Saguenay, QC: Parc de la Caverne Trou de la Fée

This year, my boyfriend and I had a big purchase: our house.  With a few other events budgeted in, we had to make cuts.  That went to cutting down on the vacation we had together in the end.  However, we did decide to take a trip since it was nice to take a breather, relax and just be together away from everything.  Thats what weekend getaways are fantastic for.

Our choice was Niagara Falls and Saguenay.  Seeing as we’ve already been to Niagara Falls two times in the last 6+ years, we decided to go back to Saguenay and do what we weren’t able to do last time.

The first one was scheduled for Day 1 for a cave exploration and walking and hiking trail located in Parc de la Caverne Trou de la Fee. What that directly translates to is “Fairy’s Hole Cavern Park”.  The park is actually very affordable with a guarantee of at least 3 hours of activities. Its separated into 4 parts.

The first part is going for the 15 minute cave exploring.  They are known for their wide settlement of bats, except summer isn’t the season and with some climate changes, its caused an irregularity from what the guide said.  Inside the cave, it was impossible to see anything so I didn’t even bother to take any pictures but I promise you, there is actually a shape of a fairy in there on the walls and there’s a little piece of history attached to it.  However, the walk to the cave had a few pictures.

Overview of the park area at the start of the trail

Looking back from the bridge over the falls

When you reach the other side, its a little bit of a hike and then you get to the cave, where we wait for a little bit and head in to explore.

Waiting to go into the cave!

If you recall, I actually did another cave exploration earlier this year.  This one had a little bit more maneuvering around rocks.  It had some narrow spaces but it was short enough to not be too much of a problem. There was three chambers to go through and some stairs to climb here and there. It was pretty impressive!

Coming out of the cave, the second part of the hike is following the path back, except when we cross to the other side of the bridge, there is an actual hiking trail to the Three Falls.  This trail does a loop and leads to an open area with three waterfalls.

Lots of water around the site! Love it!

Near the falls!

A beautiful rainbow

The hike is a simple family trail.  Its easy and comfortable.  Coming back into the loop, you come back to the main path and this time, instead of heading back the way we came, you go down to walk on the old electric dam facilities which now forms a tunnel with some information about what this site used to be used for.

As you walk through this, it is connected with some wire barriers like this one, which leads to wooden pathways.

This path eventually leads to the final part of the trail which is the Green Corridor/Coulée Verte. This part is yet another hike but a super calming and beautiful fun.  The only thing is this one gets a little more challenging with narrow paths and some slippery uphill areas, rocky paths and that sort of thing.  Hiking shoes are useful not only for the caves but also for this trail.

During this path, I gained my new obsession on this trip, aside from waterfalls and flowing rivers: assorted berries and mushrooms, especially along mossy areas.

The Green Corridor was long and curvy.  It was pretty tiring as the ending of this trail, mostly because our day started at 6am and a 6 5+ hours drive.  However, it was a great preparation for warming up the muscles and getting ready for our actual hike the next day.

If you are in the Saguenay Lac Saint Jean area, this area is a must do.  Its not expensive and you get a whole lot of activities to do which makes it completely worth it.  Its part of getting in touch with nature.  You can always choose to not do the cave and just do the trails and that costs less.  Or you could choose to do everything including the 350 feet high zip line crossing.  I wasn’t brave enough to do that.  I’m not actually sure of the actual height but its pretty high so I wouldn’t be surprised if it is.

Thats Day 1 in Saguenay for us! Getting in touch with nature, a bit of hiking, lots of water, calming and refreshing! I loved it! 🙂

Day 2 coming up tomorrow! 🙂

Arbraska’s Lafleche Park: Cave Discovery Tour

Two years ago, I tried for the first time, this delightful little activity called tree adventure. Arbraska is the name of the company that owns one of the most reputable of these.

Their most recent addition is located near the Gatineau area in Quebec.  The area is located at Lafleche Park.  Thanks to Tuango and its fantastic deals, my boyfriend and I got ourselves some and decided to go for the Victoria Day weekend (the one that just past if you aren’t familiar with Canadian holidays). We had two best friends with their respective boyfriend and husband join us.  The more the merrier, right? Except this time, it wasn’t for tree adventure.  Lafleche Park had a little addition and thats the cave exploration.  We had a choice of two tours: one is the easier one called Discovery Tour (which is the one we chose) and the other is Exploration Tour which is more extreme with climbing through tight spaces.  My boyfriend is a tad claustrophobic so we opted out of that.

The Discovery tour provides us with helmets with lights on it and the guide tells us how to use it and what to remember.  We had to dress warm because once you enter the cave, the temperature drops down to about 4 degrees Celsius.  Our guide even gave us a little taste of what the Exploration tour was with a little crawling space path as an alternative.  A lot of us did go for it.  Our group was a total of 21 people and had a lot of kids so they were all very excited about it.  When we reached a higher platform, we sat down and saw one little bat sleeping in a little crevice on the ceiling.  The guide said that we had to close the lights and be quiet and sometimes the bat would make little sounds but we only heard water dripping.

The trip could have benefited from a smaller group.  Among us six, we all agreed to that.  It took around an hour and was pretty interesting for general knowledge.  The guide’s enthusiasm is a plus and we saw how certain areas was still waiting to be eventually discovered.

I’m still not so sure if I’d want to do Exploration tour, mostly because my mind goes back to the claustrophobic movie experience with The Descent. I have an overactive imagination so that happens. Although, I am quite curious about how it would be though.

I am quite certain that one day I’ll come back to try out the tree adventure. 🙂 It was a pretty cool experience.  Plus, the area is very awesome. Here’s a shot of the surroundings.

There’s also a hiking trail there but remember to bring mosquito repellent because we got bitten alive and eventually just came back.  Hiking and spontaneity is one of those things that don’t quite work together 😉

I’m a bit slow with putting this up since this was last weekend.  Still, I think its a nice initiation of cave exploration.  Its a new experience.

Have you ever gone cave exploring? Are you comfortable with dark small spaces?