Niagara falls stretches from the USA into Canada or vice versa, from the US side you can only see part of the falls and it is only part. You can pay to go out on the observation tower which is said to give a better view, but we will come back to that. The other option is to take a boat trip on the 'Maid of the Mist', or the best option which was recommended to us by several people on the Inca including two Canadians was to walk across the bridge into Canada and view it from that side. So that's exactly what we planned to do.

Now to get into Canada you have to cross the border, which naturally means immigration questions. This would sound pretty straight forward to take you passport get a stamp etc and over you go, well its not quite that simple. If you remember the interrogation we had getting in to the USA then this was similar to that, as in order to enter you need to have a way of proving you aren't staying or that you aren't just crossing to cross back into the USA to get a visa extension for your time in the USA. Luckily we had checked this out before hand and taken our USA visas that proved we had over 2 months left in the USA if we wanted, so with another stamp added to our passports, the story of travelling for 12 months and how we got it off work and we were only crossing the border to see the falls, we were allowed in.

We can confirm that as we were told the view from the Canadian side is some what more impressive than the pathetic view the USA side allows, the falls are visible from the entry border all along the road edge up to the view point where the water actually falls. The spray that comes off the falls finely soaks everything within several metres of the edge, emphasised by wind this can get you from quite a distance.

Every picture we have seen of the falls must have been taken at a unique angle or with a special lens, as although this sounds silly they looked much bigger on the pictures. Now that is not to say they were not big because they were huge and impressive, but it was still different to how we had envisaged it.

We watched the 'Maid of the Mist' boats several times in order to see if we would take the trip as it sounded pretty good. The name would indicate that it would sail around in the mist of the falls ensuring a good soaking and surround of cloudy mist from the falls. Well sorry to disappoint you but this is not so, the Maid approached the falls and stopped short of the mist created. At this point you may be thinking it was just a one off or we were at the wrong angle, well like we said we watched several times from different places and this was the same each time. So this was definitely a disappointing bit, so we scrapped that idea and enjoyed the varying views we had of this awesome power of nature. We lit David's Grandads' candle as he really wanted us to make it to Canada as he loved this place with a passion and as we weren't too sure just yet if we could make it there properly at least it had been lit on Canadian soil. Norman got in on the act but got a bit nervy on the wall edge, but as all elephants do he enjoyed the water. (He needed a bath anyway).

After an hour or two we set off to cross the bridge divide back into the USA, as we went through the Canadian border we met no resistance as there was nobody there, we did however pay a turn style fee of 50 cents each!!! The cheek!

On arrival back at the USA we did meet resistance in the form of another twitchy American immigration officer! Regardless of the fact we had clearly been to see the falls as we had only been a couple of hours at most, plus we had over 2 months on our USA visa this guy was not happy. He couldn't understand why we didn't know when we were leaving the USA, why we hadn't got onward travel arranged, plus why we weren't concerned about how we would travel next. After some discussion and ANOTHER full explanation of our twelve month trip, with passport stamps to support the story so far he got the gist! The fact we had taken a year off work and still had a job to go back to, let alone the fact we had the funds to travel for 12 months without work still astounded him! It seems that this is unheard of in America, and the more places we go and people we tell, especially the border staff, this becomes more apparent. Thinking about it we only know of 2 other people that are doing a year trip and have yet to meet anyone that has done or is attempting to cover North America in the same trip. Most only manage 6 months at best, so we feel pretty lucky that we up to press are doing it this way and doing it our way, so keep your fingers crossed for us.

Once back on the USA soil we had look around the visitor centre taking in some bits of info, but were soon ready to head off to our next stop. We had decided we needed a motel for this night to be fresh for the next day, so we pulled up outside a nearby motel and did what's known as 'piggy backing'. This is where we use our laptop to pick up the wireless internet signal from the motel which in America is normally not secured meaning anyone can hook in, then we sorted out which motel we were heading for and off we went. No internet fee incurred, but we found a place and got directions to match. Now that's how to economise. See you next time!