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?
Tranquil Dreams 