St. Anthony, Newfoundland – Iceberg drift

I presume food quality, especially in restaurants, to be much higher than in the USA. But food from supermarket contains a similar chemical concentration like ordinary toilet cleaner. Usually three ingredients should be enough to produce cottage cheese; here there are 15. Yoghurt has 0% fat, but tons of sugar – not to forget the slimy thickener. However, the fresh fish and lobster compensate – simply delicious.

We are in the very north of the island. Look! Our first iceberg. And another and another. They become bigger and bigger. Majestically they drift to the south along the coast. But the weather is ugly. It is humid, chilly and windy. 2°S and sleet.

Newfies complain about insufficient tourism. The reason can’t be the infrastructure: There are hotels, motels, bed & breakfasts, campgrounds everywhere (even if the last mentioned and nearly all museums are not open yet). The roads are good, excellently signposted, and nearly every village has an own tourist information. Should the weather be the reason? To be fair, now might not be the completely right time for the island, but even in summer temperature raises rarely above 15°C. And when the weather is nice, the mosquitoes come. The extensive swamps offer a lot of opportunities to the offspring.

More and more icebergs approach the coast, the storm pushes them into the bays, and pack ice congregates.  Joerg picks a piece of an iceberg washed ashore. I store it in our freezer. Wind speed increases, now we already have more than 100 kmh. Sleet drifts horizontally along the road. Snow lies in shallow hollows. Just for intellectual strengthening: Newfoundland has geographically the same latitude than Hungary. But climatically they have nothing in common. The island is situated in the Northern Atlantic refrigerator and climatically not really benefited. I have a funny feeling Newfoundland will not be my new domicile.

Tim Hortons rescues our afternoon, since it doesn’t stop to rain. A coffee and some doughnuts from the fast food café lift our mood.

Water falls off the mountains, new waterfalls, and new torrents form. The two million Canadian lakes must be filled somehow. Icebergs get closer and closer to the coast. Waves lick the frozen fresh water that might be hundreds, maybe thousands of years old. One of these beautiful, clear, turquoise coloured giants is breaking apart. What a long journey it must have done to die here, in Green Island Brooke bay, melting.

Current sightings: 18 moose, five caribous and six icebergs.

In the end of the day Joerg pours us an Ardbeg on a piece of the iceberg in a glass. There is not much better than a good whiskey on glacial ice.

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