I Went Rafting on the Tidal Bore on the Shubenacadie River

I told you July was going to be busy.

I wasted no time getting on with my next adventure, and on Sunday I did something that has been on my list of summer activities for at least two or three years.

Perfectly planning it for a day where the tides were nice and high, I headed over to Nova Scotia with my friend Sarah, her roommate Richard, and his friend Leah, to go rafting on the tidal bore on the Shubenacadie River.

This is something that I have really wanted to do for a long time. I'm constantly discussing it with guests at work, whether it's in conversation about the tidal bore or guests telling me about their experiences, and have just been itching to try it for myself.

I think the reason it's taken me so long to get around to it is the price. It's not that it's super expensive, at $60+tax, but I feel like generally when you're looking for something to do in your local area on a day off, you tend look for things to do that don't cost too much money. When you're on vacation and it's your only chance to do an experience, you're okay with spending that much money for a day out, but it's different when it's a close-to-home activity.

There are a number of different companies that go out on the bore, but we went with Fundy Tidal Bore Adventures, because they were ever-so-slightly cheaper, and they offered the opportunity to rent a GoPro to mount on the boat (which I did, fortunately, because the battery on mine ran out after about 45 minutes or so).

They offer two tours, either two hours or four hours. We did the two-hour tour, and were glad we did. Our driver Kyle (who was awesome) told us that the longer tours feature an additional set of waves to ride through and then the rest of the tour is mainly sightseeing. The tour we did still felt like we were on the water for a long time, and we didn't feel like we were majorly missing out by only doing two hours.

The tour starts out heading out on the boats towards the mouth of the river to meet the bore as it comes in. Once we got further down the river, we hopped out of the boat as we had a bit of time and went mud sliding down the banks of the river. After washing off, we headed back into the boats to go meet the bore.

The bore essentially creates two sets of waves for you to ride through. Kyle told us that the first ones are the smaller of the two, but they still aren't exactly small. At our request, Kyle tried to hit the waves as head-first as he could, and the very first wave we hit sent us all flying out of our seats. I felt the impact from that first bounce all the way up my back and part of me thought "oh god, this is gonna be a long afternoon," but fortunately the rest of the waves were much better.

We all had a fantastic day out and I was so glad to finally do this. I think we were all pretty sore the next day - I was surprised at how much of an arm workout it was from holding on to the ropes to ensure I didn't fall out of the boat!

This one is definitely one you're going to want to check out the video for. As always, the video is below.

Tidal bore rafting: check.




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