Bonavista and Trinity

Bonavista and Trinity

Puffins and Whales!

How English is it to anglicize the name of the freelance Italian explorer, Giovanni Caboto, to John Cabot and claim the second European incursion into North America in 1497 (not counting the Vikings or the Chinese.) Just five years after Columbus invaded San Salvador in the Bahamas, Cabot’s expedition landed on the island of Newfoundland (Terra Nova or New Found Land.) He purportedly said “Buena Vista” as he sighted the coast. The English version stuck and the Bonavista peninsula has a long and rich English history. There’s a restaurant near the center of town called the Bonavista Social Club. (Another case of cultural appropriation in good humor.)

Settlements on this arm of Newfoundland are quaint and picturesque. Tourism is clearly important, but it seems there’s a good bit of authentic enterprise occurring in fishing and forestry. Life here is humble and friendly. Winters may be harsh with a respite in the summer months of glorious weather – clear and cool.

We drove to the iconic striped Cape Bonavista lighthouse, overlooking Bonavista and Trinity Bays. Completed in 1843 the lighthouse used seal oil until 1962 when it was automated. We arrived too late to tour the museum and climb the tower.

On the way to the lighthouse we visited the Dungeons Provincial Park with a beautiful view and interesting geology.

To get to Dungeons we drove through the community pasture. While trying to take an interesting picture of a Shetland pony with a whitish mane, it walked right up to the car, backed up to the front bumper and started scratching its back on the bumper. That was quite humorous until the pony wouldn’t stop! We backed up and the pony backed up until we backed up far enough that it didn’t feel like following us.

This little pony, evidently with child, or maybe well fed, needed to scratch an itch. She chose the bumper of our Volvo.

Dungeon Provincial Park - a limestone sink hole compromised by ocean erosion.

Meeting sailors at the dock is always a reward for us. Learning their stories of crossings and cruising, ports and navigation, and sharing common challenges is entertaining and educational. We stopped at the Bonavista town wharf to talk with two sailors aboard a European built Nautor Swan 36 sailboat. They had been taking their time sailing from St. John’s, ducking in and out of nearby coves and towns. When we listen to the stories from sailors in the far north Atlantic, we are humbled by our “Goldilocks Days” exploits on the ocean.

They introduced us to Don and Joyce on a large motor cruiser, Zephyr. Earlier in the day we heard someone playing accordion. Turns out it was Don. He says he’s just learning, but he sounded pretty good to us as he played a couple of Hank Williams tunes for us. And, they gave us a tour of their impressive boat.

Bonavista waterfront is a happenin' place!

We took the time to step into the museum of Cabot’s landing. Inside is a full-size replica of the Matthew, the ship that Cabot and his crew of 20 used to cross the Atlantic. Well, it’s a replica of a replica. No plans exist of the original Matthew so for the 500-year celebration of the landing, naval historians took an educated guess of what it might have looked like and built a replica in 1996 in Bristol, England, sailing it to Bonavista, Newfoundland. That replica is now in Bristol. Then the good people of Bonavista built their own replica in 1998. The ship is no longer seaworthy so she sits in a large barn, built over her harbor slip, in a cradle elevated above the sea. The interpretive exhibits in the adjacent building are small but well done. The gift shop is well stocked and opens onto a wharf-front area with a stage.

As part of the community’s Come From Away week-long celebrations, there was live music on the stage on the night we were in town. Come From Away is similar to Homecoming in The Bahamas, where people who are from the community, but have moved away, come home to visit family and friends and participate in community-wide activities. We were happy to sit with locals and listen to two performers perform a wide range of music from local songs to Great Big Sea tunes to pop tunes and old songs from the U.S.

"Sailor ain't a sailor anymore."

Although we do not commonly take commercial tours, we opted for a tourist adventure aboard a whale watching boat out of Bonavista. We were not disappointed. Marvin chatted up the captain and learned about his past and the sea conditions in Bonavista Bay. Most importantly, while Lee was looking at seabirds, like guillemots, puffins, cormorants, herring gulls, and black-legged kittiwakes, we saw whales!

Humpbacks! Up close!

All who were aboard the boat were thrilled with the excitement of seeing the whales so close. A mother and calf were circling the waters in a cove surrounded by cliffs. When we arrived and the engine went silent, the huge mother whale came to the boat as if to check out the intruder. We learned researchers had identified the whales by their unique tail markings. The captain said that a month before they had been observed in the Turks and Caicos. From our past work in TCI we knew that the Mouchoir Banks between Grand Turk and Haiti is a major calving ground. We had seen whale spouts there, at a distance off the beach. Once when diving on the wall off Grand Turk, Marvin heard humpback’s singing, which is still a very moving memory.

In the nearby town of Trinity, a musical theatre puts on a number of shows throughout the summer. We caught “Shenanigans” a vaudeville-genre performance centered on self-deprecating Newfie humor. On the drive back to Bonavista, in the early evening, we avoided collision with a juvenile moose that was invisible in the center of the country road. While not full grown, it was as big as a horse! We had been warned by the innkeeper to be vigilant while driving at night.

We enjoyed trying to get to out-of-the-way places along our drive across the province, taking side roads and gravel roads to coves and landings to explore places that were not advertised in the tourist guide. This yielded interesting engagements and chance encounters at local restaurants. Everywhere we met folks who had interesting stories – some local, some tourists like us, and some who “come from away.”

Puffins – up close

Who doesn’t like puffins? These small seafaring birds are so cute and photogenic! When we cruise to nesting islands off the Maine coast we glimpse a few hundred, mostly at a distance. Any tour excursion we’ve taken in Iceland, Faroe Islands or Alaska has not been much different, with the birds being a distance away and needing binoculars to see them as they dive in the water or fly back to the island. What a thrill here In NLD to have a nesting colony that is free and you can walk up to. Thousands! The brochures claim 600,000, but we are a little skeptical of the census. Yet it is easy to believe they number into 6 figures. The nesting islands are just meters away from a place where one can sit and observe the antics and life and death drama of survival. Large gulls (adult and juvenile) stand by to snare an unprotected egg or chick. Gulls themselves can have their nests raided if left unprotected.

Puffins fly back and forth in a disorganized cacophony. Photographers are busy aiming for the money shot. Casual visitors take in the spectacle. Birders are compiling species for their lists. This place is just up the Bonavista peninsula in the settlement of Elliston, pridefully proclaiming themselves “root cellar capital of Newfoundland.” Root cellars have been excavated into the sides of the hills, reinforced with stones and closed off from wildlife by a door.

One could spend hours here walking the trails through grassy pastures along the precipitous rocky cliffs, or sitting to watch the endless ocean, scanning for a whale’s spout spray.

Unfortunately, we just missed catching a tour out of Trinity that would have given us a chance to see the world's heaviest eagle, a Steller's Sea Eagle that is a visitor from Russia. It was seen in Maine in February 2023 and apparently has chosen to relocate to the Trinity area of Newfoundland for the past several months. A birder we met at a restaurant had just returned from a tour and shared his photo with Lee. Dang! Close but no vagrant bird for Lee to add to her life list.

Thanks for reading....still more to post!

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