Broken Shit and Animals

 

As I write this Ghost and I are speeding through the Manitoba wilderness back to the grand city of Winnipeg!  Well, sort of.  While we are heading through the Manitoba wilderness and back to the grand city of Winnipeg there is of the less speeding more…moving.  With some stopping.  And the occasional going backwards!

We’re traveling back from Churchill via one of the two methods of moving between Churchill and Winnipeg; flying or training.  We are training it up.  This is a first time experience for both off us so we were pretty stoked to get onto the train and see what the trip is like. We’re in sleeper berths as the ride is 45 hours long and we decided sitting in a chair that entire time would be nothing short of hell-ish.  The beds, at least mine is, are quite comfy and according to the attendant, they are the largest ones on the train. 

Watching the Manitoba wilderness pass by is interesting.  Leaving Churchill we got lots of the expected flat, flat, flat barren swamp.  When I fell asleep last night the scenery had developed a few more trees but it was still WYDRAFAW flat (my fancy acronym for watch your dog run away for a week.  Aren’t I clever?).  The scenery this morning has developed to bumpy with tall, plentiful trees but is still most definitely wet, wet, wet. Manitoba should win some sort of award for this much water.  Or, we should just keep this in mind next time Alberta has a drought, come  and siphon it up. Still too far out for phone service (I checked) but I think we have a stop today in somewhere called Thompson and maybe I’ll be able to connect to the far away world then.

I just realized I didn’t explain my whole “moving, with some stopping”.  Apparently, in order for the train to not literally fly off the rails, we can only do a certain speed.  That speed is under 100km/hour. Sometimes we are heading along nicely and others we slow to a crawl.  Last night we stopped a few times, (don’t know why), and then would back up a bit and start again.  This reminded me of a story Ghost told me his dad told him about POWs in WWII.  The story goes that the POWs from Europe (or wherever.  Not Canada) were being transported via train across Canada to an encampment in Alberta.  Because Canada is so massive, the train ride took a while and the POWs swore that during the night, the train had to be being backed up.  I never really think about how big Canada is until I travel across it, but last night I started laughing when they put the train into reverse.

Speaking of reverse, I am going to take this story about our adventures and back it up a bit, specifically to yesterday when Ghost and I got to…(pause for dramatic affect) play with beluga whales!!!  It was awesome.  We were taken out on kayaks onto the Churchill river and paddled around while these gorgeous and rather funny, creatures came and bumped into the kayak, tailed the kayak, played with our paddles and splorfed water at us (splorf being the sound they make when they surface and blow air/water at you from their blow hole).  Ghost and I also discovered that when the guide says “feel free to go explore” she means “eh, tourists.  They won’t go that far.”  They sent the zodiac that accompanies the group out after us to tell us we had gone way too far.  Apparently they were not expecting people to be that successful at paddling.

This would be one of the whales about two feet from our kayak.

 

A slightly odd shot of looking down the whale's blow hole, but a good example of how close they got.  The yellow thing is the kayak.

The day before, Ghost and I rented a truck and headed out of town to go find a downed cargo plane called Miss Piggy, named because she carried pigs and because of her large carrying capacity.  The guide book says that on a landing she developed engine troubles and had to land amongst the rocks (where she is still sitting).  For those (myself) who are worried about dead people still sitting strapped to the seats, their eye sockets staring at all who trespass, haunting their dreams with their cries of grief at the lost chance in life….will be pleased to know that the plane landed without a casualty! 

We found the plane about twenty kilometres out.  We parked and then hiked the kilometre in to see it.  This is something, that apparently due to the risk of bears, one should not do without a gun. Being the left-wing people we are, we lacked a gun.  Thankfully we did not make the morning news as “those eaten tourists”.  The plane was exceptionally creepy and Ghost got to enjoy me being super wigged out and “not wanting to go any closer, isn’t this close enough, it’s really creepy!” He, wisely, did not listen to my protestings and we got close enough to take some awesome pictures and walk around it.  

Creepy-ass plane. 

Churchill is a weird place.  The tourist attractions seem to be, as Ghost put it “broken shit and animals."  Along the gravel highway that we were driving there are attractions like old broken plane, potential sighting of bears, old broken ship, adult Canadian eskimo dogs (we got to pat them.  They were cool) and old broken satellite thingy.  Broken shit also comes with its own lustrous art like the penis-dragon.  This is why this blog is adult content.  Penis-dragon.

 

Penis-dragon.

Churchill was definitely interesting.  The locals vary in how much they say you should worry about the bears, so use your brain.  Probably not a good idea to wander outside of the town but inside seems to be fine.  At least in August.  I’m not speaking for October-November.  That’s something else.  Oh be warned.  Shit be expensive in Churchill as everything has to get shipped up.  $10 for 4 litres of milk and gas at $2.16/litre.  Oh yeah.  Good times.  Beer is nice and cheap though, as it’s government regulated, so I say skip the milk, drink the beer.  

If you are considering a Churchill trip I would aim for about three days.  Seems to be the right amount of time to comfortably see stuff.  Where we stayed, Don and Hiromi’s Polar Bear B&B, has better rates than the hostel and they are really nice and the place is insanely clean, so go there (I’m pretty sure Hiromi sneaks in during the day and cleans.  It’s little things, like the top of the desk shining).  Do one of the animal tours, depending on when you are going to be there.  And go see the broken shit.  While broken, it is still pretty cool.  And, penis-dragon!  On that mature note, I will leave you and return to watching trees go by.

*this was written while on the train from Churchill to Winnipeg and I did not get internet until three days later, so it's a little out of date.*