Ottawa, Canada

View of Ottawa.

My time in Ottawa was a great example of how a great couch surfing host can vastly improve your travel experience. When travelling solo for such a long time it can be difficult to find the motivation to get out and explore, ending in lots of procrastination and time-wasting. Also because the amount of time ahead of me in the trip was so vast, everything seems a little daunting. Not to mention how difficult it is to meet people, but to be constantly having to meet people "cold" - that is, starting conversations with complete strangers.

This is where couch surfing is amazing, and despite all its difficulties for a trip like this (locks you in to a bit of a schedule, making touring a bit less opportunistic and spontaneous), the benefits of being able to meet interesting people far outweighs the downsides. Ottawa wasn't the most interesting city I went to in North America, but I had a great time due to the people I hung out with. If I hadn't managed to find a couch surfing host I would have stayed at a hotel, gone out drinking, maybe talked to a few Canadians at the bar, then spend the next day walking around the city by myself taking photos.

Ottawa's parliament building.

Because I stayed with these lovely Canadians - Paige and Matt - I got to meet interesting people (people on Couch Surfing are generally very engaging, interesting and fun) and see Ottawa from an local's perspective which is far more fascinating than a tour guide's view. I think without this human connection travelling can turn into some sort of scavenger hunt, where you look up "best things to do in X" on trip advisor, wander to each sight/monument/attraction, take the obligatory photos and then go back to you hotel room that looks the same as every other one.

My situation for couch surfing was a little unique, I needed to find lots of hosts and stay for a relatively short amount of time. So to improve my changes, I'd find a few (3-5) profiles that I'd like the look of and write messages to each one. Hosts generally want more personalised messages - which is fair - so I always tried to pick out bits of their profile that we had in common or ask them questions. Sometimes this could be rather difficult.

Awesome looking spider sculpture in Ottawa.

A small number of hosts would have strange little games in their profiles like "mention my dog's name in your response", or "the first word of your response should be the 3rd word of my description". Once I'd see something like this I'd generally move on to the next profile. I didn't have the time for these shenanigans

Even if I jumped through all those hoops, who's to say the person was going to be free to host anyway? Hey hosts, CS recommends writing 5 requests per travel destination, which means I have to:

1. Find suitable profiles
2. Read your long-ass profile
3. Gauge whether or not you're a psychopath (believe me, there are some weird-as-fuck people on CS)
4. Workout if we'd get along
5. Respond with a personal message, using my comprehension skills to try and relate bits in the profile to me or my profile.
6. Rinse, repeat x4

A completely unstaged scene.
Left to Right: Dale, Matt and Paige.

This takes a significant amount of time - time spent on a tiny laptop where I could be seeing the sights. Or drinking!

Plus there was some push by CS to find something in common with my hosts. Why do I want to meet people like me? Yeah let's go find some boring system engineers so we can talk design methodologies and argue what programming languages are better. I want to meet all sorts of people, that's what makes travelling interesting. I don't want to hang out with me all the time. I already do that every day!

Ultimately I did achieve the diverseness I wanted through couch surfing: From pot-heads to police officers, hippies to enlisted air force personnel - I was damn happy with the result!

Paige and I in Gatineau Park.

Paige's couch surfing profile was very refreshing. It basically just said (apart from her interests etc.), "no games, just send me a message and let me know what's up". Paige was a hardcore traveller though, so I think she could better relate to people in my situation. Paige and her husband Matt were planning to take an entire year off to go travel through Asia, and both seemed to work with a purpose of saving up for the trip. Paige herself had travelled for very long periods of time on her own.

Gatineau Park, Quebec.

When I arrived in Ottawa, I met Paige at her home; A nice little apartment made out of the basement of a suburban house. When Matt arrived home we all hoped in the car and headed downtown to meetup with Dale; the other couch surfer. Dale was an Australian (Melbournian, which make up 90% of the Aussies I met in the US) who was also on a very North America long tour such as myself. He was travelling across the US with a friend in a van, and had parted temporarily so he could head up to see America's Hat. 

We all drove around some famous parts of Ottawa we saw the parliament building, eternal flame monument and other historical landmarks. Then we all got a beer at a Russian-themed bar. The bar's back room had an awesome collection of Russian propaganda posters from WWII right through to the cold war. It also had some dude sleeping back there who didn't seem too pleased when we turned the lights on.

Gatineau Park, Quebec.

For dinner we all went to the best kebab place in Ottawa (according to Matt). The kebabs in Canada seem almost exactly the same as the Australian ones, except they have more pickled vegetables in them. It was like pickled turnip or something? Can't quite remember.

That night I saw first hand the weird North American activity of feeding your cats catnip - basically cocaine for cats. I've never seen anyone do this in Australia where you give your pets a "recreational" substance to make them more entertaining  It made Paige's cats go kind of mental, but they loved it - the fat one would push the other cat out of the way if it got into the way of his drug hit. Dale and I were very fascinated by the whole thing.

The next day Paige did not have to work, so she drove Dale and I through Gatineau Park, which was beautiful this time of year. The leaves on the maples were all changing, I would have loved to ride through the park but did not have time.

Later that day I set off for Montreal, French Canadian country!

Toronto, Canada

The ride into Toronto was pretty uneventful, just long, slow freeway. Lot's of traffic as I got closer to my hotel. The view of downtown Toronto as I passed over the top was pretty spectacular though, for me the city looked modern and... what's the word... clinical?

When I arrived at the Day's Inn, I had the most unenthusiastic front desk girl I've ever met. She seemed to have given up on life, despite my earnest friendliness. I wanted to try and get to downtown the next day, and she informed me that it would be at least about an hour of commuting and 2 bus rides.

This is my only photo of Toronto.

That night I also found out that my hotel was nowhere near any bar or decent food place, so I just settled on some schnitzel burger place.

I'm ashamed to say that the next day (my full day in Toronto) I didn't get to downtown. Not that I wasn't busy, I spent half the day responding to selection criteria, as the time had come for me to start looking for a job back home. Also the day looked pretty miserable weather-wise, which drained my motivation somewhat. Before this day I'd never seen fog still hanging around at 3 in the afternoon.

That night I did something very Canadian and got dinner at Tim Horton's. Apparently it's the place to be for local riff raff and douche bags.

Here's hoping I get more motivated in Ottawa!

Niagara Falls, Canada

Stopping at a very well respected Canadian coffee chain.

Originally I was going to stay the night in Buffalo, head up to the Canadian side of the falls for a day, then continue my journey through the US. However I thought that while I was so close to the Canadian border, it was probably worthwhile doing a quick trip through East Canada. So I booked a hotel for Niagara Falls and Toronto then put in couch surfing requests for Ottawa and Montreal.

Crossing the Canadian border was relatively straight-forward. I remembered to take my passport out of my pannier and put it in my glove box so I could pass easily through. The Canadian border patrol were pretty chill, asked me a few questions about my trip and I didn't even have to take my helmet off! Passed through the inspection, paid 3 American dollars at the toll both and then I was through.

Riding through Niagara Falls (the city).

It was a little weird to get used to being back on the metric system again, obviously all the speed limits were now in KM/H. Thankfully my speedometer showed both metric and imperial units.

By the time I arrived in Niagara Falls it was getting dark, so I headed down to a local brewery for dinner. Since they brewed in-house I got to try real Canadian beer. According to the bartender, many Canadian breweries have now been bought out by American ones, so getting a real "Canadian" beer could be a little difficult at the regular drinking holes.

I noticed that not much had changed from the time I left the US, the culture seemed to be about the same. Replace Starbucks with Tim Horton's and that's about it. Mind you I was very close the the US border, so the American influence may have been creeping in a bit.

The falls from behind.

The next day was kind of miserable, cold, wet and rainy. A perfect day to go see a giant waterfall. I packed all my stuff up and headed down towards the falls. 

From just the ride down from the hotel to the falls I got fairly wet - at the time I left the hotel it was clear but it started raining almost as soon as I set off. The weather trickery meant I did not bother with the wet-weather gear (I didn't have wet weather pants by this stage in the journey anyway). 

What I found a little puzzling is that it's not that clear how to get to the falls, or good places to park. There were these massive empty car parks (presumably due to it being off-season), but the were quite a distance away from the waterfall. And I thought there'd be signs everywhere saying "Falls this Way", surely this would be the only reason people are in this town. 

However at some point I was able to see a massive spray of water rising off in the distance, which put me in the right direction. I found a car park for $8 an hour, got my SLR out and walked down to the falls. 

Looking a little uncomfortable. But proof that I was there!

I got pretty fucking soaked. I don't think it was even raining then, but the spray coming off the falls was very heavy. Many tourists were wearing ponchos, but I just had my light weatherproof jacket on, which was really good at deflecting the water off my torso and onto my jeans. These were the Kevlar jeans too, so they get really heavy when they're wet.

Needless to say I was pretty uncomfortable, but I managed to get a few shots of the falls. Honestly I was a little worried about my SLR getting damaged by the water, so I didn't take that many photos. The water spray would almost instantly put drops all over the lens, meaning I had to keep wiping it with a damp cloth - not very effective. 

The falls without a cold wet man in front.

One thing that was pretty amazing is how close you could get to the falls. The edge of it only seemed to be a couple of feet away. I wonder how they deal with the erosion? The falls are constantly eroding back the edge causing the horseshoe shape to be noticeably different every decade or so.

Despite all my problems, it was fantastic to see the falls. They are immense - the volume of water that comes off them is staggering. It might be nice to see them in the summer though, I may have done the boat tour if it was a little warmer.

I eventually took refuge in the close-by tourist centre  where I dripped and pondered how my 5 hour ride to Toronto later on was going to go in cold, wet jeans.

The tour ship approaching the falls.

The "American" falls on the other side.

In the end I decided to ride to a local Tim Horton's and dry off for a bit. After a few hours I set off on the freeway to Toronto.