No doubt about it, there is no limit to the generosity of the North Shore people… Claudine (you all remember Claudine, don’t you? The ice cream, the candy and all that jazz?...)was at it again, this morning. Believe it or not, she showed up at 5:30 AM with juice, muffins and homemade jam for the road! How generous can you be?
At 6AM, off we go! We’re on the bus, on our way back to La Malbaie where we’ll spend the night at the Youth Hostel. An uneventful trip if you forget some delays due to construction work. After a few stops along the way, we realize the temperature drastically increased since we left. If Mingan was toque country, Port-Cartier is more bikini country, 250 kilometres further up river! Strangely we meet Marc Charron and his partner, remember them? They’re the Outaouais kayakers who explored the islands at the same time we did, but in reverse order (remember the people who couldn’t find camping space as we had made reservation for all of them?) They too are on their way back home.
We pass the time as best we can on the bus. Francis and Émile create charades;Layla and Madison hold epic shoe sole fights; some sleep (actually nearly all of us do in turn, except for the driver). Our musical selections are most eclectic, from AC/DC to Nicki Minage, from Imagine Dragon, Loco Locass, Jason Mraz, to Coldplay and many others.
We arrive in La Malbaie around 5 PM. The Youth Hostel is near the river with a wonderful terrace overlooking the water. We savour a delicious barbecue (not the machine, the food), in the soft breeze and in the (much appreciated) absence of mosquitoes. I observe them from the sidelines: they speak loud; they laugh; they recall the highlights of the trip. The light in their eyes is quite a sight… At the end of the meal, Marc-André L. is presented with a surprise cake to mark his birthday … what else?
Later, on the lawn in front of the hostel, we hold our last sharing session. The adventurer certificates are handed out; each one of the participants gets a stone to his/her name with the word they selected last night, and, in my opinion even more significant, we cut one of the ropes used during the expedition to make bracelets. That means we’re linked forever in friendship.