Newfoundland

When we visited Patagonia (see my previous blog), we noticed that we crossed the 55- south parallel. Wow! But when we moved our finger across the world map we saw the 55- north parallel crossing Newfoundland, Canada!
Let’s go and visit and see which one is nicer. 

We rented a car at the airport, St. John’s, where we started our trip.
Looks like the city is a travel back in time. It has modern buildings too, but its mark is not the contemporary and stylish constructions, but the feeling the whole city generates. It is the oldest and most easterly city in North America. Well, depends who you ask. But… “1497 – Tradition declares that St. John's earned its name when explorer John Cabot became the first European to sail into the harbour, on June 24, 1497”. Now I am wondering if any town or city in North America can mention any year prior to that (barely 5 years after America’s discovery). I do not know if the place was inhabited continuously, I leave it to historians.  

We hiked on different trails. I felt sucked into the nature, many times we (me and my wife) saw no one on the trails the whole day; and I am not sure all those places were indeed trails. There were some signs but walking from one sign to another was rather intuitive. We never felt lost, the hills were surrounded by water, and only way down led into a real trail or where we parked our car.

Sometimes after crossing forests and hills we reached a corner of the ocean where there were few houses. I was always wondering what kind of life is in those remote and isolated places. 

And of course, there were the floating glaciers. Many of them. By the way, in the restaurants we bought wine that was made with water from the glaciers, different flavours of local and wild fruits. They advertise it as wine made with 10,000 years old water.

​We had some rafting…

​And we payed for a trip on the sea on a pneumatic boat. We saw whales. A humpback whale made quite a show, but I have only the movie, no picture. 

​Newfoundland shoreline is stunning.

​Next pictures are for bird lovers.

Well, we wanted to compare Patagonia and Newfoundland, they are about the same latitude, one in the north, the other in the south. Still, they are so different, both have to be visited. But if someone will ask me to choose which one I would like to visit tomorrow, I will pick Newfoundland.