| |
|
72 The falls |
|
|
|
Canada: Ontario
Friday 14 October 2005
I went to check us in at the campsite office and also to get information about the best options for heading into town. There is normally a shuttle bus running every thirty minutes all day from 9:30. As its off season the service only runs on Fridays and Saturdays and it does not start until 2:30 this afternoon. It was not quite what we had hoped for but it meant that we could use the morning to catch up on some other bits and pieces.
We mainly focused on Morty, filling up with petrol and propane and then taking him to a car wash. Although we have had a lot of rain off and on we have still not washed Morty since getting off the ferry to Havre St Pierre. We found another one of the DIY high powered jet washes and gave him a good wash, rinse and wax and even went so far as vacuuming the inside. The jet washes are pretty hard work, especially to reach up to the roof. It was very tempting to "accidentally" soak Stef but I resisted knowing that he would get his revenge bigger and better at some future date. When we got back to the campsite a car was parked in our space. It belonged to the daughter and son-in-law of the couple next door to us. Their granddaughter is getting married tomorrow in St Catherines and is having her reception in Niagara Falls so they have come here for a few extra days for a bit of a break. They seem to live out of their motor-home and until recently also had one in Florida. The daughter, having grown up with campsite based holidays, is trying to convince her husband that they ought to get a pop up trailer (one that all folds down into a big box) but he is so far not keen. Stef chatted to the men as I chatted to the ladies. After Stef gave the chaps a "tour" of Morty the son-in-law seemed to be starting to shift his views. A bit after two we left Morty behind and headed into town. The bus is a shuttle that runs through to the early hours, good for us as we planned to spend the night out in downtown Niagara Falls. It only took a few minutes to get into the centre but it then seemed to go a very long winded way around town before reaching the river. I think its route must take it around many of the hotels. The big chains all have their own shuttle buses to take their guests around town. It is not really that big a place and you can easily walk around the centre but there are a lot of Americans here and from what we have seen of them so far they do not like walking. The bus dropped us at the bottom of Clifton Hill and we walked down to the river for our first glimpse of the falls. There are two waterfalls. The horseshoe shaped one that most people picture when you talk about Niagara is on the Canadian side of the Niagara River. There is another straight edged falls that is over the border in the US (or the "evil empire" as Stef has taken to calling it). Having been to Iguazú falls on the Argentinian/Brasilian border our first reaction to Niagara Falls was that they were not very awe inspiring. They are certainly a lot smaller and I do not think that the water drops as far. That said, our initial views started to change as we readjusted to the scale of the falls.
It was a pretty cloudy day but the sun was trying to break through as we bought our tickets for tourist attraction number one, the Maid of the Mist boat trip to the falls. You go through a concrete switch back of corridors down to some lifts that take you to the river. As it is off season there were no big queues but you could tell from the way the area was laid out that the queues would be very long in the summer. At the bottom we were given our souvenir blue recyclable ponchos to wear on the boat and joined the queue to board. They leave every fifteen minutes so it was not long before we were under way. At first, I thought they were a bit overly cautious giving us the ponchos but I soon became glad that they had. We initially went past the American falls. In, I think, the 1950's they had a big rock slide at the edge of the falls so the height of the drop of the water is now only about twenty five metres compared to the previous sixty metres. They have built a viewing platform that enables people on the US side to look across at their fall. It reminded me of a big diving platform and I wondered if anyone had tried to pretend they were in Acapulco and had gone off the edge. As the Maid carried on past the US falls I started to be very glad of my poncho and also that I have a waterproof case for my camera. As the gusts of wind blew by they caught the edge of the falls bringing curtains of water across and onto the boat. The power of the water from the falls stirred up the river into a mass of white water. Although you could not feel it on board, watching other boats you could see how they struggled to maintain their position at the foot of the falls. We were there for quite a while, long enough for everyone to get photos if they wanted to and certainly long enough to get very wet as well. With the sun breaking through the clouds we were treated to many rainbows sparkling through the mist. The mist created by the falls rises up in a column, as if the water was on fire, and away up into the air. As it was quite a windy day, the mist from the falls and the clouds seemed to merge into one. From the front of the Maid we were simply looking at a vast white wall. In terms of its size, the water on the Canadian side falls about eighty metres. In a single second, enough water goes over the top to fill one million bathtubs. The power of the water is enough to crush an entire city within minutes. It is certainly not something to be messed with and we both thought that the people who have got their kicks by going over the top were a bit nuts. Once off the Maid we walked along the top of the valley and around to where the water crashes down. The water runs at about forty miles an hour and it looks fierce, swirling around with strong currents and eddies. You can walk to the point where you can see the water go over the edge. A dark blue seething mass turns into an opaque greeny blue colour with white crests of foam on the outside. It is beautiful to see and almost hypnotic. From here we went to the Skylon tower which gives you 360 degree views across Niagara. The views were pretty good as you could see up the river and follow the water down to the falls. The falls are eroding the rock and geologists estimate that they used to be seven kilometres further downstream. Looking back over Niagara itself, it is now just a mass of hotels and parking lots and has little character in its own right apart from the stretch just along side the river. Our next stop was the Imax cinema which runs a forty five minute film about the falls and those who have gone over them. Originally a site populated by Indian Tribes, Niagara is an Indian word meaning "thundering water". Local Indian legend tells the story of a young girl who was extremely beautiful. As she was so beautiful, the Chief of her village said she was to be married to the oldest man in the village, an honour and a privilege. Not surprisingly she did not want to marry this old man and ran away during the ceremony. To ensure that the Chief and her family did not lose face within the village she had no option but to leave it and go it alone. She walked down to the river and jumped into her canoe and started paddling away. The currents caught her and ended up taking her over the falls where she perished. The legend says that she was whisked away by the gods. It is thought to be her spirit that sometimes, not always, looks after others who end up going over the falls. As European settlers headed this way Niagara became busier. In the winter, blocks of ice coming down from Lake Eerie gather at the bottom of the falls, eventually piling up into an ice bridge across the river. People used to freely walk across this and vendors even set up stalls on the ice bridge. Unfortunately, in 1912 it melted quickly carrying three people to their deaths so people are no longer allowed access to the ice bridge if one forms. On two occasions, ice further up stream has stopped water coming down so that the falls ran dry. In the 1950's the American Army purposely stemmed the water on their side so that they could survey the river bed by the falls. Perhaps it best claim to fame though are the people who have gone over the edge. Sadly, some of these cases were specifically planned as suicides but others have been daredevils, or mad people, doing it to make a name for themselves. The first was a sixty five year old school teacher, Annie Taylor, who hoped that the associated fame would generate enough money for a comfortable retirement. She, and her kitten, were wedged into a barrel that was padded with a mattress and a pillow and they were set adrift in the river. They survived the ordeal but Annie's hoped for fame and fortune did not materialise. The Imax cinema has a display of some of the crafts used for attempts over the falls. They are all variations on the theme of a barrel and are mostly very basic. Many successful attempts have been made but equally several people have lost their lives trying. The attempts on a jet ski and a kayak were perhaps not surprisingly unsuccessful. Some people who survived the fall subsequently died because their "craft" had become stuck either under the curtain of water at the falls or in the whirlpool further down river. For these people, lack of oxygen led them to suffocate. The most amazing survival story was that of a small boy, John Woodward, who was out on the river with his parents. The engine on their small boat cut out and they got dragged towards the falls. The mother was pulled to safety before she went over the falls. John did go over the falls but survived with no broken bones. The father did not make it. The other people who are famously linked to the falls are those who have walked across it on a tight rope. Blondini was the first and the only one I had heard about before coming here but many others have also gone across. I was left with the feeling that a bit of an unofficial competition has been created by these people in terms of who can do it fastest or in the most unusual way. One chap walked across sixteen times in one summer. I personally think they are all barking mad adrenalin junkies.
With evening approaching we headed for our last stop of the day, the casino. We went to the new one in town slap bang in the middle of where all the big hotel chains are based. There was a full set of Marriott, Hilton, Sheraton, Radisson and a few others too. One of the sad things about Niagara Falls is that they have allowed these chains to build big high rise hotels. The Imax film was made in the 1970's and at that time the only tall building was the Skylon Tower and the old casino. The new casino was very glitzy and full of light. It again made me wonder what Las Vegas must be like. We set ourselves a limit of what we were prepared to lose and walked in to the maze of slot machines, noise and lights. It was probably about 7:00pm when we got there and it was already quite busy. A band was playing in a bar at the end of the casino and it felt like they had been there for hours. With no natural daylight anywhere in sight people must lose themselves in here for hours. We had thought the casino at Malbaie was large but compared to this it was tiny. We walked around for a few minutes until we found some tables where they were mainly playing cards. There was the usual mix including black jack, poker, roulette and craps. A separate area had been ring fenced for serious poker players where all players played each other as well as the bank. Stef went to have a look with me hanging back with a "don't you dare" look on my face. He would have been eaten alive in there as he is not good enough at concealing his thoughts on his hand. Not sure what we wanted to play we tried to follow the game of craps. You roll two dice. If you roll seven or eleven you win. If you roll two, three or twelve you lose. Anything else, you have to roll that number again before rolling a seven for you to win. Sounds easy enough until you start to factor in the gambling. We picked up a leaflet with the rules but it still does not make sense to me. It is one of those games you need to play to learn but a casino is definitely not the place to learn in!! We decided to have a go at roulette. Stef opted for the black or red strategy he had taken in Charlevoix but this time it did not pay off. I went for individual numbers and came up a winner on the second go on number 24, my sister Caroline's birthday. We played for about half an hour. My winnings cancelled out Stef's losses and also covered the cost of the drinks we had along the way so we walked out of the casino with the same amount of money we had when we walked in. I had hoped that would be the case before we walked in and have taken a little bit of pleasure in teasing Stef that I won and he did not!!
|
||||||
|
Visitors: |
|
|
|
Copyright © 2001-2007 Stefan and Vanessa Aalten-Voogd |
