Christmas Trip Review

I got up late on 24th; actually, I had already prepared my luggage the night before. At 10, one hour late, I was ready to pick up my friends at university. We decided to drive to Steinbach, in order to visit the town, have lunch and doing some shopping (especially food). On the way to Steinbach we also passed the small town of Hanover (with one "n", but I think there is a connection to Hannover because it's a German community) and saw road signs for Blumenort (funny name, "Flower Town"). There are also many French speaking communities (La Salle, St. Adolphe, ...).

First day: Trip from Winnipeg to West Hawk Lake via Steinbach

When we finally got to Steinbach, I was really surprised that it was such a small town, for I had in mind that it must be one of the bigger towns in Manitoba. Still we found a supermarket to buy some food, yet we didn't find an open restaurant downtown. So we decided to continue our trip in direction of West Hawk Lake and to have lunch later. As we got back to highway #1 we found an restaurant in Richer; I was interested in having some Canadian food.

The restaurant looked pretty funny ... it was an old kind of bar/pub and when we entered the first thing the waitress asked, was: "Hey guys, you seem to be young! Please show me your identification cards side by side ... " I was really surprised, for we weren't looking to order a beer. However, as she told us, we weren't allowed to stay in this room if we haven't reached our 18th birthday. In the back room of the bar they sold beer (liquor store), one side of the room was full of gambling machines and in another corner two old guys were drinking a beer and spoke French Canadian together (hard to understand!). This bar looked like the setting in an American movie; nevertheless, we ordered toast and burgers ... and got a good meal.

Now it was already time to drive to West Hawk Lake. The resort was easy to find, the check in took only a few minutes ... and I think we were really lucky to find such a good cottage. We had a nice kitchen, a lovely living room with a fireplace, three bedrooms, and finally a small bath room. A few minutes after we moved in the cottage we already got visit of some deers, was really nice to see them in front of our cottage.

"Canadians" seem to be curious *smile*

The other guys prepared dinner and Brian and me, we tried to light a fire ... as we experienced, it is difficult to make a fire only with newspapers and humid wood; therefore, we had to collect some kindling ("Kleinholz"). We had Chinese Dinner and Japanese noodles (they look like spaghetti, you eat them cold!) ... both was really great. We ended our Christmas eve by watching two movies ("A very long engagment", "Euro Trip") and enjoying the fire.

On the 25th we got a great breakfast with bacon, eggs and toast. Later on we decided to make a small trip by car.

Second day: Trip to Ingolf and Whiteshell Provincial Park

Spontaneously we decided to go to a small town named Ingolf ... just for fun! After a couple kilometers we reached the end of the road and there were just a few houses. I was already thinking of turning back, when we discovered that a small way led to the frozen lake. We parked our car on the border and walked down to the lake as a men arrived with his snowmobile. He told me that the ice was thick enough to drive on with cars, I was actually really suprised because I never did that before.


He left, but after a couple of minutes he already came back and offered us to ride his snowmobile, for he thought that we never had the opportunity before, what was true! He was so kind, everyone of us was allowed to drive his snowmobile and it was really fun ... for sure he is responsible too that I will keep Canada in a good memory!


We had some fun with the car on the lake, it was an unfamiliar picture to see parked cars on a jetty ("Anlegesteg"). We drove round the whole lake, who was pretty big (circumference was probably more than 10 km).

Having fun on a frozen lake!

Afterwards we did a small trip through the Whiteshell Provincial Park, on the way we saw many lakes and also a few falls. I was really interested in Rainbow Falls (due to the beautiful name), yet the fall was not as big as I was expecting :)

Rainbow Falls: Small, but still beautiful!

On our last day of our Christmas Trip we had planned a big trip ... going to Lake Winnipeg before going back to the city of Winnipeg.

Third day: Seven Sister Falls, Pinawa, Victoria Beach, Grand Beach, Winnipeg

On our way to Lake Winnipeg we did a stop at seven sisters falls, I was curious to find out why this town had actually such a funny name. The town itself was small, but at the end we found a road sign for the dam. As we reached the dam we had a sight over a huge storage lake ("Stausee") and also on a very wide river valley.

Dam of Seven Sisters

Huge storage lake

View on the wide river valley

Later on we drove to the town of Pinawa, that is situated close to the storage lake. Yet, there was nothing special to see, thus we continued our trip in direction of Lake Winnipeg. After seeing many frozen lakes we also passed through an area of First Nations ("Ureinwohner"). The urban sprawl ("Zersiedelung") was well visible, also we could see that the poverty in this area was higher than in other parts of Manitoba (burnt cars, houses with broken windows, ...).

Around 3 o'clock we finally arrived at Lake Winnipeg and reached Victoria Beach. First, we didn't know how to get to the beach, yet after asking some pedestrians we finally found a way down to the beach. The sight was really impressive, I felt like I stay at the North Pole.

Lake Winnipeg - I'm still looking for the polar bear!

Actually some interesting facts about Lake Winnipeg: Length 428 km, Area 24'390 sqkm (equals more than half Switzerland), Maximum Depth 18m !!!

We also visited Grand Beach, yet everything was closed and we couldn't reach the beach. Our exciting Christmas Trip ended finally with dinner at George's Burger House in Winnipeg.