Of Parks, Fjords and Caves

 July 11 – 20

Our Quebec travels continued in the Laurentian mountains on the north west side of the St Lawrence River (aka le Fleuve) in Saguenay and Charlevoix regions.

Before we get started with today’s entry, let’s talk about some of our favourite French words and expressions. We mentioned le fleuve in our previous post, which is very good. It’s very satisfying to form that sound sound. Le fleuuuuve. It’s similar to another of Al’s all time favourites, the French word for tires (or tyres). Pneus. Pneus. Not only does it have that same eu sound as le fleuve, but it adds in a p-n combo that we just don’t have in English. Such a fun word. Pneu.

BUT we have a couple of new challengers. Michelle’s mot du jour these days is ‘Exacte.’ In high school French we learn ‘exactement’, which means ‘exactly’. But these days the cool French kids are all just saying exacte. Way cooler. Exacte.

Al heard his latest favourite phrase while we were playing tennis the other day. The guy on the next court was pretty vocal and also pretty critical of his own poor play. At one point he shouted in frustration ‘Bah – c’est quoi, ca??’ which pretty much means ‘What the **** is that?’ We’re finding a reason to use that phrase just about every day on the trip. C’est quoi, ca??

Anyway, Jas and Chantal joined us in Saguenay which was great for us as they both speak fluent French and Jas loves to find fun things to do.

On our first day, we stopped off at the local Distillerie du Fjord to try some local gins, around the corner from our cottage. They use many of the local plants found in the boreal forest to flavour their gin such as young shoots of balsam fir and Labrador tea. We resisted the 48% medicinal version and went with the much more appealing cucumber-infused choice. The only problem with this particular bottle is that it evaporates extremely quickly. I foresee having to continually buy new bottles to replenish.

 

I'm sure there's some actual food in there somewhere

Cave and dam hunting at Grotte du Lac Lamothe

 Not far from where we were staying was a cave Jas had heard about on the CBC, and which the local at the distillery described as ‘a bit redneck’ (???).

This tunnel, cut deep, deep into the rock, is a remnant of a dam created in the 50’s for a local paper mill. It’s not in use anymore, but you can still walk back probably 5 or 600m underground. It’s pitch black and pretty spooky, despite (or enhanced by?) the graffiti tags on the walls and the detritus on the cave floor. Inexplicably, even though we knew we were planning on visiting, we carefully left all flashlights and other forms of light safely at home, leaving us with the feeble lights on the backs of our phones to navigate by.

 

Outdoor Adventures

Lac Saint Jean kayaking. We had pictured a gentle paddle across a serene lake, stopping off for a picnic lunch on a scenic beach. This image was shattered by Mother Nature. Battling the wind and waves for two hours, we finally reached the beach the rental woman had described as ‘trés tranquil’. What she had failed to mention were the vicious hordes of biting bugs and mosquitoes. Ah….Canadian summer. Less than 30 seconds after landing we were back on the water and eating lunch on board.

 

Keep in mind that when it's really rough, no one is taking pictures!!....

Hiking in Monts-Valin National Park. For all of what makes Sepaq wonderful (Sepaq run many of the provincial parks here in Quebec), sometimes their signage skills leave a little to be desired. What was labelled as a 5km, 2 hour hike turned into 10km and 4 hours. But it was worth it to see the different levels of the fjord valley walls.

This is a hang-gliding launch pad

There's about four baby grouse inside those feathers

The parc had a 'weather-predicting rock'. 

• When the rock is wet, it's raining
• When the rock is dry, it's not raining
• When the top of the rock is white, it's snowing
• When the rock is missing, there's a tornado
• etc :-D

Wondering why Al's by himself? Those bubbles aren't from the jets

Fun with Fjords

 Apparently Saguenay fjord is unusual because it doesn’t flow into an ocean or sea like other fjords, but instead flows into ‘Le Fleuve’. In fact, because it flows all the way from Hudson Bay to the St Lawrence River, it was a well used path for indigenous Canadians and, once Europeans arrived, the town at the mouth of the fjord was the very first trading port in Canada.

 In the footsteps of the canoeing traders, we headed out on a sea kayaking tour on the fjord from the pretty town of Sainte Rose-du-Nord. Jas assured us the kayaks would be way better than the last time and this would be a totally different experience. As we stood looking at the formidable waves forming on the water we weren’t so sure, but in fact the kayaks were more than up to the task, which made the trip a lot more bearable. Plus, lunch consisted of a degustation of local cheeses, spreads and beers – and we got to ride the current back to the starting point, which made up for all the hard work in the morning.

 

Being the fjord experts we are, as we paddled across the width of the Saguenay fjord we were all thinking it was wider than what we’d expect for a fjord. Isn’t the definition that it’s a narrow? While the Saguenay fjord doesn’t look very narrow, it was carved by a glacier and the stats are impressive.

It was 3.5km wide where we were, and it does narrow to 1.6km in parts. The cliffs rise between 300 and 460 m above the water level. What blew us away was how deep the water is – 275m in some parts so at the deepest point, the distance from the bottom of the fjord to the top is 700m. And it’s still rising apparently.

 

As we were sitting in the middle of the fjord on our kayaks, our guide chose that moment to let us know that this fjord is also home to sharks. Very large, nasty looking sharks who’ve been around the block more than a few times. The Greenland sharks (grey sharks) live for 250-500 years, making them the longest living vertebrates on earth.  They usually grow to about 6m long and 1,000kg, but can be up to 1,400kg! People are no longer able to tell Michelle that Australia lays sole claim to scary animals. Luckily the reason they’re here in the fjord is that they like to hang out in very deep, cold water.

 

After our kayaking trip, Jas had found what sounded like a quaint little restaurant owned by a husband and wife. The husband, apparently, is the mayor of the town. What started with him greeting us with amusing anecdotes of how he found himself married to a woman from France and not a Quebecer, rapidly descended to him talking at length to us each time he served us (well, technically talking to Jas and Chantal as we couldn’t really understand much), getting more and more ridiculous in the content until eventually our polite nodding and smiling led him to decide to join us at the table. We’re pretty sure if there’d been any wine left in our bottle he would have poured himself a glass. We figure that given the town only has about 400 people in it, he’s worn the ears off of everyone there and so is always on the lookout for fresh meat. Once we managed to extricate ourselves and left the restaurant, the power in the entire town went out. Perhaps those diners still left in the restaurant had made a call as an SOS?

 

The mayor, holding court

Charlevoix

Part two of this adventure took us to the Charlevoix region, in the heart of the Laurentian mountains and the Flavour Trail. We really should include a map or something in these posts, as it’s probably difficult to follow along at home. Here’s a rough guide to where we’ve gone so far:

 

As we drove we once again caught sight of Le Fleuve. The mighty fleuve!

 Quite a few years ago we read about a fun activity in the Dolomite mountains in Italy called ‘Via Ferrata’. Our impression was of a kind of scaredy-cat version of rock climbing where you’re harnessed in to a life line cable and you make your way along or up a rock face using metal steps stuck into the rock by some much more adventurous soul than us. It’s been on our European bucket list for a while so we were pretty excited when Jas discovered we could do it in Quebec in the Grands Jardins Provincial Park.

 We weren’t sure if it would be a bit hokey, kind of like a kids’ ride and not actually challenging or exciting. We were wrong. This was an incredible experience, and one we would wholeheartedly recommend!! Al's favourite activity so far (and that includes golf! :-D)

 

Acropole des Draveurs. We’d heard that a hike up the Acropole des Draveurs in the Haute-Gorges-de-la-Rivière-Malbaie provincial park (they need a really big sign for this park) was well worth the 10km round trip. We had no idea how spectacular until we arrived at the first peak. It was – and this is not mere hyperbole – jaw-droppingly spectacular. Pick your jaw up off the ground spectacular. Supercalifragilistically spectacular. And, like so often happens, the pictures simply can’t do it justice. But trust us, it was…well, you get the idea.

 

Et cetera 

The last day of our time in this region was forecast as rainy so we headed to the cute little town of Baie St Paul which is well known for a few reasons. The first is as a bit of a Mecca for artists. The second is as the home of the founders of Cirque du Soleil (who we did not see). But it is chock full of small galleries, shops and restaurants. What we hadn’t known was that we’d booked to be there just four days before a huge music festival that brings over 40,000 people to this small town. So it was just starting to burst at the seams when we left. But we still managed to get into a few very nice restaurants.

 Here we recreate the scene from the Bocce box...

And of course, the evenings were filled with games galore. No clear winner over the course of the ten days (and no, just because you won the last game we played doesn’t mean you won the week…). We did all enjoy ‘La Course Aux Fromages’ game, featuring Max the Cat and a giant piece of cheese. Even if we never quite figured out all of the rules.

It was in fact Mr Green, with the candlestick, in the Conservatory

And so, after a whirlwind 10 days we bid Jas and Chantal ‘A bientôt’ and made our way to the next chapter of our Quebec road trip. Our next stop required a bit of a backtrack around – what else – Le Fleuve – as we cross from the north shore to the south.

Next up is the Bas-Saint-Laurent, the southern coast of the St Lawrence. Read all about it in Farewell Le Fleuve, G’day Gulf.

If you missed the start of our Eastern Canada adventure, start here!