Vacation Installment#5: St.John's & YEHAW ride

This is the view from the deck of our bed & breakfast in St. John's. A little foggy this day, but you can see the harbour. The hills around the harbour are shrouded in fog.

We spent our full day in St. John's walking around the historic downtown area. I am a lover of old houses, and was in my glory with all the colours:
John Mellencamp might sing about Little Pink Houses, but there is every colour imaginable in St. John's.
We did actually look at more than just houses, but the houses were a highlight for me.
One of our stops was at an independent record store called "Fred's". We picked up a "best of" cd by The Irish Descendants, the group that we saw at Bridey Molloy's the night before. We lunched at a pub, and stayed while it poured rain outside. I took a look through some antique shops and craft stores and John tagged along. He always quickly goes outside to people watch while I browse the stores. We headed to Quidi Vidi, a local micro brewery to see if we could pick up a sweatshirt for John but they were out of his size.

Then we headed up to Signal Hill. Here is what we saw...nothing! It was so foggy, we couldn't see a thing over the wall.

We returned the next day (one of the few days of sunshine we had) and this is the view towards the St. John's harbour:

What a difference a day makes!

Sunny Sunday had us leaving St. John's and heading to Bay Bulls (no, not Bay of Bulls or Bulls Bay, but Bay Bulls...apparently the name has been shortened over the years). This was one of those days that our timing was off, but it turned out in our favour. We were in search of a boat tour. We missed the turn for Bay Bulls (hard to do, but I can navigate us to missed turn offs all the time) and kept seeing signs for boat tours "ahead". We stopped at a convenience store and John asked the woman where the boat tours were. She told us to go back to Bay Bulls. No problem, it wasn't far. So...we turned around and back tracked. When we arrived, we had just missed the 11:00 boat tour and the next one didn't leave until 2:00. This wouldn't be a big deal in most places but Bay Bulls is pretty much just O'Brien's Boat Tours and nothing else. We walked the docks, talked to a man and his son who were fishing, watched a couple of guys drinking beer in their truck on the pier, walked back to the boat tour gift shop, and overheard a conversation about a zodiac ride. I was a little reluctant at first (I mean, touring around the ocean and icebergs in a little zodiac??) but became convinced it was definitely a "must do". We had done a boat tour in the past while in Cape Breton, and had never been in a zodiac so we made the change. We were going out with just one other couple and our guide works full time for the Coast Guard, so I figured we were in safe hands.

First thing we had to do: put on survival suits. Yikes! Do we need these things? Apparently the ocean is 3 degrees celcius. Survival time is about 20 minutes without a suit. With a suit, you can add about 20 minutes. Hmmm....not sure about this trip! This is our guide, Michael (on the left) with Debbie and Wayne from Houston, Texas. Wayne is a geologist, which made touring the cliffs quite informative.

Look at the size of the boat!

It was the ride of our lives! I absolutely LOVED it. I wish I was a writer, because I'll just never be able to put into words how exciting it was. Once we got out of the harbour, Michael turned the zodiac towards the cliffs and headed to them at (what seemed like) full speed. I think my eyes were probably popping out of my head and I rarely swear but I do believe I did as we were rushing for a cave. We pulled into a cave and came to a dead stop. Wayne yelled out "YEHAW!" and that became the theme of our trip. We had lots of YEHAWS, let me tell you. Here is the view from inside the cave looking out:

I couldn't get both sides of the cave into the photo, since I had my zoom lens on my camera and couldn't get a wide shot.

We headed out of the harbour and into the ocean...with 6 foot waves. Can you imagine being in the little zodiac in 6 foot waves? It was a gas! We toured close into the cliffs where the sea birds were nesting (but after my up close puffin experience, seeing them on the cliffs seemed anti climatic). Then we headed out to see an iceberg up close.

This photo is courtesy of Wayne. All the black specks are sea birds. There were thousands of them flying around. Michael's advice: Don't look up with your mouth open! You can see the iceberg in the middle of the photo.

Another photo courtesy of Wayne. We met another tourist on our trip who told us icebergs were no big deal. He only wanted to see ice in his drinks. I think they're beautiful and awesome in their size. (don't forget that only 1/10th of the iceberg is above the water) And there's nothing like seeing one up close. I love the colours in this photo, but it just doesn't give the right perspective of the iceberg. It was huge! We didn't get really close. Michael told us they can break and/or flip without warning. Yikes.

After a wonderful 2 hour ride (and one last YEHAW as we pulled up to the dock) we were back where we started. We were disrobing from our fashionable survival suits when we heard Michael say "Hi Con". We looked up, and there was Con O'Brien from The Irish Descendants...who we saw performing a couple of nights ago in St. John's. Seems he owns O'Brien's Boat Tours. Too funny. I went to get the newly purchased cd from our car, and John asked Con to sign it for us.

This day was definitely one of the highlights of our vacation, and all because of some bad timing and missing the boat tour!

Next: whale tails and bird tales