July 2, 2013
At long last, we finally arrived in Havre St. Pierre - this has been our pressing destination to catch the boat tomorrow. We've been riding hard since Grand Forks, North Dakota to make this rendezvous which, at times, seemed too far away to make in the time we had. In fact, several days ago when we were way up north in LongLac, we were in a little diner and we were looking at our map. The server came and asked us where we were from and where we were going and when we told her we were trying to make Havre St. Pierre in 5 days, she said "WOW!" which drew the attention of the other locals in the restaurant. Before we knew it, they were all talking about and considering the task before us. After much hemming and hawing, the group verdict was, "Well... you *might* make it..." with much shaking of their heads. :) Today, we DID IT! It felt like we'd completed a bit of a marathon. From Sept-Isle to Havre is only 200 kms but the road after Sept-Isle is much more secondary and there are stretches of it that are very old and rough. We also ran into quite a bit of road work which held us up a bit. We were very excited to finally arrive and at the north end of town, there is another municipal camp site right on the beach. Gorgeous! We snagged a site and went into town to look around. We found the information center and found the pier where we will catch our boat tomorrow morning. We had a beer at the local biker bar and met three fellow riders from Montreal. We missed the grocery store (it was closed) so we had a quick sandwich/salad at the Subway and were in bed by 8:30. The long days of steady riding, combined with some rough roads is hard on the body. Today, by the time we got in, I was sore. I had to take some Tylenol for the aches and pains for the the first time. Just a lot of stiffness...
July 3, 2013
We had to get up at 3:00AM to pack up our camp and get down to the pier by 4:00AM. We got there and there was no one there!! For a few minutes, we worried that information was lost in translation and we had missed the boat but then we realized there were shipping containers on the dock that hadn't been there the day before so we assumed they were cargo ready to go. Finally, around 4:30, a fellow came by and opened up a container to take out his forklift. He didn't speak any English but with some patience on his part, he managed to tell us that we needed to go to the shipping office to check in which was across town!! Oh boy! He was just writing down the address when another fellow came by. He worked for the port and spoke only French but told us he would take us so he drove his car and we followed he got us to the office. We were VERY lucky!! At the office, they were wondering where we were and if we had made it from Thunder Bay!! (which was where we had called to confirm our reservations from). Turns out we were the only passengers they were pickup up at Havre St. Pierre, along with a bunch of cargo.
After registering, we went back down to the pier and the boat showed up at 5:30AM. What an incredible boat!! It is the "Bella Desgagnes" a brand new ship that was only 3 weeks in service. In fact, we are on her 7th sailing! It was built in Croatia (started there) and then the company went bankrupt so it was finished in Italy. It's a mini cruise ship, really, and our Purser, Todd, gave us a nice tour because we were the only new passengers coming aboard at this port. He gave us our own private berth which is a nice as the one we had on the Holland America ship we took to Alaska a few years ago! What a SURPRISE!!! We thought we'd be on a rough cargo ship, sleeping in crew bunks and here we are in the lap of luxury! The dining room is beautiful with full table service! Go figure! And the food has been incredible - the freshest of seafood, brought on board from the ports of call. The Bella is also a cargo ship as well and the stern of the ship has a large hold for all the shipping containers and a HUGE crane for loading and unloading. We had to load our motorbikes into a container and the crew were so careful and meticulous about tying everything down without scratching the bikes but also to make sure they were very secure. We were both really impressed by the care taken with this. The crew didn't know we had our trailer (although I mentioned it when I booked the reservation) so they didn't have enough container space for it. After some head scratching, they decided to just hoist it up on it's own with the crane and they tied it directly to the deck. It looks pretty puny out there, next to all the huge shipping containers! But it made it on the boat, which was the main thing!
So here we are in the lap of a luxury cruise ship for 2.5 days, chugging along the north coast and stopping in the ports of all these little fishing villages along the way. In each port, we have between 2-5 hours (depending on how much cargo needs to get on and off) to get off the boat and wander around and take photos. There are some little tours in some of the ports you can do as well but we're finding we're seeing enough just on our own. We made Natashquan by mid-afternoon and then Kegaska around 7:00PM last night. We stopped in La Romaine around 11:45PM but we were so tired, we slept right through that port which then departed around 4:00AM....
July 4, 2013
This morning, we woke up at 7:00AM to the sound of the engines roaring as the ship was docking in Harrington Harbour. What a pretty little fishing village. All the houses are brightly coloured and instead of roads, they have have narrow paved paths and board walks and there are four-wheelers everywhere. They are by far the main mode of land transportation in these villages. There is the odd car or truck around but without anywhere to drive them, not a huge need. And, of course, boats, boats and more boats! Apparently, there was a major movie shot in Harrington Harbour recently called the Grand Seduction. We haven't seen the movie but are curious about it now because we've been here. We'll have to watch it. It also reminds me a bit of the village where they shot the movie "Popeye" back in the 80s... cute little brightly painted houses all connected by board walks and pathways...
As the day continued, we pulled into the ports of Tete-a-la-Baleine and La Tabatiere and we were able to get off the boat and explore these fishing villages. Each one has around a couple hundred people that live there. We hit St. Augustine in the night and then on July 5, at 7:00AM, we arrived in Blanc Sablon.
July 5, 2013
We set out alarm and were up and at 'em at 5:30AM. We showered and packed up - taking advantage of the lovely bathroom amenities and the electricity we knew we wouldn't have for the next several days. The boat docked at Blanc Sablon and we disembarked and waited for our shipping container to be unloaded off the boat. It was buried fairly deep in the hold so we waited for a couple of hours. Finally, the big crane lifted it out and we unloaded our motorcycles! After reassembling our belongings, we headed off to Red Bay.
There have been big fires burning in both Quebec and Labrador and the skies have been very hazy since last night. They have that eerie dusk light during the middle of the day - reminds us both of the bad fire seasons we had at home a few years ago. You can smell the smoke in the air. The black flies here are pretty bad - if you stop riding your bike, they cloud around you within seconds. I got a black fly bite in La Tabatiere a couple days ago and my right eye got swollen like a someone punched me. It's still swollen today.
The road to Red Bay is a nice twisty road with some good, long stretches of great pavement and some stretches of awful, potholed, bumpy road too. Very hard, especially for Lynn, on his trike pulling the trailer. Red Bay is just over 100 kms from Blanc Sablon. En route, the road takes you through a lot of the tundra looking terrain - very much like the Mackenzie River estuary we drove through a few years ago, just before Inuvik. At one point, a new piece of road takes you almost straight up a high mountain and the view from the top is incredible!
Red Bay is a great little fishing village. Just 2 weeks ago, the received their UNESCO World Heritage Site designation - you can imagine how proud their people are of this prestigious event! Parks Canada has 2 museum buildings - the one up by the church holds the authentic whaling boat they found and restored and the one down town has a fantastically displayed collection of artifacts. Red Bay is the earliest known European contact point in North America. It was verified by the discovery of a Basque galleon which went down in the bay around the mid-1550s. The Basque Country is between France and Spain. The Basque people themselves are currently reconstructing a replica galleon and they plan on sailing it to Red Bay in 2017 in celebration. It will be a HUGE party - we hope to come back for it!
There were also some big icebergs in the harbour. Pretty exciting for us to see! They're so blue in colour! We've been told they come down from around Greenland. Gorgeous.
We really enjoyed our stay in Red Bay, despite the WORST hatch of black flies the locals have seen in over 30 years. Our luck it was the summer we decided to come for a visit!! They're so bad in places (where there is no wind) that you literally have to run for cover and even the hardened locals have to wear fly netting shirts and head covers over their clothes when they go out for any length of time. CRAZY.
As a result, we returned to L'Anse Au Clair (near Blanc Sablon) and took a hotel room. Too freaking many bugs to camp, that's for sure!
At the hotel, we ran into Elmer and Sharon, who we met on the Bella. They had been in Red Bay too. Elmer said he had gone out in a boat with one of the fishermen to see the icebergs and had a chunk of it in his bathtub! We went up to their room to see it and sure enough, there it was - a chunk the size of a basketball. Elmer hacked off a chunk of it for us which we gnawed on... a chunk of pure, 5000+ year old ice from Greenland! You don't get to do THAT every day! It was particularly nice with a little bit of Sharon's Newfoundland Screech poured over it!
July 6, 2013
This morning, we jumped out of bed and headed down to the ferry terminal ASAP to stand in line for a ticket. They reserve 75% of the boat trip and the rest is up for grabs on a first come, first serve basis. There was already a big line when we got there so we kept our fingers crossed. We got a number and a passage ticket and had to hope and see. We met Dougie, a big rig driver who was trying to get home a couple days early because he couldn't get through the Labrador highway. It's closed due to the fires. He dropped his load in Labrador City and was heading home to Gander. The great news was we all got on the boat and later, Dougie saw us and invited us to share his table for breakfast on the boat. He was a wealth of information about Newfoundland and gave us lots of great tips on what to see and where to go. Everywhere we've gone, we've met such incredibly friendly, helpful people. It's given us such an incredible impression of Canada and the people in our great country. Instant friends all across this great land. We're gathering quite a collection of cards and scribbled names/addresses/phone numbers of our new friends and quite the rate!
Once arriving in St. Barbe, Newfoundland, we headed north to L'Anse Aux Meadows, the 1000 year old Viking camp. They don't believe it was ever a settlement but it was a temporary camp that was used on and off for about 10 years. They believe the vikings came for resources, particularly wood, to bring back to Greenland for building. L'Anse Aux Meadows was the very first UNESCO World Heritage site ever declared in their program back in the 1970s. Pretty cool that it's in Canada! One of the significant parts of it's history is that this was the first point of contact coming from the East of humans in over 100,000 years since we all left our common motherland Africa back then. The first people of North America arrived on the west side but this viking camp was the first contact from the East, bringing the migration of humans to North America full circle. VERY interesting history.
Parks Canada has done a magnificent job of the site - they have reconstructed several buildings which you can walk through. All the artifacts there are reproductions but done true to tradition but the nice thing about that is you can touch and hold them, try the clothes on etc. They have interpreters in costumes who are very knowlegeable and bring the buildings to life (like Barkerville for all you Barkerville-ites!!) Then there is the actual archeological site which are impressions in the ground - you can see where the berms for the walls are and they have signs that tell you what building was, based on the evidence found during the digs. An incredible place!!
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