Advertisement
Published: February 10th 2006
Edit Blog Post
Hike. Kayak. Whales.
Busy day of doing stuff
I'm cold and hungry!
We started off the morning with a short hike to the rocky cliffs somewhere in Cape Breton...can't remember the name! It was only about 45 minutes for the round trip hike. More like a pleasant walk amongst the trees and then the reward was some gorgeous views.
Then it was another short drive of about 20 minutes or so to the place where we could rent kayaks. Only $20 for two hours of kayaking! I love kayaking on nice and calm waters. Amazingly I didn't get too wet either.
After kayaking we had a short walk along a rocky beach and tested out our rock skipping skills. Yup, I still can't skip a rock worth a darn! haha
Before we knew it, we sped off to the whale watching boat that was waiting for us. It was supposed to start at 2PM. We ended up not having enough time to stop for something to eat but we all decided that we could wait the 1.5 hours and just have a late lunch instead. Well, we were out on the open waters for about 1.5 hours
Cathy, Vivian and Tania
A little bit of rock climbing to get to the view point. before we even saw one whale! Finally some Pilot Whales (aka Potheads) were spotted! Then the next hour we were out there getting out fill of whales. By this time we were all cold, tired and famished and at one point some of us were joking that we'd seen enough and were ready to head back. Unfortunately there were 20+ other people also on boat with us. It was funny when the guide said something about the whales liking calamari...at that point most of us on our tour started having fish and chip cravings. It was so funny how focused the 10 of us were on eating fish and chips. To save time looking for a place Olaf asked the Captain where the nearest fish and chip place was. So when we disembarked and saw Carman on the docks he started telling us..."we have two options..." Then we all said, yeah, we want fish and chips and Olaf knows where to go!
We were a bit short on time because we wanted to get in one more hike in and do some moose spotting so we took our fish and chips to go and we chowed down on our
greasy yet oh so delectable lupper (or if you prefer linner haha) in the bumpy van while heading to the Skyline Trail.
It was getting late so we couldn't walk the entire Skyline Trail that is supposed to take about 2 hours so we walked until about dusk before heading back to the van. But that's okay since we'd already had quite a long day and more moose would likely be out around dusk. We were pretty fortunate to see quite a few moose out in the distance and when we were almost back at the van we even saw one on the side of the road. We were really quiet and walked slowly by that guy for fear he might charge us. We were all relieved that we didn't have to worry about a charging moose and made our way back to our accommodations in Pleasant Bay...a couple more hours of driving.
Oh yes, I forgot to mention that on the trail walking back to the van some of us were "attacked" by this one "killer" bat. I swear it kept swooping for our head. Then it got really funny when Carman and Olaf started to scream
Whale watching
That's a little baby calf at the top of this picture. like girls.
Anyhoo, we were driving on the Cabot Trail which takes you around Cape Breton Island. The short 20 second ferry ride was down because of mechanical failure so we had to do a bit of extra driving which was a bit of a drag and caused a bit of a "panic" that we might run out of fuel? At least we got a Tim Horton's stop. Mind you Carman decided to go through drive through where there was a bit of mayhem with our order. It was funny. Carman said to the guy over the speaker, "I hope you got that order right. If not we'll come in and straighten it out." Or something along those lines. But just the way he said it, it sort of sounded like..."look punk, you'd better get this order right otherwise we'll come in there and straighten you out." LOL
We eventually pulled into our accommodation just before 10PM. I decided to just shower up and flake out on my bed since I didn't want to smell all smoky for a second night in a row. I ended up talking with both Cathy and Mandy lots. Well more like Mandy and I had a two way conversation with one another and Cathy would come in every so often. And with Cathy, she pretty much dominates the conversation so I'd have to say we listened to Cathy rather than had a conversation with her. LOL
With all the fresh air that I got during the day I was pretty much out like a light and didn't hear anybody else go to bed!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.184s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 10; qc: 54; dbt: 0.1394s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb