797 August 8, 2022 Bonaventure Island
I began the day with an easy walk through the town.
While I was out, I purchased tickets for the ferry. When we hiked the other day to Land’s End, we met a gentleman from Nova Scotia. He had just been through Perce and he told us that we had to take the ferry ride to the island to see the birds.
We got to the wharf and stood in line with hundreds of others also waiting to board. We departed and the boat took us around Perce Rock. It really is impressive to see it close-up!
Three Sisters.
The captain then steered us around Bonaventure Island. This bird sanctuary is the summer nesting place for northern gannets. These are the diving birds I have been watching. There are an estimated 150,000 gannets here right now. They arrived in April, returning to the exact place where they nested last year. Each pair hatches one egg. The chicks are white fluffy things! Each bird eats 1 pound of fish each day. The chicks get so fat that they cannot fly and do not take to the skies until September.
We saw the birds soaring overhead, catching wind currents and sitting on the ledges and depressions in the cliffs. They looked like frosting drizzled on a cake.
We could see seals bobbing in the water.
Once we arrived on the island, we hiked across on the Colonies Trail. Each morning, when Tim and I walk out into the world, we have no idea what we will see.
I was totally unprepared for what greeted us. First there was the smell…it smelled like birds that eat fish. Then, there was the noise; a loud, raucous chorus of squawking. Then, there were the birds…thousands of birds. There were many coming in to land, flying low and carrying what looked like bunches of seaweed. They whizzed overhead. They have a wingspan of 3-4 feet and they are incredible to see.
This reminded me of college kids on spring break…the chaos, the multitude of them, on the beach!
I could have stood there all day…it was amazing and an experience I will never forget.
We decided to take the longer hike back to the ferry. This trail skirted the edge of the island giving us lots of opportunity to see other bunches of gannets and more seals and the beautiful coastline.
A guy hiking in front of us spotted this fox in the weeds.
There was a bunch of feathers on the path not far from that fox…
The last part of the hike was past houses…years ago, people lived on this island and subsisted on cod fishing and had small farms and grew vegetables here. In 1971 when this became a national park, the Canadian government evicted the 35 families living here.
We stopped for a snack…I had packed boiled eggs…which might have been in poor taste!
We had hiked about 5 miles and we were happy to arrive at the snack bar where we snagged a powerade and a date bar.
We met another couple as we were hiking and then met them again while we waited for the boat. They were from Montreal. They wanted to know if we were lucky enough to get reservations at La Maison Du Pecheur and we had. Apparently, it is a world class restaurant and they had really wanted to go. There are no more reservations available until late August and so they were going to miss going. Tim and I had talked about canceling our reservation but instead, we gave it to Sean and Kim…we hope that they are enjoying a spectacular dinner! We were tired and we went to a pub and ordered drinks. They brought us our order and told us that they were closed until 5 when they would reopen for dinner…darn! We went instead to the food truck and Tim got fish tacos and I got a quesadilla; both delicious and enough.
We got back to the RV at around 5 and I put some laundry into our washer. The washer broke and so we had sopping clothes and wet carpet and wet basement compartments. I am at the laundromat now waiting for clean clothes…it’s all part of the adventure!!!
We still had a wonderful day 😊
