Niagara Falls, which was one place I certainly couldn't miss while in this part of the world, is a little over an hours drive from Toronto by tour bus. It is also, somewhat conveniently, situated right on the Canadian border with one waterfall on each side - so the United States and Canada are constantly grumbling about who has the better view. Unfortunately, it really is something of a no contest - the United States has the smaller of the falls, which they attempt to make look much better than they actually are by sticking coloured lights all over them at night in an attempt to convince everyone that water is actually every colour of the rainbow other than blue. It doesn't work - the Canadians have Horseshoe Falls, which is the semi-circular shaped waterfall you see in all the photos. In fact, if you go to Niagara Falls and visit the New York State side in the US, you really are going to come away wondering what all the fuss is about. Just to be sure they've won the fight, the Horseshoe Falls are also bathed in coloured light after sundown these days, and naturally look just that little bit better. There's something quite satisfying about being able to find something that the United States doesn't manage to do bigger and better than everyone else, although it's still a shame that it can't be outside North America altogether.

Mind you, you have to bear in mind that anything even approaching the size of Horseshoe Falls in England would cause the entire lake district to drain out in a couple of seconds, so it's probably just as well we don't have anything like this back home. One thing you realise pretty quickly whatever you decide to do at Niagara Falls, is that you're going to get very wet indeed - I suspect that at least a portion of what they call rain over in New York City is probably spray from the falls. When you arrive, you are provided with ridiculously large bin liners in yellow or blue which they laughingly call raincoats and which swamp you. These would make you feel quite stupid if it weren't for the fact that everyone looks exactly the same - and if you go on the Maid of the Mist, the boat which actually takes you into the spray itself and right up to the base of the falls, they swap your bin liner out for an even bigger one which could comfortably contain at least three people. Or one American.

There are certainly plenty of ways to see the falls, and if you have altogether too much money burning a hole in your pocket then you can even grab a hotel room overlooking them and spend the entire night sitting on your balcony watching them for as long as you like. There are three towers, allowing visitors to view the falls from above - and assuming you don't suffer from acrophobia, you can walk out onto a ledge suspended above them for the ultimate photo opportunity.

For those not content with the standard view down onto Niagara seen in every photo, it's also possible to join the imaginatively named "Journey behind the Falls" tour which leads you into a tunnel system at the base of Horseshoe Falls, starting at the visitors centre and making your way under the cliffs to the base of the falls via several exits onto viewing platforms. Eventually, the tunnels lead right around the back of Horseshoe Falls and finish quite abruptly at a point where they literally exit into the back of the cascading waterfall and if it weren't for a well placed grille you could just get down on your hands and knees and crawl into the water. At this point, the raincoats which everyone have been supplied with are particularly welcome, as the spray from the back of the falls ensures that you would otherwise literally be stuck to your clothes. You want to discuss what you're seeing in awed voices with those around you, but alas this is totally impossible as the roar of the water makes it impossible to hear yourself think - unless, like our guide, you have thought to bring a megaphone with you!

The main attraction at Niagara, though, is the Maid of the Mist. Launched in 1846, this is a passenger ferry which takes visitors out to the very base of the falls, right into the spray and as close as they can possibly get without being capsized by the cascading waters. Originally, the boat was simply intended as a means of ferrying passengers between Canada and America before the nearby Rainbow Bridge was built, but it quickly became established as a tourist attraction in its own right. In all, there have been seven boats with the Maid of the Mist name so far, ranging from the original paddle steamers in the nineteenth century to the modern twin decked diesel monsters in use today which can carry up to six hundred passengers at a time into the falls. The boat takes visitors up close to all the falls at Niagara, including not only the American and Horseshoe Falls but also the much smaller Bridal Veil which is technically part of the American Falls but is separated from the main drop by Luna Island, a small rocky outcrop 130 by 350 feet in size. One of the most incredible experiences a ride on the Maid of the Mist can offer - apart from the opportunity to look up at the falls towering above you, of course - is getting a rare chance to ride through a rainbow. The air around the Horseshoe Falls is so full of spray and fine water droplets that a brightly coloured rainbow rises almost perpetually from the water a few feet in front of you as you approach, arcing high into the air and disappearing into the water at the far side. I captured all this on video, of course, but am frankly quite astonished that the camera survived the experience, considering the fact that the amount of water continually throwing itself over the side had me convinced at one point that there was actually more water inside the boat than in the river surrounding it.

Getting your head around the sheer size of Horseshoe Falls is quite difficult, unless you've actually been there and seen it up close. Much like the Grand Canyon, even a photograph cannot fully portray the scale of the place, especially when you ride the Maid of the Mist to the base of the Horseshoe Falls and are surrounded on three sides by cascading water. Horseshoe Falls is no less than 2600 feet wide - meaning that you could turn the CN Tower back in Toronto on its side and place it alongside the falls and still have 800 feet to spare. As of January 2009, the tallest structure of any kind on the face of the Earth - the Burj Dubai Tower in the United Arab Emirates - was roughly the same width as the falls. In case this still doesn't fully put the scale across, we're talking about half a mile here. Niagara is certainly not the widest falls in the world by any means - there seems to be rather a fight going on as to which can claim this honour, with the general consensus being that it is Victoria Falls on the border of Zambia and Zimbabwe. Many argue that the honour should go to Iguacu Falls in South America, at over a mile and a half in length, although this doesn't really qualify as it is actually 275 smaller falls grouped closely together. Nevertheless, it is high on my list of places to see before I die. Despite all this, Horseshoe has got to be one of the most impressive waterfalls in the world due to it's wrap around nature and the fact that you can get right up close to its base and feel it all around you.

One thing which Niagara certainly can claim over other waterfalls is that it seems to have always been a draw for every attention seeking nutcase on the planet. The most popular stunt undertaken at Niagara has to be going over it in a barrel - squeezing into a flimsy wooden cask and being thrown into the river by equally crazy friends who then stand around and watch as their mate is washed over the edge and drops 170 feet to the gorge below, where presumably the barrel, assuming it is still intact, is pummelled to a pulp by the 680,000 gallons of water which hurls itself over the edge every single second. And yes, you did read that right - 680,000 gallons per second. The first person to do this was a 61 year old school teacher who undertook the challenge in 1901 as a publicity stunt - but any respect I might otherwise have had for her bravery in doing this is somewhat tempered by the fact that she had thrown her cat over the falls a few days earlier to see if survival was possible at all. The cat survived, and was suitably pissed off about the whole thing. Going back even further, another tradition was started in 1859 by a tightrope walker with a death wish known as Blondin who stretched a wire across the gorge and proceeded to show off to quite an outstanding degree. Other tightrope walkers of the time would have been quite content to say that they had successfully crossed Niagara gorge without falling to their deaths, but Blondin did it several times on the same day. The first time, he just walked across with the traditional pole for balance. Obviously this wasn't impressive enough for his massive ego, however, because he then did it again bound up inside a sack, pushing a wheelbarrow, wearing a blindfold, walking on stilts, and famously carrying his manager on his back - although whether his manager had any say in this is open to debate. During one crossing, Blondin really decided to take the piss by sitting down half way across, cooking an omelette and having dinner.

Most people who undertake stunts at Niagara are charged with doing so without a license, and fined a small amount, which doesn't really seem like much of a deterrent considering most of those who do so have clearly got more money than sense. In 1989, Peter DeBernardi and Jeffery Petkovich went over the falls in a two-man barrel they had constructed themselves. This barrel set them back an estimated 30,000 dollars and contained viewing ports, a rudder system, built in radio so they didn't have to miss their favourite shows while plunging to their almost certain doom, video cameras to film the whole thing and a supplemental oxygen supply. In other words, not at all like a barrel. The purpose of this stunt, rather bizarrely, was to discourage future generations from taking drugs - and the outside of the barrel was suitably adorned with messages such as "Drugs Kill". Obviously, nobody thought to mention that throwing yourself off Niagara Falls in a barrel is quite likely to do the same thing. Not only was Mr DeBernardi obviously not put off by being hauled out of the water and then hauled across the coals for what he had done, but he went on to protest against the system a year later when he attempted to attach himself by means of a harness to one of the cables which operated the Niagara Falls cable car, pull himself out to the midpoint and attach a flag to the wire, assuming that he would be rescued by the cable car before it ran over the harness and sent him plunging into the gorge. Again, the police politely explained that they had better things to do with their time than remove people from cable car cables.

About Simon and Burfords Travels:

Simon Burford is a UK based travel writer. He will be re-publishing his travel blogs, chapters from his books and other miscellaneous rantings on these pages over the coming weeks and months, and the entry on this page may not necessarily reflect todays date.