Saturday 7th September. Sept-Iles, Quebec Provence, Canada.
Sept-Iles (Seven Islands) is a town of 24,000 people. They have a port and have had eight cruise ships here this year. This is the first time that a Royal ship has been here. But not the last I believe.
The town went all out to greet us. They have small ships come to visit so had a nice pier and a good set up. But with only 18 hours notice they were ready for us.
Pretty funny! News people were everywhere when we arrived .|
Interviews with everyone.
The pier was set up with many shops and stalls, bike hire, tourist information and all. The school bus drivers had been called in for the days, and the buses made available to run free shuttles to town from 8am-8pm.
It was so exciting. I had seen the square yellow buses in movies and whenever in North America. And today I finally got to go in one. I was ridiculously excited to do this.
I sat their quoting the lines from Forest Gump when Forest was looking for a seat – “Seats taken!”
Everyone got into the spirit and we played school kids – planning to wag, hair pulling, blowing imaginary spit balls and singing songs. So much fun.
We then went to get our hire car. And another problem. The girl running the show was very out of her element and was just handing out cars.
We heard three people got to collect their car – one way hires to all over Canada and the US only to be told that they now didn’t have enough cars for them to have a one way hire.
WE heard her give (what we believed to be) our car to the person in front of us – whose booking she couldn’t find.
When she got to us she said that she didn’t have any more ‘economy’ cars. More would be coming from the airport later.
“Well that will not do. We have a contract for a car now, at this price. We didn’t care what kind of car e got for that price”.
After 15 minutes of ‘discussion’ with both her and her boss on the phone regarding contracts etc – we drove away in a gigantic pick-up truck!
And off we went. What a sensational day we had!
We headed along the main road – Interstate 138 towards Quebec. Our first stop was as a diner where we had a great Brunch.
We are an hour away from the ship, and were having a ball. We were the celebrities with people chatting to us. The manager even came out to chat.
I didn’t realise this part of Canada was quite so French. Almost no one spoke English. All signs were in French. The menus were French. Even the car spoke French, so we pushed buttons to make things work.
In the diner we saw the news on TV. It was all about us.
But was official. We were refugees. According to the news. A story ran every 15 minutes titled
“OURAGAN DORIAN
2100 CROISIERISTES SE REFUGIENT A SEPT-ILES”
HURRICANE DORIAN
2100 CRUISE SHIP REFUGIES IN SEPT-ILES”.
But 2100 plus crew “refugees” is big news. Cameras everywhere. We keep looping on the local news.
After chatting Richard, from the next table gave us directions for things to see.
“Oh. Just wait. You can follow me”. He jumped into his car and lead us down to a lovely natural park.
So much fun.
We walked through the park. Wandered down lovely trails and saw the waterfall. The river was lovely. Then headed off to drive around many of the small towns.
They houses were lovely. The driveways were interesting. People were winterising their houses. Most of the drives were black – many painted in what looked like a tar product. Guess it helps to defrost the driveway in winter.
It was pretty cool already – early Autumn, so would be very cold here. Snow flags were on fire hydrants, fence posts, garden edges etc. The temperature was around 13 degrees but the wind was fairly mean.
Sept-Iles (Seven Islands), is a huge wineglass type bay. Be drove to the other side of the bay. About 100ks.
We could see giant buildings there, but were going to try to see birds. One of the islands is an important bird sanctuary. But alas all we really saw was the gigantic Aluminium plant – ‘Alouette’. It took up most of the peninsular. Massive.
We decided that it looked like a waterpark with its giant blue
tubes everywhere. What wasn’t the plant was very pretty.
Back through one of the towns we saw a skate park – multi-purpose. Bet all the
kids use it for snowboarding in winter.
All along the highway were side lanes for snowmobiles and quad bikes.
There was a ski resort nearby – so I guess it’s very cold. The triple glazing at the café should have
been a giveaway.
We stopped at a small fruit shop for a look. Much of it was grown in the market
gardens. It was very rural and not perfect fruit. We looked at some birds on the
shore nearby. Great Blue Herons in large groups. Bald eagles. Canadian Warbler.
There were little birdhouses for swallows on posts all around.
We saw a very rude goat!
It was then on to Parc Aylmer- Whitton. A wilderness park. Stunning. Beautiful
trails through the nicest forest. And what made it even better was that it was
full of squirrels. Le Cureuil Roux – Red Squirrels. The Eurasian one found in coniferous woods. And these were amazing coniferous
woods, with the best moss and lichen forest on the floor. So many mushrooms
grew under the pines.
Le Cureuil Roux were still very wild, but know that the humans brought peanuts for them.
At the fruit shop they didn’t have whole peanuts, so we bought a snack pack of salted ones, then had to suck the salt off before little the cute guys have them.
They would see you walking down the path and make their presents known. You wold then stand very still and drop peanuts at your feet and out they would come. Only one at a time – and SO FAST. The they would stand at your feet being adorable and eating the treat.
When they were it the bushes racing around you couldn’t focus on them. You just saw movement.
They were quite territorial. At one time one came at us from each side of the path. Apparently this is not OK. And it was on. No fighting – but a chase. One chased the other round and round in the forest for many minutes. Screaming at each other as they blurred around. The noise they make is amazing. So loud for their size and normally a chirping sound, but these two were screaming. One in rage and the other, I’m sure, in fear.
The forest was full of person-made bird boxes, ranging from extremely tiny to about 400×400. At another time, a squirrel sat up a bird box and chittered and chirped to us. Many times.
They are so unbelievable delightful. Tiny. Fast. About the size of a rat with a top coat on, but so pretty.
We walked down to the water and watched Bald Eagles and other birds. The mosquitoes were mauling us so Grace and I headed back and left Lou to watch birds. We chatted, fed squirrels and wandered along. In totally the wrong direction. We laughed a lot and finally made our way back. Funny.
But we did feed more squirrels and even saw Le Tamia Raye – Eastern Chipmunks. Smaller, faster and even more adorable if it’s possible with their yellow and brown stripping.
And when we got back a family of Quebec Marmots – Groundhogs, (or also called Woodchucks) came out from under a rock. They are a large burrowing rodent, part of the squirrel family. Heavy build, round with thick fur and bushy tails. About 5 kg.
Cute!
We then wandered back along the bay, turning down roads and looking at houses and back to the ship. We needed to eat. We were refugees after all.
So much fun.
That night I tried to change my flights home but the Web site kept crashing.
I tried to ring Qantas to organise a flight home but the machine told me there was a four hour wait and I was about no 1,234,567 in line.
Sarah tracked down the text line number for me so I messaged them.
I started this process at about 30 minutes after midnight.
And it went downhill from there. After sending in all my information and answering questions the person would then ask me “do you wish to proceed?” “Well no, not until you tell me the flight times and plans.”
Then that person would disappear. Then a new person would come on and away we would go again.
Sunday 8th September, Sept-Iles, Canada.
This text message to Qantas went on for …… 14 hours! I should have waited the four fours on hold! I will admit that I did fall asleep between 3 and 4a, and then 5 to 6.30, but apart from that it was this answering a question every 10-15 minutes, then that operator going on tea break or something.
It was the worst service ever! They just could not go off script. It’s called an “Autobot” service…. Maybe it was a sophisticated computer…. but it was bad.
Anyway – at 2.30 pm, finally a new person came on (well a new name anyway). Told him all the who, why and where……and within 15 minutes my new flights were booked. Since there were no points flights available for the next few days, when Grace and Lou said the next tip was 5 days (now 4 as we were late getting to Boston), and going to Bermuda, we decided what the heck, we would do that. If I had to wait for flights in a hotel I may as well wait for them on a ship.
Yay. So now I am getting home on the 18th.
Next day was more of the same.
This time we headed in the opposite direction. But first a trip to Walmart – which is always an adventure. They sell everything.
we drove in the other direction, trying to find a big national park, but it appeared that access was only via a goat track, and although we had a huge 4×4 pick up, we didn’t want to go bush bashing, so we headed back.
Great beaches.
Then we stopped at a few beaches. The edge of the hurricane was hitting and the beaches were wild with huge winds. And at a few rivers.
We then dropped the car off and back to the ship.
As we sailed away members of the town saw us off with a bon voyage sign.
What a delightful time we had in this little town. The had had eight ships this year – so having us for two days must have been a good kick to the economy, but they were just so lovely to us.
Of course when chatting in the lifts – most people had to say that “Humph – what a boring two days they had had.”
Well if you just sit around of course you will be bored. We were exhausted. Hahaha.
It was then two sea days to Boston. Wonderful.
Now a day in Boston before the now four day trip to Bermuda.