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Well, I was so exhausted last night that I simply showered and dropped into bed...so, here is our day from yesterday...
Again, we woke up bright and early to be out of the house for 7:30 a.m. - this time, the sun was shinning, there was a cool breeze in the air, and NO fog! It was promise for a beautiful day.
Off we went for an hour bus ride down to Black's harbour to catch a ferry. The building for the ferry was ultra stinky - and we all decided to wait outside instead.
The ferry was HUGE! And pretty amazing on how they load all the cars and trucks onto that one boat. We were having a dedicated marine mammals watched, and were therefore outside on the upper deck in the freezing wind...we saw the blow of a Fin Back from very far and a couple porpoises over the hour and a half ferry ride and had all put on all of our clothing layers that we had brought.
Voila! We were now on Grand Manan. Where they get the Grand, I am not sure...it is a cute little fishing village and a blue run down school bus was waiting to pick us up to drive us the remainder of the way to the next warf for our trip into the Bay of Fundy.
We visited a museum/reseach center in the way - very cute - It was very small and mostly full of bones with a little shop in the front selling all sorts of marine life dust collectors...After that we went to a whale cememtery where there is a North Atlantic Right Whale and a Fin Back Whale decomposing behind bars. Both were strandings that occured either on or near the shores of Grand Manan and they are letting them decompose in the sun so that they can then use their bones in a museum.
Well the bus finally let us of at the warf where we were to take the 'Day's Catch' to see the whales. We had lunch on the beech and I think we all enjoyed that very much - it was warm and sunny, and we got to take off our shoes and dip our feet in the ice cold ocean water. It was amazing!
Finally, on the boat to see the whales. Well, I have never been sea sick before, but this was something else, so a good part of the going and then coming back nausea was aflicting a lot of the class - so we desperately hung on the sides and dedicatedly watched the horizon to keep the nausea down. We were out for nearly two hours, freezing, tired, and getting deperate, so Jen and I decided we would try to call the whales. Well, much to the amusement of our fellow classmates as well as the tourists that were with us, we talked in the language of the Right Whale and Humpback to come and play with us...well, believe it or not, 10 minutes later, we spotted the first blow. The passengers were amazed!! It is our new calling! We will be the futur whale callers and will travel world wide with fleets of ships calling the whales...LOL!
The North Atlantic Right whale is an endangered species and there are only 300-350 of them left in the world. We have been learning about them for the past week and a half and yesterday, we got to meet them. They are beautiful. We must have seen about 10. They were coming up, and some were having a coutship ritual, they were lobtailing, and showing of their tail flukes. Simply magnificent.
Off in the distance we were even able to see a couple of humpbacks breaching! Would have loved to seen it closer, but even from a distance they were spectacular.
Well, after all that travel, nausea, and being frozen to the bone, we met the Right and the Humpback. Amazing!
So, now that we had seen them and had travelled so far (we were close to Nova Scotia), we headed back. The nausea on the way back was worse, so I took a nap leaning on Amanda's shoulder.
Our little blue run down bus was waiting for us and we all just sort of threw ourselves on the bus, exhausted and anxious to be back. We had supper on the ferry and watched the sunset off the deck. When we arrived back at Black's Harbour, our last bus had broken down, so we needed to wait for another one...after 45 minutes, then an hour bus ride home, we still felt like we were on the boat.
Our trip of bus, boat, bus, boat, bus, boat, bus had exhausted us all.
Today is a study day and we are going out for another boat ride tonight.
I'm off to finish my presentation.
Love you and miss you all
xxx
A
2 comments:
What a great day on the Island! It sounds like you had an amazing time. If you got me a ceramic Whale with "Grand Manan, N.B." on a little gold plaque on the front I am going to have to hurt you, you know that, right? We the decomposing whales huge? Did they smell? Was it gross? Were there bugs? The devil is in the details, you know, Angie.
Well - no I have not picked up any tacky souvenirs...so, no worries.
Actually, the bones have already been out there for 2 years and all of the meat was off, just bones looked to remain, but, a lot was covered in weeds...weird, I know...guess no body wanted to go pulling the weeds while they were in full decomp mode :)
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