Later in the afternoon, The Zodiac Four prepared to head out from Tadoussac for some whale watching.

The Zodiacs are smaller vessels seating about 20 to 30 persons and I think much better for whale watching than the larger boats.

Here are a pair of Belugas, who always seem to swim in pods. This basically all that you can see of them except the few times that they swam under our Zodiac. They are only 10 to 12 feet long.

 

This is the tail of one of the two Humpback whales that we saw.

The next morning, we ferried back across the Saguenay and headed west along the south shore. We visited the village of Petit-Saguenay.

Here are the mud flats of Petit-Saguenay, with another boat waiting for high tide.

 

We stopped at another small village called L'Anse-Saint-Jean which has a harbour on the Saguenay (this is just a local stream).

We also stopped at Baie Éternité, which is in Parc National Saguenay. This sign shows the layout of the fiord under water and how the salinity increases the deeper you go.

We went for a cruise on the Saguenay while in Baie Éternité. Here is our cruise boat coming in to pick us up.

 

Our cruise boat passed this Sea Lion sunning itself on the rocks on the north side of the Saguenay.

Here is one of the streams plunging into the Saguenay. Note the different colours of rock along the shore line. The tide at this point can be 4 to 5 meters.

After the cruise, we followed a little path leading to this huge overhanging boulder. We continued along the south shore until the end of the fiord and finally stopped in Alma on the shores of Lac St-Jean. There, we stayed at the Hotel Continental.

 

The hotel is located right on the start of the Véloroute des Bleuets, which circles Lac St-Jean. We headed out for a two hour ride in 30 degree heat before showering and checking out for our next adventure.

We headed back down to Baie-St-Paul through a back highway that passed thhrough the mountains and had descents at big as 19 percent. We stayed at Hotel Baie-St-Paul for the next few nights which was very pleasant with large air conditionned rooms, breakfast included. The next morning we went for our first big hike up Mont Lac des Cygnes in Parc National Grands-Jardins.

Parc Grands-Jardins - Mont Lac des Cygnes - click here for a panoramic view.

 

The next day, we headed out to Parc National Hautes-Gorges-de-la Rivière-Malbaie and climbed the Sentier Acropole des Draveurs. This was a climb of about 800 meters and a round trip of 5 hours.

The trail was quite steep, sometimes very rocky, sometimes rocks here and there.

 

At the top, there were 3 levels of summits. Here I am at summit 1.

Acropole des Draveurs Summit 1 - click here for a panoramic view.

On our way back to Montreal, we stopped at Canyon St-Anne. A trail leads from side to side of this canyon over a number of swinging bridges.

 

The water descent in this canyon is actually greater than that of Niagara Falls (in height, not volume).

We saw a group of climbers who first walked across a wire from the shore to get to the rocks in the middle of the canyon.

 

They then descended the left side of the rocks, made it around the corner and climbed back up the other side.

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