Saturday 3 July 2010

Driving from Saint John to Halifax, Nova Scotia, we are entering our 4th Canadian province, having already visited Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick. Part of our journey included a stop at Hopewell Rocks to observe the Flowerpot Rocks and the famous tide which has a vertical height difference in the Bay of Fundy of as much as 17m between high tide and low tide.

Entering the area, we drove through the little fishing village of Alma to see all the boats in the harbor sitting high and dry in the mud about 5m below the jetty. This funny sight attracted our cameras of course. Proceeding to Flowerpot Rocks, we were quite disappointed by the expensive entrance fee, crowded beach and lack of viewing sites. It takes about 3 hours for the tide to come in and there is nowhere to sit and watch this phenomenon. So we spent some time on the beach at Flowerpot rocks with the summer holiday crowds before heading back to Alma where we would actually be able to watch the incoming tide.

We had a lovely meal at a waterside restaurant while we watched the beach and sand bars disappear under the encroaching water whilst the fishing boats became afloat again and rose up to meet the jetty. The tide rises at about 2m per hour so to get an idea of how fast this is, I strung out a row of stones on the slipway and watched how quickly they were submerged in the rising water. It was an interesting phenomenon to watch before we continued with our 4 hour journey to Halifax, arriving around 9pm – still in the evening sunlight!