Iceberg Tour in St. Anthony's, Newfoundland

July 14, 2017  Friday

This morning I awoke at about 5 am after a night of swatting mosquitos and trying to sleep.  Jim spent yesterday evening washing our filthy car and cleaning the windshield of the motorhome.  He came in saying the mosquitos had arrived.  We’ve really had no problem with them so far.  He must have had some stowaways on his clothes and they buzzed us all night. 

Jim spent the early morning moving the motorhome “wreckage” from the tow car to the motorhome storage.  He had to rearrange some things to get that done.  While he was doing that I did some cleaning inside.  While doing that I killed two mosquitos and about three biting gnats or something that looked like that.  Hope that cleared away our pests from last night.

We got everything we’d need for today’s boat trip and loaded the car along with Jim’s computer.  We went up to the club room near the office to check out the strength of the wifi…not good.  We took off for town and tried the Tim Horton’s for the first time.  Nice place…with breakfast sandwiches, lunch menu and a muffin/donut/croissant/danish counter to satisfy any sweet tooth.  I ordered a strawberry cheesecake Danish and two coffees to have while we attempted to access their free wifi.  We had a little bit of success downloading emails but no wifi calling. 

We left there and went shopping around for some things Jim needed.  One of the things we are looking for is Lava soap.  Most people have never heard of it…we still haven’t found any anywhere.  Went to the local Subway for lunch before heading to the boat dock for our tour.  While we waited to load the boat we connected with the wifi at the visitor’s center.  Success!  I tried to make some calls but only left messages.

Finally boarded the boat for our tour.  Jim and I and 10 other brave people got on the top level.  The tour guide said the top does most of the rocking in the water so beware.  The top was the best place.  We could see everything 360 degree view.  Most of the time the guide was steering the boat from the top deck.  There are icebergs all around…not too close…but out there.  The first thing we saw up close were big dolphins.  So pretty moving through the water.  As we were heading out to find humpback whales I was the first to see something.  It was a minke whale.  It was right near the boat.  We saw several on this trip.  While heading out to a large iceberg we passed a smaller one.  We all thought a humpback was near there because we saw blow spray into the air.  Turned out that the iceberg had a hole in the middle and the waves were splashing up through that hole.  That iceberg had a passenger…a seal.  We made a turn around the iceberg taking pictures.  Then we headed out to the larger iceberg.  While the boat was getting closer and closer the crew started playing the theme song from Titanic!  Very funny!!  It was amazing to be so close to the large iceberg.  There was a line of debris floating from that large one.  The guide said that was a sign that the large iceberg was shedding ice.  They scooped up some of the pieces and gave us each a piece of iceberg to eat. 

After spending time circling that huge piece of ice we headed back still looking for the blow spray from a humpback.  We were almost back when our guide got word from shore that a humpback was spotted near the rocks of the bight…that’s what they call the water inlet when it’s too small to be a bay and too large to be a cove.

Anyway, we went very slowly right around following the rocky shore into the bight.  Finally, there he was…a humpback.  The guide said he was a young one.  It was still exciting to see.  We followed him/her all the way back to the mouth of the bight.  Time to head back to shore as another tour is waiting for their turn.