A quick snapshot of the people on our tour:

Our Group:
Jolly James and Peppy Paula:
If being nice was a super power the tall bearded James would wear a cape and defeat villains using nothing but his niceness. He is a tenth degree black belt of nice using his utter lack of any evilness to break six boards at once. Paula was also nice. They had the most positive outlook of anyone we’ve ever met. Everything was nice or amazing, sometimes both “nice” and “amazing” depending on which one of them you asked. They were from Calgary eh.

Dan and Jen:
From Windsor. Which I count as being from Michigan. Also extremely nice. They were both engineers, although Dan is back in school to become a teacher. The thing about Dan I loved was that he bought a grilled octopus from someone on the street and ate it. Jen told him, “You’re so gonna get sick.” But Dan ate the whole thing. And then he got sick, but he swore it wasn’t from the octopus, “I think it’s from the rice,” he would later say.

Alice (Alee-chay)
The token Italian. By way of Norway where she teaches English and Italian to Norwegians, and translates the occasional children’s book from Norwegian to Italian. She was such a language teacher. My mind kept flashing back to Madame Burnay my tenth grade French teacher. She was from a city bordering the town in Italy where Angelica’s grandfather grew up. Small world.

Jayson and Colleen:
Sorry to everyone else, but these were our favorites. Jayson is my new hero. He’s something called a SARtech, or Search and Rescue technician. He’s one of those guys that drops from helicopters attached to a cable and pulls people off of sinking ships. And he was also a Newfie which means he had the funniest of all the Canadian accents. We kept making jokes about how if our bus broke down or our boat tipped over Jayson could save us. Ok, by “we” I mean “me.” Colleen was also very funny. She bought conical hats and kimonos for all her family and made Jayson buy a kimono as well. He referred to it as a housecoat which made me love him.