Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
We drove to the border crossing and the girl in the booth asked the usual questions like do you have any firearms or weapons, any alcohol, mace of pepper spray to which we answered no. She then stamped our passports and told us to go proceed to the customs office whereupon they told us they would need to check out the vehicle. We both thought oh no, this is it, we will be turned away as we had everything we had answered no too. We had beer, wine, machette and axe plus firewood and it is not allowed to transport firewood from place to place as it can spread diseases to different plants and trees. Two customs officers checked the vehicle and camper out and they must have seen everything we had, the female officer even had hold of the machette and the axe was under the seat. The spray was situated right between the seats, which was really only a red dye spray, but they wouldn't realise that. Less than 5 minutes later we were told we were fine to go and nothing was mentioned about any of the stuff we had including, unbelievably the wood. We think we will make sure we can honestly say we don't have any of the things on the return to the states only the machette and axe.
After an overnight stop at St John,'s New Brunswick (a cruise ship stopping off place, though goodness knows why as it is hardly worth a mention), we carried on to Nova Scotia in sheeting rain and thick mist so visibiltiy was extremely low.
Halifax is steeped in history with pirates, indians and waring colonialists and exploding and sinking ships making the history of Halifax read like and adventure story. The city itself was full of restaurants and pubs probably something to do with its ship faring backround. We visited Pier 21 through which between 1928 and 1971 over a million immigrants entered Canada. Their stories and reasons for leaving their homelands are well presented in this museum. Peter went to the maritime museum and we both went up to Citadel Hill Canada's most visited historic site which is a star shaped fort on top of Halifax's central hill.
On a brighter day we drove along the south shore to Peggy's Cove which houses one of the most well known lighthouses and not much else aparft from fishing boats, fishermans houses aand a post office with its own lighthouse shaped stamp cancellation mark. In 1998 unfortunately a Swiss Air plane crashed at Peggy's Cove killing all 200+ passengers on board and the Canadian Army were drafted in to help clear the wreckage.
British and Scottish heritage is still in evidence here in Nova Scotia with many of the place names like Dartmouth, Liverpool and New Glasgow and there was a piper up at the fort playing the bagpipes.
- comments