Day 8 - pales and whuffins

We woke up with our alarms after going to bed very very late because we watched the NBA basketball final. We had managed to sleep through the night, despite it being really cold.

Our first stop was the Bay Bulls area where we had a boat trip booked. I am not a huge fan of boats and this was quite a big deal, as we would be out in the Atlantic. We were blessed with a sunny day and still waters and set off in search of whales. The skipper of the boat sang us some traditional Newfoundlander songs (which were very Irish). After about 40 minutes we were alerted to a sighting of a Hump-backed Whale. It was blowing huge sprays of water into the air. We waited near it for a long time, and it came to the surface many times before diving down again to feed.

Although we didn’t see a flick of the tail, it was still very beautiful to see this majestic creature so closely.

Our next stop on the boat was a nearby island (us remaining on the boat) which is a dedicated reserve for birds. There were thousands of them nesting. They did pong a bit and were also very noisy. The birds we saw were Murres and … Puffins. The Puffins are way smaller than we expected (6-8”) and they were quite hard to spot. They mate for life and live around 25 years. They come back to Newfoundland to nest each year - to the same nest and lay one egg. They spend eight months of the year in the ocean, but it’s nesting time June to September.

They are quite hard to distinguish from the Common Murre (a relative of the Guillemot) but we did spot many in the water and a few flying.

After two hours on the boat we made it safely back to the dock and went to a local fish restaurant called The Captains Table, proudly claiming ‘the World’s Best Fish and Chips’, for lunch. It was really nice but hard to verify that claim.

We made our way to our RV home for the night near Brigus, which is an old fishing village known for it’s historic buildings. The RV park was quite a long way from the town, but we hadn’t done too much so we decided to walk it.

With it being Sunday, everything was a bit closed up, but the sun was out and we had a lovely walk around the lovely wooden houses, and saw the ‘historic’ tunnel.

In the evening we settled in the van, and cooked hotdogs for dinner. It’s been a lovely day - much less cold and even some blue skies!