7 – Beginning to have Fun

Our baggage arriving a day later than us caused no real inconvenience. The worst part was worrying that it wasn't really going to come at all. The overnight bags from Lufthansa were indispensable, containing T-shirts, toothpaste, toothbrushes, deodorant, razor, hairbrush (two funky foldable ones with mirrors contained in the handles), moisturiser and all sorts of other useful stuff that made us miss our luggage a little less. We picked up our rental car. This one was not a Twingo but a Chevrolet Impala - from one end of the spectrum to the other; absolutely massive! It was big enough to put the canoe and crate in the boot so Tala could sit on the back seat. Fred drove to the hotel which wasn’t really far from the airport but took us a while to reach due to the unfamiliar road systems and the weariness. We soon noticed that there isn’t really an overtaking lane in Canada. Overtake, undertake, whatever…anything goes!

The hotel was comfortable; the bed was massive and the room service food delicious. We shouldn’t really have been eating as it was about 1am according to our body clocks but couldn’t resist the tempting menu. The sweet potato chips were fantastic! I always remember a place according to its food.

After our indulgence we soon fell into an undisturbed sleep. Unfortunately, we were awake at 4am but this gave us time to review our travel insurance details in case our luggage had disappeared for eternity into the void that is Frankfurt airport. The fact that we would be recompensed didn’t account for the time and effort that Fred had put into tweaking our kit to perfection to make sure that everything important was included and that it was all as lightweight as possible. We were also unsure that we could get the exact same kit over here. With the thought of perhaps never seeing our kit again, we put our minds to our next mission which was picking up the RV. I wasn’t looking forward to this part since the plan was for me to drive the rental car back to a campsite while Fred drove the RV. I have never driven an automatic before. Fred was bad enough in the airport, having to ask one of the rental company workers how to get it out of Park! Anyway, by the time we arrived at the RV company Fred was quite confident on the Canadian roads and I was trying to assimilate the journey and the unfamiliar road rules.

The guys at Cruise Canada were great. They agreed to store Tala’s crate while we have the RV but have also allowed us to store it there till the end of our whole trip. That makes things much easier for us. They also gave us some extra sleeping bags and sheets in case our luggage was delayed. We were shown a 20 minute orientation video about the vehicle which, in our worn-out state, proved a little hard to digest. Luckily, there is a manual in the RV which covers everything but goes into much more detail. We had to inspect our vehicle for damage and marked it down on a diagram so we aren’t liable later. After the pertinent paperwork had been formalised and we’d had a quick snoop at the new RVs in the store (they are really cheap compared to European prices!), we were on our way.I led in the Chevvy heading for a campsite about 20km away, back towards Toronto but almost on the same long road as the RV company.

The campsite was lovely and almost devoid of people having just opened for the season. It was like a little oasis in the middle of the city so unfortunately it was surrounded by ‘highways’ on every side. This didn’t perturb us because we just wanted somewhere to stay while we worked out our route and returned the car.
We spent a couple of hours in the RV so Tala could get used to it a little before we left her so we could do some shopping and drop off the car back at the airport. It does seem somewhat ridiculous that we rented a car for one day but Cruise Canada won’t allow drivers to step off a plane and straight into an RV. I understand completely why they have this policy, feeling as we did after the flight. We dropped off the car, were thankfully reunited with our lost bags, and got a taxi back to the campsite where we chilled for the night and decided on our route for the next day.
This is also where we saw our first black squirrels and American Robins, which are both in abundance over here but such a novelty for us.

American Robin.