The South Shore

The last three days we have been traveling the South Shore of the Island. We had quite heavy seas coming around the south-west corner of the island around Port-aux-Basques. But it got a bit better once we were on the south shore. Winds here are mostly from the south, so are on-shore. We were glad to get to Garia Bay, more sheltered from the ocean, and quite beautiful to boot.
There was a venture planned on-shore. But the weather was cool, grey and raining. So we decided to spend the day on the ship. Turns out that we had forgotten about the maxim for Maritime weather: if you don't like it, wait an hour. After the Zodiacs had gone ashore, the weather turned very nice, sunny and warm.








Well, you can't win them all, and we had a lovely lazy day reading and sleeping. The evening was spent in a singalong. Darlene was up late, and got a bit of a reputation as a singer.
Next day, we moved a bit further along to an area of the coast dotted with fjords. One of the beauties of a smaller ship is that it can negotiate its way into these relatively narrow bays, and our group took advantage of this. We went into White Bear Bay (actually a fjord), "parked" the ship, and took the zodiacs out for a cruise further up the fjord. Turns out that this area had been a small community before resettlement, but is now used for "camps" or summer homes. People fishing and hunting moose (we saw one boat go by with a large dead moose in it). People came out from their cabins to take pictures of us: they had never seen so many people at once in their bay.
But we moved on to Ramea, a town on an island off the coast. Interesting that this town has developed wind power a bit, as an experimental project from Nfld. Power. They were a fishing town, until 1993 when the plant closed down. Their population has dropped by two-thirds. Their school, which is modern and has all the good facilities, has only forty students through all the grades.
In spite of this, they have a great spirit. They put on a spread for us, and challenged us to a friendly soccer game (we lost).
We bought a locally-made quilt, but first had to get money from the local ATM.




Our next stop was to be in Francois (pronounced by their residents as france-way). On the way there, we went into another fjord, at Bay La Hume. The rocks there were spectacular. But we were told by our resident geologist that they were only young— just 3.4 million years old!




After that it was on to Francois. This is a town of about 100 souls which refused to be relocated, back in the 60's. Its residents continue to fish and live, in spite of the fact that there is no road to it, and all supplies come by boat on an occasional basis. There are no cars, only four-wheel ATVs, which run on boardwalks or sidewalks. Geographically, or perhaps geologically, it is situated in an old volcano, as you can see from the photos. But it is beautiful, in a frankly stark way.








After a long walk from the town up to the lookout and back, we returned to ship for supper, then went back into town for what they call a "kitchen party", but is actually in a hall, with music and dancing. The sky was totally clear and still when we returned for the night to the ship in our Zodiacs, and the stars were, again, amazing.
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Location:Francois