August 22, 2017:
Yesterday was a much-appreciated day at sea, although we pretty much missed the entire eclipse.
Today, we had a change of schedule. We were originally scheduled to land at Prince Edward Island in the town of Charlottesville; home of the much-beloved Anne of Green Gables. I had really looked forward to mentally re-living those stories as we had AGG-centric tours scheduled. However, we can’t really complain about the rationale for the change. Apparently, it was necessitated by a new shipping law intended to protect the extremely endangered North Atlantic Right Whales. Scientists predict the remaining worldwide population of North Atlantic Right Whales may number as few as 400, and all previous conservation attempts to reverse their declining numbers have been unsuccessful. Therefore, as of August 11, 2017, all shipping traffic within a large area of the ocean around Prince Edward Island was ordered to reduce speeds to 10 MPH in order to minimize the danger of ship strikes to the whales. This change meant we were not able to get to PEI in time for our visit there, and still make the rest of the stops on our itinerary, so we diverted to Corner Brook on the west coast of Newfoundland instead.
There is a lot of cool stuff to know about Newfoundland. For one thing, the geology is so old, it predates the Rocky Mountains by hundreds of millions of years. It was originally inhabited over 9,000 years ago, and was discovered by Leif Eriksson about 1,000 AD. It was the first discovery of the North American territory by Europeans, and predated Columbus’ “discovery” by over 400 years. The whole of Greenland and Labrador was extensively explored and charted by Captain James Cook from 1763-1767. The island was settled by many different European settlers, but they all had one thing in common; they were drawn here by the incredibly rich fishing grounds in the Great Banks which are made possible by the Labrador current running down from Artic Canada and Greenland down the Labrador coast on the NE Canadian mainland and around most of the island of Newfoundland.
For our visit today, we are visiting the town of Corner Brook, which is located at the far eastern end of a deep bay lined with islands. In fact, Captain Cook named it the Bay of Islands; a name he liked so much that he reused it when he discovered New Zealand. Because the excursion staff was scrambling to come up with suitable outings for our nearly 500 guests in a small town which not part of our original itinerary, many of these last minute options involved bus trips for between 2 and 8 hours on school busses. Instead, Jim and I decided to explore some of the scenic walks in town.
We started off by hiking up a steep hill overlooking the town to visit the monument to Captain James Cook. The walk was quite a bit more rigorous than Jim or I had planned, but we were rewarded by some great views over the town and the bay. The other good outcome of the hike was that we met a really nice couple from Cambridge in England (Chris and Heather) and they hiked with us.
Then we were able to catch one of our tour busses back to the ship. I must say, the tourist bureau of Corner Brook was scrambling to give Saguenay a run for their money in the competition to be the “nicest port in Canada” (yes, that IS a thing here)! Everyone we met was exceptionally nice, with the prevailing language being English, spoken with what sounded like a kind of a rounded Irish accent.
Since I had been having trouble to get the photos for the blog to upload on the ship, we found a really nice coffee shop and café right next to the ship called Harbor Grounds, and I parked myself at one of their tables for most of the afternoon to upload photos and get a couple of blog posts published using their really good WiFi. After having a yummy raspberry lemonade, Jim ditched me to go out and enjoy laying by the pool on deck.
Having accomplished my mission, I dropped my computer back on the ship and caught the shuttle back to town so I could explore the highly touted walking path running through the center of town. It runs right next to a brook and originates at a large pond called Glynmill Pond. In all the reviews I had about it, they all mentioned bird life at the pond and featured pictures of swans. That was enough for me, so off I went. The walk was really great and shaded by forest. As you can see, the pond is really lovely and the big building at the end of the lake is the Glynmill Hotel, a local gem of a hotel, and still lovely. The swans were just the icing on the cake!
Tomorrow, we actually sail into France for a day (at least the French territory of Saint-Pierre et Michelon, which is a small archipelago of islands to the south of Newfoundland, and which is the last remaining French Territory in North America. Au revoir until tomorrow!
Vaya con Gringos 