Maine, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick: Day Three

Monday morning found us at the Cat Ferry terminal, five minutes past the requisite 7:00 a.m. arrival. The scene was one of complete chaos, and at that moment, it seemed impossible that all the cars could get checked in and put on the ferry in an hour. After a brief parking lot dance with a long-wheelbase GMC Yukon, we joined one of about a dozen lines of cars, roughly half of them with Canadian plates, to wait for embarkation.

The Cat, which runs between Bar Harbor, ME and Yarmouth, NS, Monday through Wednesday, and between Portland, ME and Yarmouth the rest of the week, is a remarkable vessel. Built in Australia in 1998, it is one of the fastest ferries in the world, with cruising speeds of up to 40 knots (about 55 mph). At full power, its water jet engines expel enough water to fill an olympic-size swimming pool every 33 seconds. Designed to transport 900 passengers and 240 vehicles, including 14 tour buses, it makes the voyage from Bar Harbor to Yarmouth, once an overnight affair, in a hair over three hours.

Amazingly, the entire mad cauldron of cars and motorcycles was loaded onto the ship in about 45 minutes. We drove into the cavernous hold, directed by staff in bright red overalls wedged the car between a railing and a red Chevy Aveo from Quebec, and squeezed ourselves between rows of tightly parked cars towards the stairwell, taking the liberty to fold others' rearview mirrors as we passed. Clearly, the ferry was designed to be used in a part of the world where the average size of a passenger vehicle is quite a bit smaller than in North America. Once on the passenger decks, the atmosphere was far more inviting. Rows of airline-style seats (but with more legroom), a cafeteria in the middle, a gift shop, several sitting areas with large movie screens. After the Aussie-inflected safety video, we were underway, only a few minutes past the scheduled 8:00 a.m. departure.

The Cat really is fast – a quick glance at the water outside tells you that you're moving far faster than any boat you may have been on in the past. To me, it felt amazingly solid – no vibration, no noise, just the gray waters of the Atlantic speeding past. Once on the open ocean, however, the ship did pitch noticeably, and therein lay its biggest problem. J. got exceptionally sea-sick and spent the entire crossing in her seat, with her head on the table, unable to take advantage of the open rear deck or the surprisingly decent breakfast at the cafeteria. This was, all told, the biggest misadventure of the entire trip.

We arrived in Yarmouth on schedule, losing an hour in the process – Nova Scotia is in the Atlantic time zone. After another 45 minutes or so we passed through the border checkpoint, where we were interviewed by a very polite young officer who asked us all the same questions we used to get asked before Sept. 11^th – why we were in Canada, how long, and whether we were bringing anything not for personal use. Make no mistake – crossing the border, at least the one with Canada, in either direction, is not about security. It's about taxation. As long as we convinced the guard that we didn't have anything that we would sell and avoid taxes, we could have had a trunk full of nuclear explosives. After a lunch at a random pub across the street from the dock (mediocre sandwiches and excellent smoked haddock chowder), a stop at a tourist information office and another at a Canadian Tire store (a kind of industrial Target) to buy propane for our camp stove, we were finally on the road to Cape Breton around 3:00 p.m.

The advantages of being a large, sparsely populated country are most readily apparent on the Canadian highways. The major roads – roughly the Canadian equivalent of our Interstates – were uniformly excellent, had very little traffic, particularly long-haul truck traffic, and as a consequence no road construction to speak of. The disadvantages are equally apparent, however – we didn't reach Canso Causeway, which connects Cape Breton Island to the mainland, until almost 10:00 p.m.; the town of Ingonish Ferry, where we were staying, was still two more hours away on the Cabot Trail – a much smaller, twisty mountain road. My paranoia of having to face any form of law enforcement in a foreign country didn't help -- it confined us to driving within 10 km/h of the speed limit, which alternated between a semi-generous 100 km/h and an almost-brisk 110, dropping to 80 in the mountains. We finally arrived in Ingonish Ferry around midnight, after a final 100 km on the Cabot Trail, keeping our bloodshot eyes peeled for moose.

The drive did offer a priceless moment of realization that there still are pure places in this world, and that rural Nova Scotia is one of them. At one point along the way, we had stopped at a tourist information office to call our hotel and arrange for late arrival. The staff – two high-school-age kids, a girl and a guy, unfailingly polite and friendly, asked us to sign the guest book. While I was on the phone, J. went to sign, and discovered that the previous visitor, as a stupid joke, signed in as Paris Hilton. J. commented. With complete seriousness and a straight face, the girl asked, “Who's Paris Hilton?” Ah, to be so far away!