Hitchhiking to Montmagny

In September 2021, my friend Andrés and I decided to challenge ourselves by trying out this thing called “hitchhiking”. Our challenge was to leave on a Saturday, get a ride to Québec city, visit a bit, and get another ride to a small town outside the city called Montmagny. Never heard of it? Yeah me neither. That was the whole point: to go there and arrive in a totally unknown town getting rides from strangers.

Full video here

Leaving Montreal

With the help of HitchWiki, we found some information on the best ways to get out of Montreal. We took the metro near the Trans-Canadian Highway and waited near a ramp to hopefully get a ride. We started around 9:30am to give us time to find a ride before noon. After changing spots a couple of times, and after 2 hours of waiting, we got a ride. And after two and a half hours on the road, we arrived to Quebec city. We walked around, ate lunch and visited a bit of the city before trying to get our next ride.

Arriving in Montmagny

Unfortunately, the ferries were on strike, so the only way to cross the river and reach Montmagny was by car… or by bus. Our plan was to take the bus to Levis, the city on the other bank of the St-Laurent, and hitchhike there. While waiting for the bus, I saw that the traffic was quite slow, so I took the sign (now saying “Montmagny” instead of “Québec”) and tried my luck. We had nothing to lose.

And indeed we didn’t lose, because within 5 minutes, I found an old couple ready to take us to Montmagny. What a miracle! Not only were we about to cross the river, but we were going to be dropped off right in front of our AirBnB. The ride was so relieving as the sun was starting to set and our hopes of getting a ride would’ve diminished as the day would’ve passed. We arrived safe and sound around 6pm.

A happy coincidence

At night, we visited the town during sunset. It was such a relief to have arrived at our destination in time, and being able to leave our bag at the AirBnB and walk a bit more freely around with no time limit to get a ride. We ate some poutine at a restaurant and discovered that out of all weekends to visit Montmagny, we chose the one where the town hosts the International Accordion Festival. It was the town’s busiest weekend, and we had no idea.

The following morning, after a quick breakfast, we went to one of the events and listened to a Russian couple playing accordion music. We were among the youngest in the audience, but not the least enthusiastic. It was a lot of fun, and I really enjoyed it. The fact that “Accordion concert” was our second biggest expense only second to the AirBnB should tell you everything about this trip.

The way back

After the concert we took our stuff from the AirBnB and went to the main road leaving the town to hopefully get a ride back to either Quebec city or Montreal. It wasn’t going to be easy, the job wasn’t done. We waited an hour and decided to go near the on-ramp to the highway passing near the town, we would have better chances of finding someone to take us. But we waited and didn’t get very lucky until…

We asked a woman parked near the gas station if she was going to Quebec city. No. Montreal? Yeah. We immediately asked if she had space for two and if she could drive us there. After a moment she agreed and our ride back home was confirmed! What an adventure. After around 4 hours in the car, she dropped us off at a metro station and we got home. Our first hitchhiking experience was a big success and it enabled us to visit a town that we would have never thought of if not for this challenge. In the end, the town gave us great accordion performances as a reward.

And who knows, maybe one day we’ll come back…