Malle Baie by Tadoussac
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'I didn’t have my regular confidence after the near debacle the other day and it took two people to navigate me out of a tight exit from the Auberge then a challenging drive here for both Strider and me. The road is a rollercoaster with grades 10-15% all the way.
We discovered a wonderful small town, Baie St. Paul, full
of art studio’s and restaurants. They were getting ready for their art festival
the following week. Many of the galleries
were high quality and we met a wonderful old lady who had turned her ancient
house into a gallery. She reminded us of
what our friend Gloria could be doing in another 25 years. It was the highlight of our time there.
My Favourite Gallery and Gallery Owner in Baie St. Paul
It always takes a long time to go a shorter
distance when there is beautiful scenery and interesting places to visit along
the way. This coast really is
spectacular. We intended to go to Tadoussac but didn’t make it past Malle Baie. We found a lovely B&B or Gite run by a 78
year old woman who had married a former Edmontonian.
She is a wealth of knowledge and gave us lots of options of things to do
including going on a zodiac whale watching tour which I have wanted to do
forever. We walked to a lovely
restaurant had a great dinner and then I settled in to read the proof of a
friends books. A good end to a good day.
The Garden by our place
Our Auberge
Day 2
We had a tasty breakfast and decided to
stay here another day rather than go to Chicoutimi. Our rooms are very nice, a good price, and
the lady is a great hostess. We drove up
to Tadoussac for the whale watching and on the way discovered that Strider has
a manual gear shift with 6 settings that I can operate from my steering
wheel. It also shows RPMs. Hope knows how to drive a standard and coached
me on how to determine what gear to be in.
It was so helpful to have it on some sections of the drive. I felt much more confident and relaxed.
We arrived in Tadoussac just in time to drive around the two streets, get a bite to eat, put on every warm piece of clothing we had and get suited up for the zodiacs.
It was so much fun. There were about 50 of us 20 to a boat mostly French speaking and more Germans, Spanish and Asians than the 3 English speaking Canadians.. It was a beautiful day to be out on the water. I didn’t bring my camera because we got splashed a lot but used my phone. We saw mink, finn and beluga whales at a distance and lots of seals. It wasn’t perfect whale watching, the zodiacs were big, not the little ones I have been on before, but they are comfortable and I appreciated that they didn’t want to go close and disturb the Beluga’s. At the end of the trip we went up the Saugany fiord along the cliffs to an amazing waterfall. The drive home felt like a piece of cake. I even detoured down a really steep side road to visit a tiny village that was quite lovely. We got back just before dark, had dinner at the same restaurant and they did not disappoint. There is a lot of big money around here, a spectacular golf course and casino and a lot of expensive, huge summer houses on the cliffs. Apparently Demarais has a fabulous castle that he uses to shoot pheasant for a week each fall with important people from all over Europe. Different life
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