The Falls!

How do I possibly start this post without saying WOW? OOPS, just did. 

What an experience.  It was quite a different one to the Grand Canyon or The Great Wall or the Pyramids.  Perhaps these Great Wonder experiences shouldn’t be compared in this way.  For those others, I sort of had moments where I just stood there, sometimes pointed, but always with a completely dumbstruck or incredulous look on my face. 

This time, I literally was out for a jog, with my camera and I had the intention of having a look and then going back to the hostel to get changed, and change to go back for my real  look.  Well, even the ability that I could just go for a jog, and see this amazing place contributed to my experience of it.  I don’t think I can stress enough just how much of an impact.  They are so accessible, that it is comical.  And so comical, that rather than standing incredulous, I was swaying with a ridiculously comical look on my face.  I didn’t stop grinning for about 4 hours.  Of course, I never made it back to the hostel in that time.

Actually as it happened, I still had no map, so while out on my run on Sunday, I first encountered the tourist district.  It was like one giant big side-show alley.  Complete with greasy smelling food, lame attractions, haunted houses and cheap trinkets.  An entire city built up around these amazing Falls.  I kept running, knowing that the Falls were off to my left, but not exactly sure where.  I did ultimately cut left, only to realize that I had run so far that I was now upstream of them (my hostel was at least a kilometre or two downstream).

From a long way off, you can feel the mist on your face.  The water thrown up by the violent impact at the bottom of the millions of bathtubs of water pouring over the Falls every second.  

The mist is so big that it ascends up above the Falls and was the first thing that I could see as I crested the hill near the Marriot Hotel. I actually had a long way to go down to get to the popular viewing platforms, but so much the better view for it.  

As I wound my way down the streets around the Casino and hotels, in prime position for a wake-up view of the Wonder, I caught glimpses through the trees. 

I could hear it, but it certainly was not the thunder that I was expecting.  I crossed streets and wound my way around hot dog and ice cream stands and then, there I was.  

Directly across the way were The American Falls.  Crashing straight down onto rocks below, how they haven’t been rubbed or washed away over thousands of years I can’t imagine.  They are a straight line on the not-so-distant horizon.  An amazing sight!

Off to the right, are the even more famous Horseshoe Falls.  The semicircular Falls that we all know from a thousand postcards and photographs.  And they were just there, for anyone who happened to be “walking past”. 

There is a boat called the Maid in the Mist that can take you right into the Horseshoe Falls to see them right up close and personal.  It must be a great experience, equally wet and terrifying and powerful.  The cost was not disagreeable, but it certainly seemed like an experience best shared with others (that you like), not something to do on your own.  Not having done it, I think I would still recommend it (hint hint, DJ & Christie!), but I satisfied myself walking around them (just at the very top you could practically reach your hand through the railing and touch the water.  There were no security guards or really anything much to stop the suicidal or stupid from hopping in the water and quite quickly being carried over the drop!

I kept walking upstream and saw the almost 100 year old barge teetering near the top threatening to go over.  I walked through the nearby gardens, a nice respite from the mist rain and the tourists that were everywhere (how dare they).  Upstream, it’s quite a different place altogether. I imagine, if you were to follow the downstream, for the very first time, you would have no idea what you were up for!  A huge crashing waterfall!  FREAKOUT!

Such an experience.  Had I realized just how simple it was, I would have crossed the Rainbow Bridge into the States (just crazy that you could throw a rock across this river and it would suddenly be in another country) and see the American Falls – even just about touch them.  However on Sunday, I thought it was going to be a mammoth bureaucratic experience to get in, I saved that for yesterday.  But that, as Douglas Adams says…is not this story.

King in the North!

Toronto – from what I saw of it was a pretty amazing place. While I am loath to compare places, it had a very Melbourne-esque vibe (right down to the trams aka streetcars) that was hard to deny. I’m looking forward to exploring it some more later this week.

However, I’ve already moved on, catching a rather unexciting yet somehow infuriating Greyhound from Toronto to Niagara Falls.  I’ll come back to that, because I first must mention how weird it is to be in a place yet not have really seen it yet.  The same happened with my first night in Toronto.  I arrived around 9pm, cleared Immigration and Customs and spent the next hour and a half navigating public transport.  I found the Bus to get me to the Subway and the Subway to get me to the Downtown and the Footpath to get me to the Hostel.  It was late, I wasn’t really sure what time my body thought it was but I think I’d eaten breakfast (I’m just not sure in which timezone).  It’s weird to be at a hostel/sleeping the night away when you have a very limited view of what is around you.  Exhausted and malnourished, rather than fall asleep I did the next logical thing.  I went for a walk.  The streets were dark but I felt remarkably safe, the night was mild and there were plenty of people coming and going and it was great to see the buildings lit up better than the footpath in the night.

The infuriating Greyhound came after a day of planning and exploring.  With no apparent accommodation available (in my price range) in the entire city, the obvious course of action appeared to be to fast-forward my plans to go and visit the Killer and the Rorminator in upstate New York.  Only, I hadn’t been able to raise either by email, I have no mobile phone number and it wouldn’t do me any good anyway, as I don’t have a number to call them on.  Saturday morning, isn’t always the best time to be making plans as both myself and other move very slowly.  I decided to go ahead and head to Niagara regardless, and hope things picked up, within moments of making that decision, Killer & Evan both came online and it seemed like this plan was going to fit into everyone’s schedules. 

With a much more solid 24 hour plan in place, i.e. accommodation, a bus timetable and a generally framed destination/timeline for getting there I went to visit the Steam Whistle Brewery.  They ‘do one thing and do it well’ allegedly, and I would find it difficult to disagree.  The tour was good fun, and they appear to be a very green (in both senses of the word) company.  Their recycling and power usage stories are quite fascinating and their reasons for having a single type of beer (a Pilsner) quite logical, at least the way they were presented on the tour.  They buy their heating from “Bullfrog” which apparently means that it’s clean, and get their cooling from Deep Lake water.  There are piped going below the surface of Lake Ontario that apparently provide incredible cooling powers, meaning no air-conditioning is required in the building/brewing process.

I followed that up with a visit to the Baseball Park, where I could admire the gigantic CN tower and the Roundhouse Park – a decommissioned roundhouse using for services steam engine trains, Thomas the Tank Engine-style.

The bus was infuriating because the driver seemed to have no appreciation of the need for a customer to know when he would arrive at his destination.  Constant demands were made of him as to where we had just stopped and how long to the next destination (at least if he wasn’t going to mention where it was).  He reacted quite negatively to this – odd, when all he needed to do was announce over the speaker and everyone would have left him alone. 

Regardless, I made it to Niagara Falls and once again put in a solid effort in finding the hostel, settling in, and then realizing that I really could be anywhere, and if I truly was in Niagara Falls, then I should surely be able to hear or see something to prove it.  Marching out without a map, in the wrong direction after ignoring advice from a Frenchman to turn right and then right again, I got a bit lost.  As we know, I find backtracking to be a tiresome exercise, so I pressed on.  I listened to the river rage below, and rage it did.  50-100m below me you could just work out the speeding white rapids.  I wandered cluelessly through neighbourhoods, following the bright lights to what I assumed to be downtown.  The lights actually represented the tourist district, and I never made it there, or downtown, but sort of slipped right in between them both.  I felt better though, having a general idea of the lay of the land.  And that brinigs me to here, needless to say, I’m off to see the Falls, before I get on with more planning and more randomly self-infuriating adventures!!!