Cold Rain And Screech

My oh my oh my oh my.  What a wacky couple of days.  I barely even know where to begin.  I will just start by saying - Twillingate is fun.

We woke up yesterday morning to reports that, first, our iceberg tour was to be pushed back to 1pm and, then, that it was canceled, due to the weather.  All the other boats in the town also canceled for the day as well.  But it turned out that the cancellation email was sent out by mistake and the tour was indeed happening.  So we walked over to the boat and, whoa, the weather was something else.  High 30s at best, raining, and windy as hell.  What a day for a boat ride!

There were about a dozen people on the boat and both the captain, Barry, and the ship's mate/host Dylan were awesome.  Very friendly and proud to show off their home to us.  The sea was rough, oh man.  Ten foot swells, the boat rocking and bobbing furiously.  It wasn't like that the whole time, just in certain areas.  The bergs were phenomenal.  Being able to get so close to these real live ancient wonders was something quite special.

This should offer a bit of perspective.  Icebergs are big.

This one has formed itself into a neat little arch.  I kinda would like to kayak through that.  That massive crack in the left side suggests that it will not be long before this thing totally collapses in on itself.  So maybe I would not like to kayak through that.

The best icebergs are the ones that look like avant garde sculptures.  

Here is a collection of a few of the two dozen or so bergs that we saw on our trip.  

Another one that illustrates just how grand these things are.  The swells were three meters high and that crashing wave was at least as tall as I am.  

It takes three years for these bergs to travel to the Newfoundland coast from way up in Greenland.  They slowly make their way down Iceberg Alley before moving around the Avalon Peninsula, floating past St. John's and then off towards their southern doom.  The water in these bergs is the purest, cleanest, and most delicious you can find on earth.  It has been frozen for anywhere between 10,000 and 30,000 years.  Often it is harvested and the ice is naturally melted and used to make some seriously delicious wine and beer.  More on that later.

From there we went back to the inn and and dried off a bit and then headed out to the Auk Island Winery for a tour and a tasting.  The winery is in the middle of town of Twillingate, in an old school.  They specialize in berry wines, many of them sweet.  They do use grapes but only in a few of their wines.  The tour was fun but the tasting - my very first wine tasting - was a blast.  It successfully got this wine-hating beer drinker to drink wine and enjoy it.  In fact, we wound up buying many, many bottles before we left the place.  Like I said, many of these wines are berry-based and they use everything from blueberry, raspberry, and strawberry to native Newfoundland berries like bakeapple (cloudberry), partridgeberries, squash berries, and stuff like that.  Some of their wines are infused with Screech rum, a Newfoundland staple, and those are quite bold.  One of their most popular wines is called Moose Joose which is a blueberry/partridgeberry wine and is delicious.  They also have a line of berry wines that are made with iceberg water.  We got a bottle of the raspberry which is so delicious that you don't even know it's booze.

They also have tasty food at the winery.  We love tasty food.  I got a reuben that was made on a homemade croissant and is my new favorite sandwich.  They also had wine flavored soft serve - we got Moose Joose and it was excellent.  The staff at the winery, as seems to be the case everywhere in Newfoundland, were so friendly and chatty and we really enjoyed ourselves there.

Our next stop was the Captain's Pub, over on the other island.  We had a coupon for free wings so we went in and grabbed a couple of pints and then it all went wild.  We ended up hanging at the bar with Josh & Shane, the staff, knocking down pint after pint and talking about everything under the sun.  We ate wings and fries and even took over the music in the bar, playing stuff like Bruce Springsteen, Josh Ritter, Johnny Cash and stuff like that.  They were also schooling me on local Newfoundland music and other customs.  And we knocked back more and more pints.  Then it came time for the "screech-in" which is a sort of common initiation ceremony that makes newcomers into honorary Newfoundlanders.  What this involves is declaring your allegiance and kissing a cod on the mouth (yes, it is a real cod), taking a shot of Screech, and correctly answering the following question:

q: Is you a screecher?
a: 'Deed I is ye old cock and long may your big jib draw!

Krissy stumbled over this and ended up taking a few shots of Screech.  From there it continued to get silly and we had a very, very good time hanging with those folks.  When it came time to leave we were not quite sure about driving so we got the wise idea to walk.  In the dark.  In the rain.  In the cold.  It was not our finest hour.  We walked and walked and walked and then we got convinced that we were lost and wound up turning around and walking back to the pub.  By then driving was no longer an issue and we made our way home safely and quickly.

All that and we were still in bed by eleven.

'Deed we are!

Today we woke up and were feeling a lot better than we thought we would but were still not quite all there.  We left Twillingate and started to make our way to Gander.  We actually did not have anything lined up for tonight and we are due at the Trinity hostel tomorrow so we just figured we would find something in between.  We wound up just staying at a hotel in Gander, which is where we are right now, because we did not feel like driving any further even though we only drove for about an hour.  Aside from running out to get food our entire day has been in the hotel, watching TV.  And that is about as fine as fine can be.  Tomorrow is a big day!

Oh yeah, I have to tell you about this - there is a very interesting feature often found in houses in Newfoundland that you will never see anywhere else, at least intentionally.  This is something known as the "mother-in-law door".  The story behind this is that, prior to Newfoundland becoming part of Canada in 1949 (they used to be an independent dominion) most rural houses had one door.  When they joined Canada, there was a new law that said that, for safety reasons, all houses had to have both a front and back door.  Needless to say this was quite a hassle, especially in the more rural areas that weren't too terribly pleased to lose their independence anyway.  So to protest, they would put the doors in the middle of the house with no stairs or porch.  Just a door, right in the middle of the house.  And on the inside of the house, furniture and stuff would be in front of the door, like it was just part of the wall.  These are everywhere.  They really tripped us out when we didn't know what it was all about.  After learning the story last night, it still trips us out.  Just another reason to love Newfoundlanders.

They call this the "mother in law door" because, if you don't like her, this is the door you tell her to use.

There is a very strong sense of provincial pride in Newfoundlanders that you just don't find anywhere else in Canada, the US, or anywhere really.  Perhaps that is due to their history of being a sovereign nation in the past.  Even more often than you see the Canadian flag flying you will see the Newfoundland flag.  And often, especially along the north coast, you will see the original republic flag flying high and proud.  Newfoundlanders are very proud of their home and their heritage and they have a right to be.  This place is awesome.  Often I forget that I am in Canada because, aside from being able to spend my loonies and toonies at Tim Hortons or A&W, this place is so completely its own universe.  There is such a deep cultural identity here and it is wonderful to be able to at least be around it for a long time, if not become totally immersed.

Anyway, that's about it for now.  Tomorrow we head to Trinity and start a three week residency.  Hopefully that all works out.  Until then, long may your big jib draw!

Drinking an Iceberg beer on the Iceberg tour boat with an iceberg in the background.  Mission accomplished.
Oh yeah, and Iceberg is one of the most refreshing beers I've ever had.  And I had many last night...