drove to the docks. We couldn't have asked for better weather for a sailing trip and we even saw some eagles while we were out there. Just sitting out there on the open water with the sun shining and chatting was so relaxing. The captain of the boat said that he'll soon be sailing down to Bermuda and eventually end up in St. Maarten until about May next year. Now how awesome would that be?? Surprisingly it'll only take about a week to get down to Bermuda and I think he said less than a week from there to get to St. Maarten. For some reason, I was thinking it'd take longer than that since the sailboat really isn't that large. Anyhoo, what do I know about sailing? Not much, other than the fact that I was enjoying myself. 😊
By the time we got off of the sailboat it was getting dark and we still had to pick up some food for our BBQ dinner. Basically all we had to do was pick out any meat we wanted for the grill and then we'd all chip in together to make up a salad and also some ingredients to make some s'mores.
After dinner we had a campfire going and there was a lot of drinking going on and even a spliff being passed around. Keith, the owner of the place that we were staying apparently grew this stash that they were smoking himself. I'm not sure if it was the spliff or if it is just the way that he normally laughs, but it was just hilarious whenever he laughed. One of those laughs that makes you laugh because his laugh is so hideous...definitely not an infectious laugh like mine. HAHA
I spent a long time chatting with Amelia and Amanda about airline/flying horror stories. My stories seem so mundane compared to these two. Like Amanda being picked for "random" searches six times while at the Heathrow Airport one time. Hmm, after the second time I would think that these are no long random searches. LOL Or when Amelia had to go through a small airport in Oregon and they didn't have any x-ray equipment and had to check her bags. Normally not a big deal but she had been travelling for a while and accumulated quite a bit of stuff in her snowboarding bag. I think she said that she was there for something like 1.5 hours! Yikes. And to top it off, they wanted to check her bag a second time somewhere else down the road on that same day. Or all of the annoying people that you encounter sitting beside you. I love Amelia's way of getting out of having to talk to them for too long..."Oh look, the movie's starting..." LOL I love that and will definitely have to use that one the next time I'm in a situation like that. But with my luck there won't be a film playing. haha
I went to bed all smoky since it was way too late to be washing my hair after midnight. Sometime in the middle of the night Duncan comes back to the middle of the night and I hear a girl’s voice. Hmm, a late night "fling"? Not sure what did or did not happen since I was half awake and pretty much fell back asleep again. Perhaps not knowing is better than knowing...
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Bryan
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Salty Bear Rocks!!!
I loved Salty Bear!!! I have traveled the world and seen some amazing places, but SB tops them all!!! Good company, lots of fun, great guides and you get to see the best of the East Coast of Canada. I will tell all my friends, you should too! Rocck on Salty Bear! I will return Bryan (Australia)