Puffin’ and Huffin’

July 18, 2015 – Day 32

The Puffin is the official bird of Newfoundland.  Today we visited a Puffin breeding site in nearby Elliston. The Puffin is the cutest little bird with chubby cheeks and a colorful beak and webbed feet.  They nest in crevices along the cliffs, and this Puffin viewing site is a place where you can get pretty close to them.  It was amazing to see so many of the puffins together—there were hundreds of them all in one place. They seemed very busy--

moving about and flying around. They are good divers and we watched one dive down, and never saw it return to the surface!  It was a very windy and gusty day, and we almost got blown off the cliffs!     Elliston is also the root cellar capital of the world! (Pretty unusual claim to fame, huh?)  They have over 100 veggie storage vaults where root vegetables have been stored over the years.  Some of these have been around for almost 200 years! (the cellars, not the vegetables).  There is a map with the location of all of the documented root cellars—we chose not to visit all of them, but checked out the inside of one and found the cellar was empty.

After a rain shower last night, and a little mist this morning, the temperature peaked at 54 degrees, but it seemed much colder when we were out in the wind.  We stopped to warm up at a little café – Neil’s Yard -and had hot chocolate and coffee (and a little dessert too) while we looked out the windows at the beautiful harbor, watching for whales.

From the Cape Bonavista lighthouse built it 1843, we were able to see the whales “huffin” against a beautiful backdrop.  The whales come here from their breeding grounds in the Caribbean and feed before heading south again in the fall. About 30 seconds after you see a spout, you see the whale’s body surface.  They say that most of these are humpback whales.  I wasn’t able to get a good picture of the spouts when the whales were huffin, but. it was a whale of a good time watching them!

We did see an iceberg floating in the distance. Bonavista is considered part of iceberg alley.  With the wind as strong as it was, we figured the iceberg would quickly make it’s way along the water.   It had to be a massive floe to be so far away, and be visible to us.

The Bonavista town water tank is painted with murals depicting the town’s history. It was a very unique piece of artwork overlooking the town.

 

We visited the Dungeon, an interesting rock formation in Dungeon park—a huge round chasm that was created by the collapse of two sea caves. They say these rocks are 600 million years old!  

The shoreline provides some stunning views as the waves come crashing in.  The sea changed from sapphire to aqua as you look closer to shore.   Pictures just don’t capture the real beauty of the scenery. 

We had a cookout tonight…who ever thought a picnic in July would include winter coats, hat and mittens?