Moominmama in Colorful Eastern Newfoundland

In which Moominmama explores Newfoundland's biggest city, St. John's, and goes hiking on the Avalon and Bonavista peninsulas...

Gray skies aren't uncommon on the eastern shore of Newfoundland, but the people who live here compensate by painting their homes in bright colors. While it's clearly a Newfoundland aesthetic now, there are a couple stories about why this tradition started 

The first suggests fishermen used the same paint on their houses as on their boats so as not to waste any -- and since the boats were different colors, the houses were too. The other is that the row houses were painted varied colors so the fishermen didn't wander into the wrong house after a night at the pub!

Newfoundland's fishing industry took a hard blow in 1992 when Canada implemented a moratorium on cod fishing because of severe overfishing, mostly by large international trawlers with technology that allowed them to harvest fish at an unprecedented rate for months at a time. 

Fishing has recovered somewhat since then, but there are carefully enforced limits so it's mostly for recreation. Fishermen often take tourists out to fish rather than fishing commercially. Local fishermen and their boats also earn money as extras, and the island has a long list of film and TV credits from "Outlander" to "Aquaman." 

The main industry today is offshore oil, and St. John's harbor, pictured here, is where a continuing rotation of boats like this one bring supplies to the oil platforms. Workers, in the meantime, go in and out by helicopter.

According to my tour guide, a boat like the one pictured here also would remain beside the platform to be ready to redirect any icebergs headed in the platform's direction. They literally lasso or harpoon them and tow them away.

Eastern Newfoundland has a crazy ragged shoreline, full of long fjords and hidden harbors. This made for some beautiful hikes. Out on the windy points marked by lighthouses, Moominmama found wild blueberries and ate her fill. 

The long-ago glaciers divided Newfoundland into a set of long peninsulas. St. John's is on the Avalon Peninsula, but Moominmama also explored some of Bonavista Peninsula.

There I saw starkly beautiful sea stacks and other rock formations. I also visited a viewing site for a puffin colony in Elliston. What a delight to see these birds flying in and out, bringing silvery fish to the burrows where they raise their young! I was grateful once again for my binoculars!

I was unable to get any decent photos of the puffins, but the other thing the town of Elliston is known for is the "root cellar capital of the world" because the slate here breaks into nice flat pieces that allow for easy stacking and created root cellars that last hundreds of years. Come for the puffins and stay for the root cellars!

But amid all these rocky shores, there are little beaches, and Elliston has a nice one. After baking in the sun at high noon watching puffins, Moominmama went in for a swim in the Atlantic. Chilly but very refreshing on a hot day! Moominmama also stopped at Mifflin's Tea Room in the town of Bonavista for tea and toutons, small fried breads traditional in Newfoundland, served with molasses. Pretty tasty!

My final hike on Bonavista was a popular trail called the Skerwink which apparently appears in a list of the top trails in North America. It is a beauty, with coastal rock formations, winding woodland sections and a beautiful view of the harbor and town of Trinity toward the end.

After a day and one overnight on Bonavista Peninsula, Moominmama had a long drive back across Newfoundland to the ferry station at Port aux Basques. From there, a daytime crossing and another long drive west to the Nova Scotia side of the Bay of Fundy, where I'm staying in at a national park called Kejimkujik or Keji for short! 

Keji is my last adventure before I return to the States via Maine and back into New Hampshire. I hope to have another post for you soon when internet and cell service are something I can count on! I leave you with a photo of "the Dungeon" a rock feature near the tip of Bonavista where erosion has created these arches and enclosed pool. Below it is a photo I took on a coastal hike just north of St. John's. Beautiful!













Location: St. John's, NL, Canada

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