23 Caraquet

Canada
Québec & New Brunswick
Nova Scotia & Newfoundland
Québec & Ontario
Manitoba to the Pacific

1 Arriving in Montréal
2 Montréal
3 Olympic Village
4 Looking for a motorhome
5 To the Eastern Townships
6 Eastern Townships
7 On to Magog
8 North Hatley via USA
9 Back to Magog
10 Back to Montreal
11 The Roadtrek 170P
12 North to Beaumont
13 La Grosse Ile
14 On to Trois Pistoles
15 Still at Trois Pistoles
16 Cap Chat
17 Windmills and mooses
18 Mont Jacques Cartier
19 Mont Louis
20 Slow start to Percé
21 Percé
22 On to New Brunswick
23 Caraquet
24 Acadian Historic Village
25 South to Shediac
26 Moncton
27 Catch up in Moncton
28 On to Fundy
29 Alma, Fundy Nat Park
30 Fundy National Park
31 On to Fredericton

Canada

Pointe Verte to Caraquet, New Brunswick

Wednesday 24 August 2005 (day 94)

We woke late again today. I was still plagued by my bites and felt pretty short tempered. In true male style, Stef decided today would be a good day to wind me up. Rather than having a blazing row about nothing I took a diversionary tactic and went for a walk along the beach leaving him to clear up from breakfast.

The beach was a narrow strip of shaley sand backing onto rocks. What I had thought was an isolated campsite was actually just one of several campsite and beach chalets all strung out along the bay. The Chaleur Bay is apparently one of the most beautiful in the world. It's big, wide, open and you can see across to the southern shore of Gaspésie but I am not sure I would rate it as incredibly beautiful. I must be missing the point!

Acadian pride

By the time I got back we had both cooled down and focused on packing up and leaving, it was early afternoon by the time we left. Neither of us wanted to go far and we had planned to just head for Bathurst. When we got there thought we both decided it had little going for it and pushed on. At Pokeshaw we made a brief stop to see a rocky outcrop, nesting place for a colony of cormorants. Normally I would find that pretty spectacular but compared to three hundred thousands on the Ile Bonaventura it was a little bit tame.

We leant a helping hand to a family in the car park. They had locked themselves out of their car and even their mobile was inside to they could not call out the Canadian AA. Having done the same myself years ago on a cold night at a Brighton petrol station which ended up with me being towed the fifty miles back home to Croydon (I have still never gone back to that petrol station!) I had a lot of sympathy for them. As much as being annoyed at not being able to get into the car I was cross with myself for letting it happen!

Leaving the birds behind us we passed a farm selling its own beef. Needing dinner for this evening we pulled in to get some steaks. Seeing us coming, suddenly four people sprang to life. Outside was a little boy, no more than seven or eight years of age, with a red scarf tied round his neck cowboy style. He had an upturned cardboard box with his price list written in market pen on the side and was selling fresh vegetables. Inside, a huge man was accompanies by two skinny lads who were playing one of Stef's favourite games - fly swatting. The beef was all frozen but we bought some steaks and burgers hoping they would be thawed in time for dinner,

On the way in I had promised the boy that we would buy some vegetables from him after we had bought some meat. As we, veg-less, got back into Mortimer his face fell which reminded me we had forgotten to buy from him. As we got back out again his face lit up with a huge smile and he proudly showed us his wares - a huge courgette, some fresh peas, beans and beetroot. His confidence waned as we asked him how much for the peas and courgette as he could not remember. His Dad stepped in joking that he hoped we had not been fleeced - a few days ago the boy had sold two pea pods for a dollar - clever kid!

We carried on to Caraquet, again in search of internet access and stopped at Tourist Information to get a local update. Not only are there few that have access most will not let you connect your own laptop. They called around for us and found a church hall that would accommodate us. The only problems was that we found no evidence of a church hall at the place they had marked on our map.

It seemed like we drove backwards and forwards through Caraquet loads of times checking about internet access, then booking into the campsite and then going back for shopping. The campsite was close to the beach and had good open views of the sea. Over the last few days we had been commenting that for a vehicle that is supposedly very popular we had hardly seen any other Roadtreks. On this site there were five including us!

Having got ourselves set up I checked the meat, still frozen, so we had to pack up again and head back into town. This is one drawback with this size of van. The big monster ones all tow a car behind them but if we need to go somewhere we have to pack everything up before we move. We finally got to use our new hibachi barbecue, a little table top job. Having finally got our wood fire well and truly alight we both chucked when the chap who had glared at us earlier for having a very smoky fire (the wood is still a bit damp) had the same problem himself. The hibachi was good but we need more practice to get the charcoal ratio right. I also think it would be better to have the grills slotting in at both sides rather than just balancing on one side (you probably need to see a picture to understand what I mean by this)

In town we had bought some ex-rental DVD's and snugged up inside for a night in front of the telly!

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