Beautiful Elora

Just 1.5 hrs away from Toronto, Elora is a beautiful small village situated on the Grand river. If you are thinking that the name sounds similar to Ellora (Aurangabad)...Well, the village was indeed named after our very own Ellora. A British official inspired by Ellora named it so. (Source: Wikipedia)

We found Elora a perfect getaway, as it's so close to Toronto and the countryside is enchanting and refreshing. The village is so laid-back and people are very friendly. It's a good place to explore especially for people interested in arts/crafts, culture. We also saw tourists taking a ride in carriages driven by huge horses. We are planning to go back to this place again in Autumn for the lovely fall colors.

Apart from the village, the main attraction is camping/ picnic and water activites in Grand River. I was keen on going for tubing as it sounded something new. We reached the conservation area and rented a pair of huge tubes, helmets and life jackets. We had to walk for almost 20 minutes to reach the river. We thought that there would be a guide at the site to tell us how to go about it. But all we found was a bunch of spectators and hobby photographers waiting for us to take a leap into the river! The river looked kinda dangerous with fierce rapids.

The questions that popped in our brains...
What if we fall off the tube? Where is the end point? How to get out once we start off? What if there are huge fish inside ??? (this one was my concern :P)

Anyway, we let down all our inhibitions and ventured into the river slowly. I made S sit on the tube and pushed him through :D.... Off he went along with the flow. I couldn't spot him after some distance. Soon after, I tried maneuvering myself with my hands and feet. I was so bad at it that the tube kept going round and round instead of catching the stream. Absolute entertainment for the watchers! :))

Meanwhile S came back for his next ride down the stream. I was so relieved to see him! This time he helped me around with the tube and soon I was in rough rapids trying not to fall off the tube. It was a super cool ride and I loved it!
I realised that the water was hardly knee deep and we could get off and walk back at any point. This made me go for few more rounds of fun tubing. We were left completely exhausted.





The after Effects of tubing:
> I successfully got my first coat of tan for this summer
> My shoes got a nice, clean wash...:D
> We were so thrilled to jump in that we forgot that S had the digicam in his pocket. Yes...the digicam got soaked in water. It is not working but we are hopeful that it might after it dries inside.

We walked back to return the tube and accessories. S held the tube on his shoulder and carried it. I thought that was a bad idea and advised him to roll the tube along the road effortlessly. Brilliant eh??....actually not :( I was rolling the tube (like we used to when we were kids!) and the tube went "BOOM". It hit a sharp stone on the road and burst. And I stood there speechless...

Jungle Joy

DAY 2

S was happily sleeping and I was struggling to sleep as I had slept right next to the windows! Sheesh..! Apart from the main entrance to the cottage, there was another entrance towards the side which directly opened to the bedroom. Suddenly, I heard that bedroom entrance door knob twist and turn. Somebody was trying to break in. I was in a fix, if it was just my illusion or for real! I hid myself under the sheets and curled up to close my ears and eyes shut tightly. The noise sealed and I heard footsteps as if someone were walking towards my window. The main entrance was beside the window. So, this stranger, whosoever, unlocks the main door and there is no more noise. I was completely in shock and woke S up. He too was awake by now as he had been hearing the noise. He quickly went to the hallway and checked out if anybody had come inside. But there was none! It couldn't get more spooky than this. S advised some words of courage to me and slid back into deep sleep :( You can imagine my plight for the rest of the night!

Only in the morning we got to know that there were 2 more houses in the building with the same entrance. Without recognising the main entrance in the dark, our neighbour had tried to unlock our bedroom door and then somehow figured out the main entrance. This was it! Overnight, I had taken a wild imagination tour beyond bounds trying to guess the reason behind the noise :P

With a deep sigh of relief, I got ready for the next adventure in the woods. This time we had two guides along with us who took us through an exciting journey into the forest. We had to drive a few kilometres into the forest. The guide kept us entertained with a lot of information about the forest, the species and whole lot of things under the Sun. What we didn't know was Haliburton Forests are privately owned by a single person, whose father bought the forests way back in 1960s for about 6-7$ an acre! He has his own set of ecologists, environmentalists to maintain and control the forest equilibrium naturally. There is a mill in the premises which uses the forest wood to generate electricity and lighting for the foresters.

We parked the vehicle at a point and trekked from there to reach a lake. Any water activity, I am always thrilled. We had to paddle through to reach the other end of the lake, which was fun! After canoeing and hiking for a while, we reached the spot for canopy walk.

A tiny suspended bridge at a height of about 70 feet lay in front of us which was less than a foot wide. This bridge linked from tree to tree and spanned for half a kilometre. The delicate bridge could hold 3 people at a time and moved incessantly with every step. We were given a brief training about keeping ourselves connected to the cable running overhead with hooks, just in case we fell off the bridge.



The walk on this bridge was the most amazing experience and we couldn't ask for a better way to celebrate our most important day!

The thick forest canopy underneath was a feast to the eyes and we were bewitched!



The bridge ended in a tree house overlooking a lake. We spent some precious time watching the beautiful sunset. Didn't feel like coming back at all....but we had to, eventually...

We came back to the base camp and bid goodbye to Haliburton soon after.

On the way back to Toronto, Guess where we sneaked into?



No Loss..no gain...!! But FuN UnLiMiTeD....

Off to the woods

We chose to sneak off to the remote forests for celebrating our Wedding Anniversary! An unexpected adventurous outing which had a lot of surprises in store for us...

We set off to the destination on the early hours of Sunday. With our new Merc, the drive was penultimate bliss. After some point, the number of houses and people started deteriorating. It was just plain forest with blind curves and wavy roads going up and down. The GPS had chosen to guide us through a short cut and we ended up in a spooky road off the highway. We couldn't even spot other vehicles in the road. It was just us in the mysterious road. There were huge Rocks, thick trees, ponds on the sides of the narrow road. To fight back the eerie feeling, I tried tuning in some local radio station. There indeed was a channel and a voice came in "Welcome to Haliburton...Canada lives here". Me and S burst into laughter and we are still laughing at the ironic statement!:D

We were finally out of that road (saw the name towards the end...it was BobCagyeon Road!) and we made our way to the Haliburton Forest Reserve. Since summer has just arrived here, we were the first guests for the season. We checked in at around 2 PM and the forest incharge briefed us about the forest and the activities. We were given a map of the forest with all trek routes, driving routes, cycling routes, camping points and lakes. And we were given a pair of keys, one for the cottage and the other one for the toll gates along the driving route deep inside the forest.

First thing, we visited the wolf centre as it was about to close. How much I hated the sight of those wild beasts!



Later, we planned to take a drive in the forest with the map in hand. There were north, east and west roads. We decided to stick to north road lest we miss the route. The roads looked something like this..



The sign boards at every split were over informative :D



We drove along very slowly and concentrated on spotting some animals in the forest. We were told that there were wild bears, packs of wolves and many more animals to look out for. It seems the animals would observe us right when we enter the forest and keep an eye on us until we leave. This was something scary...I had to get off at some points to unlock the toll-gate and swing it parallel to the road. S would drive in and I would lock the gate back and run to the car. As we delved deep into the woods, my locking/ unlocking skills depleted and my heart pounded at the slightest noise around. Being the smarty I am, I promptly passed on the task to S while we drove back..:D

We managed to spot colorful birds, huge squirrels, a turkey and a deer...tuff luck. Well, we did see tons of mosquitoes and flies! We took a break at a lake on the way. We couldn't stop but admire the beauty of the nature at its best.

We drove until we reached the


Right about turn and we drove back to the base camp. It was getting darker and the one and only restaurant in the premises was already closed. We chose to drive to the nearby Haliburton village for our dinner. Luckily one of the chinese restaurants was open and we had a hearty meal.

Back to the cottage and we hit the bed!

A little after 12, I heard something...
- END of DAY 1 -