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  • Day 34

    Labrador

    August 15, 2019 in Canada ⋅ ⛅ 10 °C

    Labrador is beautiful. Different than Newfoundland with a landscape littered with boulders on low-land boggy expanses and small alpine-like short evergreen forests. I saw a brilliant blue-white iceberg floating around on our way up to Red Bay.

    The central question is , why would you live here? Fishing has mostly dried up. Trees are too slow-growing to sustainably harvest. It’s cold and windy - yesterday I wore a long sleeve shirt, sweater, fleece jacket, rain jacket, and gloves for our morning hike on the small island across the bay. In the afternoon the weather was a bit warmer and the wind died. That’s when these teeny tiny black flies came out. We took a drive to an amazing overlook. We were out of the car for maybe a minute and were overrun by the little bastards. We dashed back to the car and a good hundred of them followed us in. We smashed dozens and dozens of them into the windows. A few landed on the only exposed flesh on my neck and feasted. I have about five or six small welts and blood-strained smears on the windows as evidence of the attack.

    So the bugs rule.

    We drove around hunting for birds and were rewarded with a few. The Northern Gannets dove bomb for fish, and we are seeing Artic Terns, Common Murres, Black-legged Kittiwakes and this morning three beautiful loons.

    Next door to our hotel is a museum that talks about the history of whaling by the Basque. It sounded grim but a lucrative way for a man to make a living during the 8 month trip harvesting whale oil.

    The locals talk about all the changes they have seen with the record snow and lack of snow, fish and no fish, and now the three buses full of tourists every day that come to visit the museum and shop for souvenirs here in Red Bay.

    And the accents - two men were talking with each other on the ferry ride over, and we could hardly understand them. You could catch a word here and there but, wow! The fellow in the museum sounded like he was straight from Ireland. Everyone has been really nice and eager to share about this place they call home.

    Power was out this morning and the water is in a state of perpetual boil alert and smelled not so fresh. The tourist industry seems not quite... ready. With so many tourists like us venturing here it will change fast.
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