lives up to its name. I have never, ever experienced such raw power up close. Not for one nanosecond did it occur to me to try and stand up there without as firm a grip as possible on the slippery handrails. Itwas like standing in a rainstorm in the slipstream of a jumbo jet: deafening, drenching and physically challenging. And a hell of a lot of fun. I came back down with a huge grin on my face, dripping Niagara water and adrenaline in equal quantities.
Mark the ranger may only fancy one soaking a day at most, but I’m a sucker for punishment. Back at the top of the cliff I keep the socks and shoes in their plastic bag and canter off, yellow rain cape flapping in the breeze, to catch the Maid of the Mist. The Maid is by far the most famous way of getting up close to the Horseshoe Falls and has been operating since 1846 when it was actually a ferry service from the US to Canada. It was only when they built the first bridge a couple of years later and the ferry traffic began to dry up that they realised they could make more money not actually taking the tourists anywhere but as close as they could to the falls. The service collapsed during the American Civil War but a savvy Montreal firm snapped up the company and relaunched it in the 1890s, with new boats running from both the American and Canadian sides. The boats they run today look alarmingly like they might be the same ones.
The main way to get down to the jetty is by another lift, back on the main shore, and when I get to the bottom I find a large number of people in blue capes, looking disconcertingly like a middle-aged Superman fan convention. It’s worrying because I only have an hour and a half left before I need to get a cab back to the train station, the boats only leave every half hour and it doesn’t look to me as if that lot will all fit on a single boat.
I needn’t have worried, though. They do. And with room to spare, chiefly because they pack ’em in, and with most of them pensioners, they are content to cram onto the lower deck rather than face the elements in the open up top. That, however, seems to me to be the only point in doing the thing at all, and so here I am, yellow cape exchanged for blue – I didn’t want to spoil the colour scheme – up by the front railing on a rickety glorified tug boat that looks a hundred years old – it was actually built in 1976 – heading out onto the choppy waters aiming for the roiling heart of the Horseshoe Falls.
It’s a fairly ridiculous journey, not least because absolutely everybody is taking pictures of everybody else, taking turns to swap spots by the railings. Except that I’m not giving up mine. There’s only one of me and I can’t take turns and selfish as it might seem I want to be up front when we head into the maelstrom. For that is exactly what we seem intent on doing, as the captain is now confirming with a set of fairly obvious safety instructions – no hanging over the side, keep hold of your camera etc. – repeated in a language whichI am by now already programmed by the new American reality to assume is Spanish, but suddenly realise to my immense surprise is French. Obviously, of course, given that this is a Canadian vessel, even though from a brief survey of the passengers the only language that anyone might understand other than English is possibly Gujurati.
To my left I can see the wooden platforms, decking and staircases of the Cave of the Winds, and have to say that it all looks even more precarious from here, a child’s matchstick construction up against an elemental force. But however impressive the American Falls might be, and from the boat I can appreciate the sheer width of the span, there is something still more daunting about the virtually perfect ‘U’ of the Horseshoe particularly now that we have gone beyond the ends of the two arms, the air around us is a swirling drizzle and the boat is bucking like an Olympic swimmer trying to breast a tsunami. I can only
Mark the ranger may only fancy one soaking a day at most, but I’m a sucker for punishment. Back at the top of the cliff I keep the socks and shoes in their plastic bag and canter off, yellow rain cape flapping in the breeze, to catch the Maid of the Mist. The Maid is by far the most famous way of getting up close to the Horseshoe Falls and has been operating since 1846 when it was actually a ferry service from the US to Canada. It was only when they built the first bridge a couple of years later and the ferry traffic began to dry up that they realised they could make more money not actually taking the tourists anywhere but as close as they could to the falls. The service collapsed during the American Civil War but a savvy Montreal firm snapped up the company and relaunched it in the 1890s, with new boats running from both the American and Canadian sides. The boats they run today look alarmingly like they might be the same ones.
The main way to get down to the jetty is by another lift, back on the main shore, and when I get to the bottom I find a large number of people in blue capes, looking disconcertingly like a middle-aged Superman fan convention. It’s worrying because I only have an hour and a half left before I need to get a cab back to the train station, the boats only leave every half hour and it doesn’t look to me as if that lot will all fit on a single boat.
I needn’t have worried, though. They do. And with room to spare, chiefly because they pack ’em in, and with most of them pensioners, they are content to cram onto the lower deck rather than face the elements in the open up top. That, however, seems to me to be the only point in doing the thing at all, and so here I am, yellow cape exchanged for blue – I didn’t want to spoil the colour scheme – up by the front railing on a rickety glorified tug boat that looks a hundred years old – it was actually built in 1976 – heading out onto the choppy waters aiming for the roiling heart of the Horseshoe Falls.
It’s a fairly ridiculous journey, not least because absolutely everybody is taking pictures of everybody else, taking turns to swap spots by the railings. Except that I’m not giving up mine. There’s only one of me and I can’t take turns and selfish as it might seem I want to be up front when we head into the maelstrom. For that is exactly what we seem intent on doing, as the captain is now confirming with a set of fairly obvious safety instructions – no hanging over the side, keep hold of your camera etc. – repeated in a language whichI am by now already programmed by the new American reality to assume is Spanish, but suddenly realise to my immense surprise is French. Obviously, of course, given that this is a Canadian vessel, even though from a brief survey of the passengers the only language that anyone might understand other than English is possibly Gujurati.
To my left I can see the wooden platforms, decking and staircases of the Cave of the Winds, and have to say that it all looks even more precarious from here, a child’s matchstick construction up against an elemental force. But however impressive the American Falls might be, and from the boat I can appreciate the sheer width of the span, there is something still more daunting about the virtually perfect ‘U’ of the Horseshoe particularly now that we have gone beyond the ends of the two arms, the air around us is a swirling drizzle and the boat is bucking like an Olympic swimmer trying to breast a tsunami. I can only
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