Park Omega

Parc Omega is an open range wildlife park situated about 90 minutes drive from Montreal (or an hour from Ottawa). If you are travelling in this region and want to guarantee yourself to see some Canadian native fauna, this park is easy to access by car and you won't be disappointed with the variety of wildlife it contains.

The whole trip will take a day, plan to spend at least 3 hours within the park just to drive around and enjoy spotting the open range animals. You'll also want enough time to participate in one or more of the special presentations, follow a walking trail, have a packed picnic, or do some activities designed just for the kids if you have any.

Driving into the park, you'll immediately be approached by several deer. You can purchase food to offer the deer, and they will stick their heads into the car in the search for food - they will also quickly move on if you don't have any.

We didn't purchase any munchables for the animals and we were happier the deer had no reason to get too aggressive towards our vehicle in the hopes of obtaining treats. Some of the deer seemed to be getting a bit pushy with other cars, but no one seemed upset by this.

We visited the park in fall, and the auburn foliage was breathtaking. I imagine this park would be worth returning to in each season, and would provide a different experience each time.

Autumn is also the mating season for the deer, so we heard the call of the male deer through the forest, and saw the bucks rubbing their antlers against the trees. We didn't see any fights between the male deer, but it would be possible.

The highlight was seeing the moose. Yes, they have exactly one moose on the grounds right now, a grand fellow, but he has his own enclosure and while he has plenty of space, you will see him behind a fence. But he's the first live moose I've seen in Canada so it was still special. No great photos of him though, being behind a fence and all.

There is a beaver lake, but I failed to spot any beavers in it. Those little guys are masters at hiding. The bears and wolves were a lot of fun to visit as well, and you could take a walk along a boardwalk above their enclosures to get another view.

We drove to Mount Tremblant after visiting the park, it's about another 90 minutes out from Montreal and an hour from Omega, so it made sense for us to combine it into a day trip.

For more information you can visit the park's website.

Warrnambool & Mount Gambier

Warrnambool

This is one of the largest towns in Victoria, and a major agricultural hub. I travelled to Warrnambool to stay with a friend for a few days. I brought the dog along, and we spent every day of the long weekend at the beach on the coast. 

Warrnambool has a respectable town centre for rural Australia, with over two entire blocks dedicated to  to a shopping and restaurant district. There's patio dining available, and some restaurants were open later in Warrnambool on the weekend than they are in downtown Toronto! Of course, we didn't expect world class dining, nor did we receive it, but you'll find Aussie diner style food very easily here.

There's a few beaches available in Warrnambool, and if you go further than the most popular ones, you can find a beach that's practically deserted. That's where we spent most of our time. 

We travelled to Port Fairy one day for a beach without waves, and this is the first time my dog has gone for a swim, so I just went nuts with the photos.

Wallabies at Tower Hill Wildlife Reserve

We also checked out Tower Hill Wildlife Reserve (free entry), where we saw kangaroos and even an echidna! We stopped at the Botanical Gardens for Australia Day celebrations, where they'd arranged a BBQ, some kids activities and live music. It was the perfect place to enjoy the sun for a few hours, and a beautiful park to visit if you are in town.

Echidna at Tower Hill Wildlife Reserve

Overall, Warrnambool is a relaxing place to chill out, enjoy the beach, and experience the rural feel of an Aussie town without leaving the comforts of the city.

Tower Hill Wildlife Reserve

Mount Gambier

A friend of mine from overseas was staying in Sydney for a year. He kept telling me about the trip he was taking with his buddies - a drive from Adelaide to central Australia. I was astonished... he came all the way across the world to Australia and had no intention of visiting Melbourne. This was unacceptable. I told him, you fly to Melbourne, and I will DRIVE you to Adelaide. And so began the epic road trip of 2008.

Blue Lake

This drive took place over 5 days - with overnight stays at Apollo Bay, Nelson, Mount Gambier and Adelaide. The four of us stayed in caravan park accommodations the whole time (at the time that ranged from 40-60/night to house 3-4 people, but that's inflated a fair bit since). This trip was entire spontaneity. We didn't plan where to stop, we didn't pre-book accommodations (something you can't risk in the peak summer holidays on the Great Ocean Road), and we had no idea what the attractions were to see along the way.

Owls spotted at Mount Gambier

The place that made the biggest impression on me was Mount Gambier, and it's for sure where I took the most photos. The town is like any other Australian town, until you see their water source. In summer (December to March), the town's crater lake, named "Blue Lake" after it's striking color, is a magnificent sight. We took a guided tour through the dam to learn more about the lake. The most that I remember is that the water is blue from the way the sun reflects off the minerals in the water - the water is very hard with calcium (and tastes awful if you're not used to that), because of the way the lake's contents are filtered through the limestone crater.

Blue Lake

What's more special, is the drive we took to "Little Blue Lake". We were recommended to go here by a local, saying it's just like the blue lake but you can swim in it. At that time, the water in the little crater lake was just as beautiful, and we swam for a while (the water was a bit cold), and several people were diving from the edges of the crater as well. I don't know what minerals were in that lake, but when I got out my skin and hair felt like a million bucks. Tragically, Amber returned to the little lake a few years later, and there are now signs up informing people not to swim as blue-green algae has taken over the lake, and it is no longer blue in color. The larger Blue Lake is still a sight worth seeing though.

Little Blue Lake

Little Blue Lake

We also visited a garden that was situated within a crater (can't remember the name) and it's worth asking the information desk about that one when you're in the area. You walk down into the crater, and there's a beautifully maintained garden at the base. In the evening, the possums will come out and we spotted a possum that had stolen someone's sandwich.

Crater Park

The cheeky Possum

On our way out we visited the Princess Margaret Rose Cave, where we took a guided tour of the cave. It's always fun to see stalegtites an stalegmites, and hear about how these delicate cave structures develop over decades of underground condensation. It was my first time seeing an underground cave, and the structures in this cave were magnificent.

Mount Gambier Wildlife Reserve

Nelson

A funny thing about Nelson. We were driving along, and Amber was remniscing about when she was younger and her parents used to visit the town of Nelson. So we went looking for Nelson. What we found was a petrol station, that doubled as a bait/tackle store and a motel. After driving further out in each direction, we found no other signs of the rest of the town.

Pelicans at Nelson

We thought, well, this must be Nelson. So we settled into the motel, got a fishing license and went to fish in the lake - also an area that we had trouble finding (I suspect we didn't drive far enough, but we thought we had driven too far and must have missed it). We ended finding a place to fish, and actually caught enough for dinner on the BBQ that night. We left thinking that must be the smallest "town" we've ever seen!

Fishing at Nelson

Turns out, Amber returned to Nelson with her parents years later, and had we just driven a little further, we'd have found the actual town.

Passing Emu farms on the way to Adelaide

Related topics: The Great Ocean Road

Switzerland 5: Interlaken

Wednesday, September 19

Today was a treat. This journey just keeps getting better and better. After a restful sleep at our cozy airbnb, we followed the road along Lake Como's south shore towards Milan, and returned to Switzerland (yes, this is a mainly Swiss trip, remember). To this point, most of the drive was unremarkable. Our next stop: 

The Verzasca Dam

You may remember this Dam from such filmography as - the opening scene in Goldeneye. Yep, this is where James Bond bungees to the base of the dam and then swiftly takes out the bad guy on the toilet. This dam is so much better than filmed!

Now, to start off, we had some trouble locating the dam thing. Heehee, get it? I should have printed a map to this, because the GPS sounded very confused when trying to locate the Dam. We tentatively followed it's directions for an hour in what felt like the middle of nowhere, until we finally reached a small town. Then the GPS said we'd reached our destination. We were lucky to have found within that town, a single sign towards the dam. Following that, it was a while before we saw another sign. So my suggestion? Firstly, bring a map, or a googlemap printout, something to get your bearings. Then, you may have better luck and confidence locating the nearest township - eg: Selvatica, or Gordemo, then finding a sign to the attraction from there.

Getting back to our time there. Man, do I wish we had packed a picnic for today! We saw the dam, you need to pay for short term parking at the attraction. There's a visitors centre and some restrooms here. After this, civilisation was sparse, and what few restaurants we did see either didn't appear appetising, or didn't appear open. The dam doesn't take too long to see, but it's a stunning vision. Now, for any die hard fans out there, there is a company that does the 007 bungee jump from this location. How cool is that! Sadly (and thankfully) for us, we arrived a week after peak season ended, so this company only ran trips on weekends and we couldn't rotate our itinerary around that. I'm not too fussed about missing it, I doubt I'd have the guts for this. Usually bungee jumping is over a body of water, but this one is into a narrow gorge alongside a slightly concave concrete wall. It feels like you'd be closed in on 3 sides doing this jump.

Verzasca Valley

Verzasca Valley

From the dam, we headed further up the road into the Verzasca Valley. This valley feels like a step back into another era, it almost feels enchanted. The road winds around the mountainside, and in the escarpment below you can see a crystal river flowing across the shallow green-tinged rocks towards the dam. Then you discover medieval-looking buildings. We would have loved to find a way down to the riverbed, or drive further into the valley than we went, but eventually our hunger got the best of us.

Verzasca Valley

We returned to the nearest Coop supermarket for some snacks. I also picked up some Coop brand Gianduja chocolate - at about CHF 1 for 100g, it's the cheapest Gianduja (hazelnut melt-in-mouth chocolate) I've ever seen, and I regret not buying more for my trip home.

Sustenstrasse

Our day took another spectacular turn as we drove to Interlaken. All I know, is that this is the name of the street we took, according to our GPS. I can only imagine how spectacular this road would be in full visibility, because we were dropping our jaws with every turn and we could barely see ten metres in front of us.

Either we were up in the clouds, or it was really foggy. As we reached the valley on the other side of the pass, it was raining heavily. It's possible the low visibility added mystery, adventure and beauty to this road, but I can't imagine how it could be less impressive when you can actually see it. And even if not, it's a fun drive with lots of turns.

Brienz

Brienz waterfront

On the way to Interlaken we stopped by at Brienz, which is a town on the lakeside. We visited the free Brienz wildlife park, which is just inland of the lake, you follow signs to the parking lot then walk up a hill through the woods - then you see some enclosures with animals, and there are food dispensers to buy food to feed the animals with. It was a fun way to spend a half hour.

Brienz Wildlife Park

Trümmelbach Falls

Trummelbach Falls

This waterfall flows through a slot canyon. You can walk within the canyon tunnels to see some parts of the waterfall, and outside of the mountain to see other parts. We checked this out as a side note on our way to Interlaken, mainly out of spontaneity. It's an easy walk to the waterfall. If you don't want to walk too much uphill, there is an elevator available to take people closer to the top of the falls, so then you only need to walk down.

Interlaken

We arrived at Interlaken before dark, and checked into our hotel. Our hotel was off a pedestrian-only zone. This made it a little tricky to figure out where to park. We ended up parking in a pay zone for a short time to walk and find the hotel, then they told us how to reach the free parking which was about 5-10 minutes walk away. The hotel was associated with a Mexican restaurant, which we had our included breakfast at the following morning.

We browsed the streets and did some window shopping before settling on a restaurant for dinner. Honestly, I'm struggling to remember where we went for dinner, because the place was great and had a price fix 3 course menu. I want to say it was the Belvedere Brasserie based on its location, so if not this restaurant, it was one nearby that provided a price fix menu with mainly French/Swiss cuisine on offer, and faced the Hohematte park. I mention this because yet again, we were very content with the quality of our meal, and felt the value was good for the price fix.

Thursday, September 20

Having taken full advantage of our first opportunity to sleep late, we went downstairs and found a brochure for the Schilthorn, which is yet again, another James Bond fan site, which boasts a panoramic mountain-top view and restaurant. We had plans for the afternoon and didn't have the 3 hours it would take to see this site without the stress of getting back in time. If I were to do it all again, I'd have woken up earlier and gone to the Schilthorn for breakfast. We had a lazy morning shopping the main street of Interlaken.

On to our exciting afternoon plans - hang gliding! Now, I've been wanting to go tandem hang gliding for a long time. And not the kind where you're pulled up by another vehicle, but the kind where you jump of a mountain and fly. It's a really tough thing to find, and I couldn't find it anywhere I've travelled in Canada. Where is more perfect to do this than in Switzerland?

Our tour guide was Eddie, an Aussie bloke that decided to drop everything and move to Switzerland for his dream. He picked us up promptly at noon, and we drove up a mountain to a take off site. We only had one guide for this trip, sometimes there are the two guides that will go up together. So Mike and I each took off separately, and watched each other glide down from the landing site. That was a great photo opportunity so we were happy with that. You have to help carry the equipment about 300 metres to the take off site from the car drop off, and he showed me how to assist assembling the glider and then checked my work afterwards.

Then on to the challenge - running as fast as you can down a steep hill, then jump! It's a bit nerve racking to run down a hill at a speed that you know you won't be able to stop. We had a few practice runs before bringing the glider with, because you have to jump at the right time. Then, we were up in the air. We were up for probably about 10-15 minutes, although I wasn't looking at the time. The view from the bird's eye is spectacular. We had clear blue skies, a stunning blue lake, and tree studded mountains. If you're up for some tricks, and the conditions are safe, the guide will happily do some dives and spins. Eddie took some photos of us from the air, with a camera attached to the glider, and Mike and I chose to purchase the photos later - hey, it's once in a lifetime!

I couldn't be happier with my experience through this company, and if you've ever wanted to try hang gliding, this is the best location I can think of for it. If you're in the area, and you're a bit hesitant, I can't imagine how you'd be disappointed if you bite the bullet on this one - go for it! It is expensive to hang glide with these guys in Interlaken (currently at 235 CHF), but I certainly don't regret a single cent.

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