(Pouch Cove, Newfoundland & Labrador, Canada)

The year of Canadian travel continues. After visiting the western provinces of Saskatchewan and British Columbia earlier this year, I am now at the easternmost fringe of Canada. We’ll be based in Pouch Cove (pronounced “pooch”) for the next few days before moving on to the international portion of our journey. More on that later…

I haven’t been to Pouch Cove since late 2007.  Even in that short period of time, however, there has been a lot of development on the road between St. John’s (Newfoundland’s capital and largest city) and Pouch Cove. Fortunately, Pouch Cove itself remains more or less the same…there are no big-box stores out here yet!

I was hoping that we would see see some icebergs drifting by, as this part of the province is in “Iceberg Alley”. An even bigger bonus would be seeing some whales. It’s the right time of year for both of these massive phenomena but everything depends on the weather, wind direction, etc.

As it turns out, we didn’t have to wait long.  Thanks to an expert’s referral to an “Iceberg Tracker” website, we discovered that icebergs had been sighted near both Signal Hill and Logy Bay.  After a simple but enjoyable lunch at an Afghani restaurant called “Afghan Restaurant” on Duckworth Street in St. John’s, we drove to the top of Signal Hill.

Signal Hill towers over the Atlantic Ocean:  this is where Marconi received the first transatlantic wireless transmission in 1901.  Despite the beautiful view, no icebergs were visible.  However, my inner goat got the best of me and I decided to hike down from Signal Hill to the Atlantic Ocean.  It is a very steep trail and most people looked exhausted upon returning.  I was not deterred:  for some reason, this was something I really needed to do.

After about 15 minutes of cautiously descending, I finally understood why “the call” was so strong:  the iceberg was there, out of sight of the crowds at the top of Signal Hill but visible to the few who dared descend to the ocean.  If you’ve never seen an iceberg before, I can tell you it is a humbling experience.  Even though this one was a couple of kilometers away, it still looked huge.    When you consider that about 90% of an iceberg’s mass is located underwater, it is even more impressive.

Now having an appetite for icebergs, we drove to Logy Bay to see if the other one was also visible.  We didn’t have to work very hard:  we saw it about 30 seconds after leaving the parking lot (see photo at the top of this post).  This one was much closer and therefore appeared much bigger.  It also put on a show, as we heard a loud boom and then saw smaller pieces on either side.  It had “calved” right before our eyes!  Our whale cousins must be impressed by icebergs too, as we saw whales breaching several times just to the east of the iceberg.

Seeing these icebergs was a great way to start our Newfoundland visit…we’re really looking forward to seeing more of this unique part of Canada!