Oot and Aboot in Canadia (part I)

There's still lots I haven't told you about, so these are going to be a brief selection of some of the other things I've been up to here, starting with my weekend cottaging.

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My first weekend, after having only been here two days, was spent at some guy, called Asmatali, from RBC's cottage in Muskoka (which is about a 2-3 hour drive away). I'd never even talked to the guy before but he was very friendly. On the way we stopped off at what was allegedly the most famous and popular burger place on the way. Admittedly it was very busy (possibly because it was in a good place to stop on the main road) but I thought the burger was decidely average (albert also agreed), but you know, it did, and even though we got there about 11 the queues were getting bigger.

The cottage was situated on a lake (Asmatali had built it himself over a large number of years) which, combined with the gorgeous weather, meant it was going to be a good weekend.









Being on the lake meant that Asmatali owned his own pedal boat and canoe, of which we tried both. The pedal boat was ludicrously slow, whilst we couldn't quite get the hang of the canoe and kept going round in circles, but you know, we can handle these things.




Now, apparently, when you are out on the lake you are supposed to have some standard safetly equipment, a lifejacket, a rope (45ft minimum), a whistle and flares. Also, you aren't supposed to use them under the influence of alcohol. When we went out on the peddleboat, we can't have got more than 100 yards away from the platform where we left from, when we were pulled over by the police in a speedboat (which was the last thing I expected). They pulled up beside us (thankfully not asking us to step out of the vehicle) saying they were spot checking for safetly equipment. Now, we had our lifejackets on, but no rope, whistle or flares. Asmatali had seen them as well, and was a bit worried, as being the owner of the craft meant he was liable to a $120 fine per missing equipment. Luckily they worked out we weren't Canadian (not sure how) and let us off with a warning. Probably a good job they hadn't seen us necking beers all day.

That evening we had curry for dinner. Asmatali had aksed his wife to make it the least amount of spicy she could, which, as you've probably already guessed, was still too spicy for me. Luckily I had had plenty of beers to dull the taste a bit.

Day two was spent most of the same, sitting in the sun, drinking beer, cooking on a barbeque and generally chilling out. It was great. What I hadn't thought about was the fact that I was slowly burning in the sun, and I had ludicrous sun burnt and peeling skin for days after that. My pass to get into the building here has a picture of me sunburnt on it. We didn't have burgers on the way home. The ones I'd cooked on the bbq were miles better.