Puffins, Whales and more!

Lupins growing everywhere

Love those colourful houses

St. Paul's Anglican Church

It was a slow morning this morning. We did not leave Cabot RV until 11 a.m. Our first stop was Trinity. We toured this small coastal town, and took photos of some of the historic buildings. We did not take a picture of the catholic church here – and realized later it is the oldest wooden church still standing today in Nfld. We did photograph St. Paul’s Anglican Church. Its records of baptisms, marriages and burials are the oldest in the province, dating from 1753. The oldest headstone is in the cemetery here – Francis Squibb, 1763 – a member of the first church congregation and one of the first Justices of the Peace.

Town Hall

Courthouse - now a Gift shop

We then drove to old Bonaventure before arriving at New Bonaventure. The claim to fame of this very remote location is that it was the set for the mini-series “Random Passage” with Colm Meaney.  It is the compelling story of Mary Bundle's journey from indenture in England to St. Johns, Newfoundland, and her subsequent struggle against enormous odds to carve out a life in the New World. It is a fictional story based on what life was like for those who left their native homes and settled here in the early 1700 and 1800s and the hardships they faced. We decided to have our picnic lunch at this location on a table overlooking the bay. This was enjoyable until the black flies found us.

From here we drove through Port Rexton, Trinity East, Melrose, Port Union, (the only union built town in North America); Catalina and Maberly before arriving in Elliston. 

Here near Sandy Cove Beach isone of the most accessible places in Newfoundland to view the Atlantic Puffin.  We took a 5 minute walk to the nesting area at Bird Rock,  which is home to more than 400 breeding pairs of puffins.  From here  we also saw  whales – what we believed to be a fin whale on one side and humpbacks on the other side. The whales were further away from us than at Cape Spear – as I could not hear their blows - and the wind was sending their sounds away from us.  There was lots of activity in the water and we could see whales surfacing in every direction that I looked. It seems we are more apt to see them on the bright sunny days and today is another pleasantly warm and sunny day here.  It was at this location, we realized we did not have our Sony Handycam – AGAIN– so could not zoom in. 

We took pictures of the puffins and tried to get some of the whales, but they were too far away. We took a few of root cellers as Elliston is home to 134 documented ones – some have been restored, others are in the process of being restored and others are in a state of disrepair.

Our next stop was Bonavista. We decided to head to Cape Bonavista to see the Lighthouse first. We were not disappointed. From here we were entertained for as long as we wanted to stand there, by a large number of whales in every direction. 

Jumping for the audience

Check out that splash! - and the boat is actually a decent size boat!

Really wish we would have had the zoom lens - as the binoculars gave us a Fantastic show

We spent the majority of our time watching a pair of humpbacks as they jumped and played in the water close to a boat, and not far from shore. They put on a really good show for us – we got some good shots – and had wonderful close up views through the binoculars. We are so sorry we didn’t have the zoom lens of the Sony Handycam.

As we got back in the car and drove from this site, I said to Marcel that we truly cannot be disappointed. We have not even been here a week and we have seen whales at 3 different locales, nesting Atlantic puffins, nesting Northern Gannets and I understand it is looking very promising for us to see icebergs this year.

After leaving the lighthouse, we stopped at the location touted for being the spot where John Cabot landed. There is a large statue here to mark this spot and the historical marker says “In early May 1497, John Cabot (Giovanni Caboto), a Venetian citizen bearing letters patent from Henry VII sailed from Bristol in the MATTHEW to seek a western passage to Asia. On June 24, he made land somewhere on the east coast of Canada. Although the sources do not allow unequivocal identification of the site, local tradition records Cape Bonavista as the landfall. From this, the first official English voyage of exploration in the Western Ocean, derived Britain’s subsequent claims in the New World and the beginnings of her overseas empire.”

Our next stop was a placed call Dungeon – which is marked as a provincial park and is home to a very unusual rock formation. It is a twin entrance sea cave with a collapsed roof. Here we saw a herd of goats wandering the rocky grounds.

It was close to 5 p.m. as we headed back to Bonavista for our tour of this pretty Oceanside village. While here we stopped for dinner (5:10-6:15) at the Ocean View restaurant. Both of us had seats that allowed us to look out over the ocean and it was absolutely gorgeous. The sun was shining and the water was a beautiful blue. We were here from shortly after 5 until about 6:15 p.m.  The food took quite a while to arrive, so we know it was all cooked fresh and made to order. I ordered the Cod Cheeks platter (came with rice and very good home made coleslaw). Marcel ordered the Cod Grautin (this isn’t a spelling or typo – that is how they spelled it in the menu). Both meals were delicious. He shared his cod with me and I shared my cod cheeks with him. We both decided we like cod cheeks.

After leaving Bonavista, we stopped in Duntara, which was disappointing. It was supposed to be a small village that has often been painted. We found it rather boring. It was pretty much a shoreline dotted with small white cottages – nothing nearly as colourful as the salt box houses we have seen elsewhere and not a particularly pretty coastline.

Our last stop of the day was Red Cliffs – and it is so aptly named – it reminded us of Sedona of the North.

It was along this route that we photographed wild azaleas. We have been so amazed at the flowers that grow wild here – lupins, iris and azaleas and all of them are in bloom right now. We arrived back at our campground just a little before dusk at approximately 8:20 p.m. We drove about 260 km today. So far, we have put at least 1500 km on our SUV since arriving in Nfld.