Thursday, July 16 - to the ferry

Mystery solved!  Turns out that "Basil," our host at the Cloudberry Inn, is a fisherman.  I guess that's why he doesn't know how to run a hotel.  Both G and J had nice talks with him and he told his story.  Fishing was the main occupation in Newfoundland until the 1990's when the cod population dropped to 1% of what it had been centuries before.  So a moratorium was put on cod fishing.  This was devastating to the small communities along the Newfoundland coast.  You can still see the effects.  In towns where there is no tourism draw, the houses are old, small, and run down.

  Like the others, Basil was a cod fisherman.  About 10 years ago he bought the Inn, but only opens it during the summer.  There is no business in the winter, he says.  G asked him why he doesn't open for hunting season.  "Oh, the #*€& hunters, they are more trouble than they are worth."

Basil thinks they should lift the moratorium.  He says the cod are back:  "I can jig a thousand pounds a day, just like I used to."  I certainly hope he can go back to fishing soon!

It wasn't always easy to understand Basil.  The accent here in Newfoundland is really unique.  I guess because they were isolated for so many years.  We can usually understand most of what they say to us, but when they talk to each other it's harder to decipher.

We had a long drive south to the ferry.  It rained most of the day--perfect timing.  Our one other rainy day was also on a travel day.  We stopped in Rocky Harbour for lunch.  J had a moose burger and I had roast moose.  It was ok.

 We had a cabin reserved on the ferry because our trip was from 11pm to 6 am.  Newfoundland time is one half hour ahead of Nova Scotia's (weird, eh?) so we gained a half hour on this trip.

Here is one of our favorite Newfies:

This is Riley.  He's very sweet and very drooly.  I'm sure he and Helge were related.  His owner says he's only 8 months old and already 120 pounds.  She expects him to reach 160.  He saw another dog and took off, dragging his owner.  Steve, you can relate to that.