Sunday 11 March - Niagara (Canada) / Buffalo / Boston

We’re yet to find a customs official that has smiled. I’m sure that the job interview for these positions must involve watching Borat and testing whether the candidate can refrain from smiling / laughing. Even Libe’s failed to get a laugh from him today, although it sure made me giggle. When asked where we were headed when driving through the customs gate heading from Niagara, Canada, to Niagara, USA, Libe provided the obvious response of “the US”. Although completely innocent, I wonder whether such a response has been taken to be overly sarcastic by an over-scrupulous officer in the past and resulted in someone getting denied entry. Anyway, suffice to say Ewing didn’t laugh, but he did let us through; he probably gets that response quite a few times a day.

Daylight savings kicked in overnight here. They’re extending the daylight savings period at both ends – it’s starting earlier in March, and finishing later in November. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think that’s a couple of months longer than our period. I wasn’t until about 5:20pm that we remembered (more accurately, Libe remembered) that daylight savings had kicked in and it wasn’t 4:20 – which was very lucky as our shuttle to the Buffalo airport was booked to pick us up between 5:00 and 5:25. A quick cab ride back to the hotel found that our shuttle driver had patiently continued to wait for us, and we hadn’t poured our $$$ for the early booking down the drain.

Today was more exploration of the falls, particularly the Horseshoe ones. Most of the falls area was still frozen, making for quite a remarkable sight. The description of this is best left to the photos I think, so I’ll let them paint the picture.

We did take a trip ‘beneath’ the falls, which allows you to view them both from side-on, and from behind, although the view was restricted due to the ice and snow compiled. Viewing them from this angle certainly lets you appreciate the velocity and the amount of water which flows in this area. Being from a country which has suffered so much from drought in recent years makes the scene more awesome too I'm guessing. I hadn’t seen this much water running since Dad’s perfectly executed cannonball nearly emptied the pool up at Pop’s place going back a few years ago.
A little downstream from the falls are the whirlpool & the rapids, two areas where the way in which the river is structured creates another two spectacular natural attractions. Myself and Libe again both defied any fear of heights (after our excursion up to the top of the CN Tower on Saturday) and set out over the whirlpool and the rapids – once again, I’ll let the pictures tell the story.

The trip home involved another set of small planes for both of us – me an 18 row x 3 seat jet, Libe a 10 x 4 one. As expected, Libe was delayed significantly (as they say in the classics, these people would be late for their own funeral) and got home a lot later than planned, before splitting a cab from JFK to Manhattan with a girl who happened to date Dylan McLaren (the Lions now Blues footballer) a couple of years ago. She probably dumped him as soon as he told her he’d gone to Optus Oval. Can’t blame her really. Certainly a small world...