We were headed for Cape St. Mary's Ecological Reserve, home of one of the largest seabird colonies in North America. The birds live out on a rock separated from the mainland by only a few feet, making them safe from predators but accessible for observation. It took about 2 hours to get there, the last 45 minutes or so through absolute wilderness. The roads were pretty bad in places - Ben said driving felt like a video game, with all the unexpected potholes cropping up.
The turnoff to Cape St. Mary's leads to a road headed for 15ish kilometers straight out to a peninsula that feels like the absolute middle of nowhere. And then there is the visitor's center. We made it!
The only other people we saw at Cape St. Mary's were employees. One of them said to Ben, "Great weather!" and we had no idea whether he was being serious or joking. It wasn't foggy or raining, but it was chilly and windy. As the trip went on we became fairly certain he was serious - it WAS great weather, at least compared with how it could have been.
The ocean everywhere we went in Newfoundland was this deep turquoise color, absolutely stunning.
Every white speck on the cliffs is a bird.
We had to hike out for about a kilometer over some moor-like fields to get to the bird rock. Parts of this trip really felt a lot like Scotland.
Several TripAdvisor reviewers complained about the stench but we didn't think it was bad at all! I guess maybe the heat of summer (which is impossible to imagine, by the way) would make it worse.
The birds truly were a sight to behold. Tens of thousands of gannets live on the rock and the nearby cliffs. They're around from about February through the end of summer, then migrate elsewhere during the winter.
It's hard to tell, but the cliffs were covered with other birds as well, smaller and darker than the gannets. The ocean was filled with black sea ducks, also. There is the visitors' center over there on the peninsula.
After the ecological reserve, we drove on for about an hour to the small town of Placentia. I had struggled with finding a place to stay near Cape St. Mary's and once we were down there it became obvious why - there is just nothing there, besides tiny fishing villages that make you wonder how the people living there manage to carve out an existence. The area is very isolated.
Placentia was smaller than I expected but at least felt like a real town. We stayed at the Rosedale Manor Bed & Breakfast.
The house is the oldest in Placentia, dating to 1873.
Because I am cheap I booked the smallest room, which turned out to be basically just a bed.
However, once again we totally scored because we were the only people staying there. The owners don't even live here, so we essentially had the entire house to ourselves, including this great sitting room and a kitchen with coffee and tea available.
So, the real downside of Placentia is that there are only four restaurants. Two of them are highly reviewed - Philip's Cafe is one, owned by our B&B proprietor, but he wasn't open yet for the season. The other one was closed because it was Sunday. So we ended up at Hoi Pun Chinese-Canadian cuisine.
I have never seen an egg roll that looks quite like that!
I got singapore noodles, which I felt like were pretty acceptable, albeit salty.
Ben got lemon chicken, which seemed to have a glaze similar to that of a jelly donut.
But, you know, what can you do? It was our only option and we hadn't eaten since breakfast. It worked out fine.
After dinner we walked along the water and through the neighborhood around our B&B (which I am pretty certain is almost the entire town of Placentia).
These creepy shacks were on the opposite bank and seemed to be only accessible by water. What do they do over there??
There were a couple of old churches in Placentia - the churches of Newfoundland almost all had this same white clapboard design.
Ben said graveyards are boring so we didn't go look at these graves, but our B&B guy told us the next day that same of them date to the 1400s!
We spent the evening (I swear this is evening - it didn't get dark until close to 10:00) reading and hanging out in the living room. It felt so luxurious having the whole house to ourselves! I even did yoga upstairs in one of the bigger bedrooms.
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