A whale of a time

The visits I'm about to describe actually took place on two different days.

Sailing, sailing

When we're on the seacoast as a result of a trip, we rarely skip a boat tour, the exception being when we are on cruises, which are really just extended boat tours. Normally we vacation in September, but for this trip I had read that whales and puffins usually leave by September, and I hoped we'd be able to see them before they departed.

So, on the Wednesday we were in St. John's, we made our way to harborside to hop on a boat for a tour. The operators don't bill the tour specifically as a whale watching tour, but hey, the actual harbor is pretty small so you can see most of it just by walking around on Harbour Drive. The crewman doing the PA instructions and historical description tells us to keep an eye out for spouts, which would indicate the presence of whales, and to sing out if we spotted any. Then we'd head that direction to find the whales.

I confess I didn't hear much of his spiel because I split time between the aft deck and the fore deck shooting pictures. So I can't relate the history. Talk to Sharon; she heard more of it than I did. After we cleared the harbor entrance -- better known as the narrows -- we headed out into the Atlantic for a bit, eventually turning toward Cape Spear, about which I'll say more in the next post. 

We hadn't been headed that direction long before someone saw spouts, and we turned toward them. While on the way, I had a short conversation with the crewman who made the announcements and admitted to him that we came to St. John's because of a TV show. He immediately knew what I was talking about and said he had also come there from Ontario because of the visuals on the show. He came to study at the marine institute, found the place as fetching as it was on the show, and stayed. 

Soon all the passengers began oohing and aahing and pointing to spouts. Then we began to see the creatures surface, though they didn't make any spectacular breaches like you get to see on the nature shows. 

When we drew near enough, the crewman identified our visitors as fin whales, the second largest of the whale species, growing to a length of about 70 feet and named for the single, large fin on their backs nearer the tail than the middle. 

Occasionally one would surface and go back down in a kind of long roll of its back, and you could easily see how long they were. The crewman told us to look for a change in the water color after we saw a spout, and that would indicate the whale's presence near the top of the water. Sure enough, the water would turn a light green, and then the beast would surface. I took video with my action camera, but it doesn't zoom well and has a wide angle lens, so the video I've linked to really doesn't show the whales as well as I'd like. But I carry the images around in my head of the closest encounter we've ever had with a whale. Too bad you can't shine a light in my ear and see my memory projected out the other ear.

Whales video (This is best viewed full screen, wide aspect on whatever device you're using. The most visible whale will be the last one.)

Caves along the shore just outside the harbor entrance. 

After watching the whales a while, we turned toward Cape Spear. As I said, I'll share more about this in the next post. After short time we headed back toward the harbor, passing a small village on the way, and made our way back to the pier.

Village outside the harbor not far from the caves above.  The crew guide 

said people would build villages pretty much any place where a cove 

provided a place where fishermen could pull their boats up on shore and 

be somewhat protected.

The Rooms

The Rooms, St. John's combination museum and archives building, dominates just about any clear view of the town's highest point. Built on the site of Fort Townshend, an 18th century British military fort that eventually fell into disuse and became buried, The Rooms house a multitude of exhibits covering art, culture, history, and natural history, and is home to the provincial archives. 

The Rooms

They call it The Rooms because its architecture mimics the simple, gable-roofed sheds, called "fishing roome" that once dominated the province's coastlines. 

We arrived there about lunchtime and did something we rarely do -- ate in the facility's cafe. That turned out to be a good call because the food was very good, and the view through the cafe windows overlooking the harbor was even better. 

Bumblebee lights like this one appear in various places inside the museum.

After lunch, we tackled the exhibits, or some of them anyway. We looked through an art installation in which the pieces were fashioned from items such as bone and baleen and other natural, mostly animal, materials. 

We checked out a section that discussed the influence of the Irish in Newfoundland history. Irish immigrants would come to the island to work in the fishing industry for several months of the year, then return to their country. Eventually many of them began to stay, bringing their families with them. According to the exhibit, at one time the Irish composed nearly two-thirds of the population. Even now almost half of the province's population has direct Irish ancestry. If you run into the right resident, you can hear the brogue in their speech (or you can watch the TV show I mentioned and hear it there).

In addition to the formal displays, kiosks and tables in the open spaces

provide interactive opportunities to visitors.

The other memorable -- to me -- exhibit detailed the first transatlantic airplane flight. London's Daily Mail held a competition for airmen to become the first to cross the Atlantic nonstop. In 1919 a couple of Brits, pilot John Alcock and navigator Arthur Brown, flew a Vickers bi-wing from St. John's to County Galway in Ireland in just under 17 hours. They encountered foul weather and mechanical difficulties, at times flying almost at sea level, to take the prize. 

The museum consists or four floors, and we spent time in a couple of other exhibits, but there's so much to see, and we spent several hours there without seeing it all. I told Sharon that it seemed to me that, if a person had time, he/she should spend three or four days there, taking one floor at a time, in order to see everything.