A Different Kind of Holiday - to Newfie Land

A recent vacation to Newfoundland saw us arriving very early a.m. into Port Aux Basques on the overnight car ferry from Cape Breton.

What a contrast to the UK – we actually saw vast amounts of space around us (once we had cleared the ferry terminal that is). In the UK there’s hardly any space left!

There were signposts on the highway talking of places many hundreds of kilometres away; we rarely get beyond double figures in England, otherwise we would end up driving into the sea.

To cap it all, somewhere en route to Gander we came to a sign saying “Mooseburgers, 63 Km”! Either they were a long way off, or they were mighty big burgers, we mused to ourselves.

Unfortunately, there are so few primary places to visit. Each day in our respective B&Bs, everyone we talked with was either going to, or had been to, the same place(s). We were arriving at places hundreds of Kms away knowing what was on the menu.

A competition began over one breakfast as to whom had seen the most moose in NFL so far. Some people from central Canada won the game, but we suspected they weren’t the kind of guys to be beaten and that they were counting sightings from earlier visits too in order to score maximum points. We lost because we’d only encountered two by that stage, and the “winner” had amoosed 27! No contest.

Then there were the highway re-construction zones, or road works as we call them in England; armies of people and machinery blitzing the landscape, a scene from Thunderbirds. If they did projects that size on UK roads, the country would seize up and everyone would cry off work (even more than usual). We don’t even have machinery that big at home. For example, we still de-ice aircraft with a thumb over the end of a hose to make it squirt a bit faster!

The guide books said there was no fruit available in NFL – but we found the world’s most expensive banana at Deer Lake and had to cash in an extra Amex cheque to purchase same. We tried to make the banana last three days, but it wasn’t too good after twelve hours, even after using full aircon in the car and lodging the banana by one of the air vents. Anything more than stage two on the fan started to break up the fruit.

Fantastic accent the natives of NFL have; and such warm people too, but we couldn’t understand what the true locals were saying so heaven alone knows what we’ve said yes or no to during the conversations! I keep looking at my credit card statements just in case we inadvertently bought a house or something. We did manage to extract the word “partridgeberry” from the experience. This, to a UK national, conjures up imaginative pictures of preserves adorned with feathers plus a wary eye looking forlornly out at you from a jam jar. Weird! Reminded me of a sign on the back of a car I once saw – “Preserve wildlife, pickle a squirrel”.

One could go on for ever – NFL was perhaps the most “different” place we have ever visited and a return trip would definitely be considered. Twillingate, in particular, was charming providing icebergs and wildlife in abundance; the only place we’ve been to where the term “moving house” means loading your large chalet onto a raft and taking it to the other side of the bay.

Now that says it all!

David F,
England.