7/17/19

Friday 26 July -- Birds, Whales &The Irish Loop

The Delta started us (and a large number of young US military personnel -- don't know why they're here) off with a nice buffet breakfast,
then we set out for Bay Bulls for puffin and whale watching. While we were waiting for our boat tour, we chatted with another couple who've followed the identical itinerary to ours. Funny we haven't met up before. They've seen more moose, but not from as close as we have, and they spotted the same fox on the Bonavista circuit. Onboard the Gatherall Gaffer V, we were treated to some live Newfoundland music while we cruised to Gull Island.
There we saw several kinds of birds, whose names I've all forgotten except the puffins. They burrow into the cliffside to nest and hatch their young. There were thousands of birds and we were quite close, so it was noisy and smelly.







Then we moved out into open water where we quickly spotted two Humpback Whales. They stayed close for quite awhile, but were in resting mode, so lots of good views but no tails or dramatic leaps. We saw a few others in the distance, then as we returned to the dock, we were entertained by dolphins cavorting around the boat.
We decided to drive the complete Irish Loop of the southeastern part of the Avalon Peninsula.

We'd heard you could whale-watch from the beach at St. Vincent's, but when we got there low-hanging clouds obscured the view, though we could see birds diving into the waves. The scenery was lovely, marred only by the scene of a terrible head-on collision. We'd met two ambulances racing toward town, so were not too surprised when we reached the scene. It looked very bad, so we hope everyone involved will be OK. Our only other stop was for lunch at the poetically-named Celtic Knot restaurant. I tried the traditional Newfoundland Pea Soup (yum!) followed by a traditional dessert that I think was called Snack and a Half (just looked it up; it's Snack na Half). Larry had scallops and fries followed by blueberry pie. Loved it!
We've just one more day here, and of course always look forward to home, but this has been a great vacation.

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