New Brunswick

It was the last week of May and my very last week to be in Canada. I was enjoying my Cambridge new home, but yet I had a plan where to spend the last days: New Brunswick, a province in the east from Québec and with an access to Atlantic through Bay of Fundy and Gulf of Saint Lawrence. I made some research and found those facts:

• A truly bilingual province, in the north prevail French, in the south English
• People are very friendly
• Capital is Fredericton, with 50ths ppl
• The whole NB has only 750ths people
• Air distance North-South is 320km
• The best place (together with Nova Scotia) for hitchhiking in Canada

My plan was following:
To go through Quebec province to the north of NB, hitchhike along St. John river to Fredericton, spend 2 nights there and then continue to Saint John. There is a scenic old highway, going in the valley along the river. From St John I'd fly back to Toronto.

So on Monday I begin my trip in a night bus to Montréal. There I spend a hot sunny day by biking around the city and meeting with Marilyn on a couchsurfing picnic. In the afternoon I found my driver and went to Québec City. So far good, 800km in one day :) I met my old friend Sophie in her restaurant and we finished the day with a beer.

Sophie didn't work on Tuesday and we could hang out together, in Art Gallery, Harbour, Market place, etc. There was no car going in the direction I needed (north-east, on the south side of Saint Lawrence river) and taking a bus was the only option to move on. So later in the afternoon I said goodbye to Sophie and QC and in 2 hours I reached Rivière-du-Loup, a small city conveniently placed on my way and where I found a couchsurfing host. Diane was an older lady living in a beautiful house with her cats and the youngest daughter. We spend the evening talking as she was really interesting person to meet.

R-d-L

On Wednesday we took a breakfast and a little tour around R-d-L together. Around noon I was leaving and finally crossing borders to New Brunswick getting off, after 4 hours, in Edmundston, in the north of the province. From there I started my hitchhiking part. First day my plan was to reach Fredericton, but I hadn't realized that by my old road it was around 300km, there wasn't big traffic and most importantly drivers used it to go only locally. So at the end of the day I got stuck, using 5 lifts, in Grand Falls some 70km from Edmundston. The hitchhiking didn't really work as I planned. It was getting dark and my chances to reach Fredericton got hopeless. But nevermind, being prepared this didn't seem to be a big problem. I found several good spots for sleeping, sent my host in Fredericton a message I was not coming this day and headed to a bar to kill time before night. Grand Falls, says Wikipedia, is situated on the Saint John River and derives its name from a waterfall created by a series of rock ledges over which the river drops 23 metres. I believe the waterfall is very nice when there is enough water, which wasn't that case. Before going to "bed" I went to check where a bus station was (in NB for some reason bus stops are usually located in gas stations somewhere far at city suburbs), because I decided that next morning I'd take a bus as there was just one in a day. Had hitchhiked again I would have risked to get to Fredericton very late (if at all). And then happened the weird shocking story: While walking back to the centre a black car stopped besides me with a person I couldn't tell if it was a man or woman. He asked where I was going and if I had a place to stay as he owned a car camp. For an immeasurable moment I thought I was saved, before a big alarm shouted hold on! This is just a typical situation! "No thanks, I'm visiting a friend of mine" I heard me saying. Fortunately the person left away. Never happened to me before :)
My squating place was an entrance to a camp-site, creating a nice shelter with a wooden floor. In the middle of the night I woke up experiencing something I'll never forget: There was a huge moose walking slowly around me in the moonlight. So beautiful and majestic animal!

Thursday: I woke up early in the morning from cold, said goodbye to Grand Falls and caught my bus to Fredericton. I arrived before noon and met my host Bradford. Fredericton is beautiful and small so quickly I had my sightseeing done and we could leave for a short nature walk. In the evening we visited a bar where was supposed to be a live music; this didn't happen so we changed to another bar with karaoke.

On Friday morning I took another bus to Saint John, my final destination. There I had another couch at Steven's place. I met another couchsurfer there, Theresa from Denmark, travelling through whole Canada! We were discovering beauties of SJ together. It's also a little town, but the largest in NB, situated along the north shore of the Bay of Fundy at the mouth of the St. John River. Saint John is the industrial powerhouse of the Maritime provinces of Canada. Wealthy industrialist K.C. Irving and his family built an industrial conglomerate in the city during the 20th century with interests in oil, forestry, shipbuilding, media and transportation. Irving companies remain dominant employers in the region with the most important businesses being eastern North America's first deepwater oil terminal, a pulp mill, a newsprint mill and a tissue paper plant. Other important economic activity in the city is generated by the Port of Saint John (until the early 2000s Canada's largest shipyard), the Moosehead Brewery and others [wikipedia]. I found SJ very nice, conveniently small to reach everything by walking and in a close distance from beaches - we visited one the next day, and I got very sunburned there :).

Theresa was also leaving on Saturday (she was going further to Nova Scotia) and I had my flight in the afternoon. Like bus stations, also the airport is very far from the town! Hadn't my great hosts driven me there I'd have had to take a taxi (no bus going there on weekends).

It was very great to see another part of Canada and to meet cool people on couchsurfing and to see my friends in Montréal and Québec one last time! And because my hitchhiking didn't work as planned, I had a great encounter with the ms. Moose :)

CA17 New Brunswick trip May 2010