I was running low on cash so we had a leisurely departure from our apartment as the local Royal Bank did not open until 10:00 am. They didn't have an ATM! I can't remember the last time I had to go to a teller for cash.
We drove around the bay to hike the Skerwink Trail, one of the top rated hiking trails in Canada.
It's not a long trail, only about 6 km but some of the most beautiful coastal scenery I can recall. It took a lot longer than we thought it would due to the many photo stops. This is just a small sample of the many views from the cliff edge trail.
Monte the Travel Moose enjoyed the 360 degree view from the summit!
Afer the hike, we drove on to the village of Elliston.
Just out of town on the road to Mayberry (I'm not kidding on that one!), there is a peninsula and a nearby offshore island totally populated by puffins. We met the local puffin guy at the trailhead and managed to understand every second word as he thanked us for visiting and donating etc.
We walked about 1/2 km onto the peninsula and encountered quite a group of photographers photographing the puffins. At first, I was trying to figure out what they were up to. The puffins were on an island about 100 metres offshore. Occasionally one would swoop by overhead but be very difficult to capture in a photo. These people had very big lenses! I noticed what I thought to be a puffin standing on the cliff edge with it's back to me. Luckily before I started firing off continuous frames of my puffin find, I realized it was a stuffed puffin being used as a decoy. A-ha, kept quiet and waited. Finally some arrived and tried to make friends with the polyester puffin. The sounds from the Nikons and Canons was like machine gun fire from the trenches of WW1! Here are a few of my captures which would be nothing like those from the pros and their 1000 mm lenses. They would be getting headshots for the candidates at the puffin pageant.
Elliston is also known as the root cellar capital of the world. Pretty good for a small Newfoundland town. To me it looked more like Hobbitown in New Zealand but I didn't have to pay $180 to tour there.
Again, some nice views of a rugged coast.
From here we drove to the Point Bonavista Lighthouse. A designated historic site where we did a short tour of the premesis and saw what it was like to live in a lighthouse in the late 1800's.
The rotating light powered by gravity...
We have rented an apartment in Bonavista with the main feature being a washer and dryer as we have been on the road for two weeks and the laundry bag and suitcases were full of clothes in need of washing. When we arrived, we discovered a gas grille on the deck so we decided that having a meal in house would facilitate the laundy process. I took a quick trip to Foodland to pick up some NY strip steaks and accompaniments. I could not understand a word the lady at the grocery store said. And by the way Ontarians, don't get too enthused about buying some beer or wine in the corner store. A six-pack here is $20. Mark West Pinot Noir which we buy in California for US$8 is $23.
We chilled out over dinner and a bottle of expensive cheap wine and spent time repacking and regrouping for the next phase of the trip.
