Yesterday we woke up a bit later than we had been and had a quick breakfast of eggs and bagels. We wanted to take a boat tour to another SEPAQ parc and figured our best bet for seeing whales in the water was to leave early.
Kat had decided not to do the boat tour, it was 42$ and she needed a day pass. Shane and I both have annual parc passes and are trying to get to as many as we can.
Île de Bonaventure is home to breeding northern gannets and it’s actually the 3rd largest colony in the world. I was excited to see all the baby birds, and hoping for another whale sighting.
We got to the ticket kiosk right in time to catch the 9am boat. Unfortunately, people had been lined up for a while already so we were in the last few to get on. A lady in front of us dropped her phone while stepping onto the boat so we made sure to hold tight to our belongings. Luckily some divers were about to go out so they said they’d check for her phone for her.
The boat tour was cooler than I thought it was going to be. They actually gave a bilingual history of the area and a lot of information on the birds. It took a little over an hour to get to the wharf on the island since we actually went around the whole thing first. We got to see a lot of the birds, some seals and even an eagle.
We picked the trail that would take us across the island and to the colony the fastest, it took about an hour. I think she said there were close to 100,000 nesting pairs so 200,000 plus babies and boy oh boy did it smell that way.
We could get way closer to the colony than I had expected and were able to observe all their behaviours. We got to see lots of the chicks, partners returning with food and even some chicks being fed. If it didn’t smell so bad we might have stayed longer.
We took the trail along the coast back to the wharf. It was a bit longer but we were still hoping to see more whales. We didn’t see a whale but we did see a lot of seals playing and sunbathing. There was also a lot of historical homes from when the island was inhabited, mostly fishermen family homes.
We got back to the wharf just in time to get on a boat, this time we went up top. I can’t say the view was significantly better and the ride was shorter. There was no tour this time, just straight back to mainland. However, I saw a whale! Shane didn’t but I did!
Kat was waiting for us on the wharf when we got back so we had a quick lunch before hitting the road. We had talked about going to geoparc Percé but it was already 2 and the campsite was 3 hours away.
We decided to stop at a river on the way to the campsite for a quick swim. The emerald river is famous for how clear and green it is. It was absolutely freezing though so I just had a nap before we continued on.
We stopped at parc Miguasha for a quick walk just to say we’d been to that SEPAQ. It had a fossil cliff so I was excited to check it out, the others had never seen one. I was expecting something more like Joggins and was quite disappointed. I didn’t see any fossils at all.
We made it to the campsite about 7:30 and decided we really wanted to watch the sunset. We timed ourselves setting up the tent - 3 minutes and getting our beds set up - 4 mins more. It’s really blowing up the mattresses that slows it down.
We went into town and found a sit down restaurant in a motel but weren’t sure if it did take out. There was a cantine across the street so we popped over. At this point it was 7:50 and it closed at 8. We asked if we could still order to go and she said yes so we quickly ordered. The food was ready pretty fast and we set off.
We had seen a look out sign near the campsite so we followed it. Unfortunately, it was uphill on a crazy gravel road. It was obvious pretty quickly that my car was not going to make it up. We also thought it was strange for a look out that was signed to be up such an awful road. We went back down to investigate and saw two foxes playing! My car was too loud on the gravel though and it scared them away before we could get any photos.
We went back into town to watch the sunset on the river. I offered to take us across the bridge so they could visit New Brunswick but we voted no.
We went back to camp to enjoy a fire and some wine on our last night of the adventure.
