(Pouch Cove, Newfoundland & Labrador, Canada)

The city of St. John’s dominates life on the Avalon Peninsula.  We’ve visited a couple of times already and we will pass through the city a few more times before returning home.  It is known for its colourful houses, some of which appear in the photo at the top of this post.  It’s not just one street:  you see these all over the downtown core.  Some of the newer buildings in the suburbs are also being built in the same style.

Driving in St. John’s can be a challenge.  It’s an old city and sometimes the sightlines and merging streets can take you by surprise.  However, the scariest part is the steepness of the streets that descend to the harbour. You need very good brakes here…and you need to check them often.  I can’t imagine what it is like to drive here in the winter when there is snow and/or ice on the roads.

We squeezed in a visit to the Botanical Gardens at the Memorial University of Newfoundland.   This turned out to be a huge facility:  not just a “traditional” botanical garden but also a well-annotated series of trails through boreal forest and pond environments.  You could spend a few hours here if you wanted to see everything.

We also visited the Johnson Geo Centre located “inside” Signal Hill.  The structure itself is probably worth the cost of admission alone; it’s difficult to imagine how they blasted so deeply into 500 million year-old rock to build it.

While the focus at the Geo Centre is clearly on geology, we focused on two aquatic themes:  the ill-fated journey of the Titanic and the journey to the Mariana Trench (the deepest place on earth).  In hindsight, it is surprising how many warnings the Titanic received (and ignored) about treacherous iceberg conditions in the North Atlantic.  The various warnings are all on display at the Geo Centre.  While most people are familiar with the story (from the movie, if nothing else), it is of course more intense when you have just seen icebergs off the very same coast where the Titanic sank.

We also saw a 3-D movie chronicling the journey of James Cameron (the same guy who directed the Titanic movie) in a special sphere to the bottom of the Mariana Trench…almost 36,000 feet below sea level.  While th 3-D effect seemed a little corny at first, it ultimately proved to be well-suited to a documentary picture.

A big event around here is when the “capelin are rolling”.  These small fish periodically wash ashore in huge numbers; it is a highly anticipated (and free!) opportunity to harvest a lot of fish.  It is particularly impressive in the darkness, as the fish are iridescent.  I took a few pictures at Middle Cove, where locals and visitors alike were laden with nets and buckets, jostling for the best position.  Although we didn’t stay long enough for the capelin to roll, we did get a strong sense of the excitement.

We generally end each day with a walk around our home base of Pouch Cove.  It is very refreshing, as the last few nights have been well below 10’C even before considering the effect of the coastal wind.   While I brought shorts along, I don’t think I will need them at all on this trip.  We are both enjoying change from the summer heat and humidity in Kingston.

(Pouch Cove, Newfoundland & Labrador, Canada)

The year of Canadian travel continues. After visiting the western provinces of Saskatchewan and British Columbia earlier this year, I am now at the easternmost fringe of Canada. We’ll be based in Pouch Cove (pronounced “pooch”) for the next few days before moving on to the international portion of our journey. More on that later…

I haven’t been to Pouch Cove since late 2007.  Even in that short period of time, however, there has been a lot of development on the road between St. John’s (Newfoundland’s capital and largest city) and Pouch Cove. Fortunately, Pouch Cove itself remains more or less the same…there are no big-box stores out here yet!

I was hoping that we would see see some icebergs drifting by, as this part of the province is in “Iceberg Alley”. An even bigger bonus would be seeing some whales. It’s the right time of year for both of these massive phenomena but everything depends on the weather, wind direction, etc.

As it turns out, we didn’t have to wait long.  Thanks to an expert’s referral to an “Iceberg Tracker” website, we discovered that icebergs had been sighted near both Signal Hill and Logy Bay.  After a simple but enjoyable lunch at an Afghani restaurant called “Afghan Restaurant” on Duckworth Street in St. John’s, we drove to the top of Signal Hill.

Signal Hill towers over the Atlantic Ocean:  this is where Marconi received the first transatlantic wireless transmission in 1901.  Despite the beautiful view, no icebergs were visible.  However, my inner goat got the best of me and I decided to hike down from Signal Hill to the Atlantic Ocean.  It is a very steep trail and most people looked exhausted upon returning.  I was not deterred:  for some reason, this was something I really needed to do.

After about 15 minutes of cautiously descending, I finally understood why “the call” was so strong:  the iceberg was there, out of sight of the crowds at the top of Signal Hill but visible to the few who dared descend to the ocean.  If you’ve never seen an iceberg before, I can tell you it is a humbling experience.  Even though this one was a couple of kilometers away, it still looked huge.    When you consider that about 90% of an iceberg’s mass is located underwater, it is even more impressive.

Now having an appetite for icebergs, we drove to Logy Bay to see if the other one was also visible.  We didn’t have to work very hard:  we saw it about 30 seconds after leaving the parking lot (see photo at the top of this post).  This one was much closer and therefore appeared much bigger.  It also put on a show, as we heard a loud boom and then saw smaller pieces on either side.  It had “calved” right before our eyes!  Our whale cousins must be impressed by icebergs too, as we saw whales breaching several times just to the east of the iceberg.

Seeing these icebergs was a great way to start our Newfoundland visit…we’re really looking forward to seeing more of this unique part of Canada!