Whales and bad cappuccinos

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Hi there. Since leaving Mont Tremblant, which was a pretty quiet 3 day stop over I moved on to Quebec city for the night. What a great old quarter! Somewhat touristy but lots of fun. Some of the buidlings at night are quite beautiful. By the way, if you are looking for the canoe trip link, here it is again.

http://picasaweb.google.com/mcintyre.bl/Canoeing1214Aug2007?authkey=8PXFV-o__WY

The hostel I stayed at in Quebec was pretty ordinary and came complete with a very drunk Swede in his bed in my dorm room (at 3pm!). He was a pleasant enough drunk but decided to go out at midnight, stumble back into the room at 4 am with the light blazing, crash into 2 beds whilst attempting to get changed and then started snoring loud enough to shame a chainsaw after some heroically loud farting!! Noice!

I jumped on the bus the next day and headed for Tadoussac up the St Lawrence river (which looks more like an ocean). Tadoussac is a lovely sleepy little village that has a reasonable number of whales cruising around. I decide to go on a 3 hour kayak trip which turned into 1 hour for getting on the wetsuits and jackets and paddling instruction and 2 hours of kayaking. No whales though which was a bummer. So that evening I headed out on a zodiac with about 15 others. Summer here has been like winter in Melbourne so it's pretty cold on the water. We ended up seeing quite a few Minke whales close up.

THe whole process is a bit like the paparazzi chasing celebrities. 4 or 5 of these small boats converge when a whale is sighted and cruise along side whilst everyone is madly snapping pics (most which seem to look like small dark blobs on water!). It all felt a little to voyeuristic after a while but the scenery was fantastic. Grey/purple soft clouds and mist with the water the same colour.

THe scenery round Tadoussac is wonderful. Interesting rock formations with small pencil pines and lush green Maple trees. I haven't been able to get on a computer yet that will let me download pics but I'll attempt to do that when back in Quebec city tomorrow. I went on a long bushwalk yesterday with and English woman and a Greman woman. It was spectacular scenery. Managed to get within a meter of a very laid-back squirrel who looked at me with a 'whatever' look and just chewed his nuts (so to speak).

The backpacker hostel I'm staying at is lots of fun. A big rambling old place with a maritime theme, big outdoor cafe area, a bar and lots of people. Quite a large quasi-hippy population has gravitated around the hostel so at night there are fire twirlers, jugglers and chain smoking Petanque players. One of the hippies was practicing during the afternoon with an unlit fire stick. After hitting himself in the head a few times with the stick I thought he was ratehr brave to jugle with a lit one last night. He didn't actually set fire to himeself but it came close and several other fire jugglers close by looked nervous!

Last night a band came up from Montreal - fantastic music. It was a mix of Cajun, reggae, zydeco and blues. There was so much dancing and stomping going on the whole floor of the bar was bouncing up and down! Tonight there is a blues/jazz band. Ive given up on the idea of getting a full night's sleep. I can recover in Montreal!

There are a lot of French folk here on holidays which makes sense when you think Quebec is the only major western province where there is French spoken outside France. The French (mainly Parisiennes) seem to have an interesting time trying to understand some of the local French spoken by the Quebecoise. So far many people have thought I'm English so I have to resort to "G'day mate! Hows it goin?" with a nasty Australian drawl just to clarify the situation. And then its "Ah...Skippy!" from the French Canadians.

The last 3 days here have been the most relaxing and chilled out for me of the whole trip. Finally unwinding from work and study! Its a very easy place to just sit on the rocks and let the mist, soft hues, reflective water and occassional graceful whale work their magic. It would be Paradise if I could find a decent cappuccino!

Bye for now!

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