Puffins, whales - and Newfoundland

Author: By Mary Meier, Globe Staff

Date: SUNDAY, May 11, 1997

Page: M6

Section: Travel

Fourteen hours for the Marine Atlantic ferry crossing from North Sydney, Nova Scotia, and weeks of planning preceded this long-dreamed-of summer holiday in a province so independent-minded that some of its residents still consider Canada another country.

Two days of driving through Maine and the Maritimes to even reach North Sydney were no problem for those of use who long for the uncrowded North. (A pleasantly temperate North at that.) For a guide, of course, each member of our foursome had tucked Annie Proulx's novel ``Shipping News'' into a suitcase.

With sound and sight muffled in coastal pea soup, however, we were obliged to remain in the dark about the real Newfoundland a while longer.

After reclaiming our station wagon from the ferryboat hold, we were guided to the highway by the swinging flashlights of the dock workers wearing yellow slickers. For our first night, we had chosen rooms at the Trudon Hospitality House, housed in a former Catholic rectory in nearby Placentia.

Geraldine Kelly welcomed us to Trudon House with an offer of midnight tea and a warning that we must also set our alarm clocks for 6:30 a.m. the next morning if we wanted breakfast before the utility company's scheduled power shutoff.

Thus, we began our first day in Newfoundland earlier than expected.

With fishing boats still idled by international over-harvesting off the Grand Banks, provincial economy is more dependent than ever on income from tourists. The island is laced with 27 Visitor Information Centres. The centers are staffed with pervasively polite and knowledgeable workers and supplied with every conceivable map, brochure, and background material for nature lovers.

Our first question, of course, as bird-watchers: Where are the puffins?

Answer: On the islands off the Avalon Peninsula, Newfoundland's easternmost region.

By lunchtime, we were picnicking in the cove at Bay Bulls, waiting for the Gatherall brothers, Al and Michael, to ready their boat, the Gaffer, for an afternoon trip out to the islands in Witless Bay.

In less than an hour, we were cruising below cliffs teeming with colonies of black-legged kittywakes, razorbills, murres, guillemots and -- glory of glories -- thousands of puffins, those comical birds with the incredibly strong wings whose flight almost resembles a sky-borne propeller.

In the pilot house, skipper Al Gatherall flipped a tape of one of Newfoundland's ubiquitous sea chanty groups into a deck, and soon the rollicking strains of ``The Masterless Men'' were all around us. Gatherall times the tunes to whale sightings.

Fin, sperm, and minke whales abound in Witless Bay. Obligingly, they rolled close to the Gaffer, blew geysers of salt spray, and then dove, holding their huge tails upright for a moment above the water.

``Puffins and whales, puffins and whales: the one buzz-bombs, the other exhales,'' became our own chant.

We had stuffed our station wagon with camping equipment, although one of our foursome, a New Yorker, was underenthused about the prospects of sleeping in tents at a public site.

The glow from the Gatheralls emboldened us for our first night stretched out on bedrolls. La Manche Campground is less than 10 miles to the south. Sites along Mount Carmel Pond were spacious, cushioned with grass and soft moss. Privacy around the individual campfires is assured. At none of the campsites during our two-week, early August stay in Newfoundland were reservations necessary.

A good night's sleep won over the New Yorker to the advantages of fresh air and forested scenery. And at $10, the price of a campsite was more than right.

Who could resist a visit to the provincial capital of St. John's with its busy harbor, despite the codfish moratorium?

We parked at harborside, in the shadow of two tied-up coastal freighters, the John Cabot and Terra Nova, which regularly ply shore waters to deliver foodstuffs, appliances, and a number of commercial supplies to remote fishing villages, many of them accessible only by water.

Everything in hilly St. John's is on a slant, and everything in this brightly colored city perched on the shoulder of the Atlantic is enticing. Armed with a city map from the Visitors Center in the converted railway car adjacent to the John Cabot, we began our ascent.

Searching for art galleries on Victoria Street, we admired the cheerful architecture of the turn-of-the-century Southcott houses built in the aftermath of St. John's Great Fire of 1892.

Victoria Street ends in a flight of steps. To the right is the Resource Center for the arts repertory theater, housed in the former Longshoremen's Hall. A merry working theater rehearsal crew, dressed in Newfoundland punk, directed us cordially to St. John's entertainment district, the infamous George Street, with bars and restaurants jammed cheek-by-jowl.

The next day, heading west toward Violet Major's lodgings in Rocky Harbour at the foot of the Long Range Mountains that anchor Newfoundland's outermost shores on the broad Gulf of St. Lawrence, we were about to engage innocently in the favorite pastime of some Newfoundland women, the battle of the bed-and-breakfasts.

Disguised as visitors, B &B owners delight in spying on their competitors' accommodations. They yearn to compare room sizes, breakfast menus, and the number of towels.

If unable to make a personal inspection, these doughty women relish accounts of other establishments from their guests, who have stopped here and there touring the province.

While opening her second tub of homemade rhubarb marmalade the next morning at breakfast, Violet pumped us about comparative prices at other bed-and-breakfasts, and names of other establishments so well off (or so badly run) to rely on advertisements in Tourist Office brochures.

(In Port-aux-Basques on our last night in Newfoundland, we were, in turn, grilled by our B & B hostess about Violet's house, the thickness of its mattresses, the general layout, -- indeed, almost the pattern of the breakfast china.)

No matter. We were, at last, on the threshold of Gros Morne National Park, that vast, breathtaking reserve in the northwestern part of the island famous for its inland fiords, lonely tablelands, and excellent trout fishing.

Our next night, in fact, would take us back to the campgrounds, this time near the pretty village of Trout River, where the angling, to judge by the full creels of the hip-booted men standing in the swirling current, was excellent.

A gourmet meal rather than fishing, however, was now at the top of our list. We had overdosed on quick picnics and roadside dinners of pan fried cod from the bottom of the small restaurant freezers. And portions in Newfoundland are economical.

The Seaside Restaurant in Trout River answered our prayers. There was a decent wine list, Irish-accented waitresses wearing black-and-white miniskirted uniforms with flair, and choices of homemade bean soups, scallop entrees, and greens other than the ubiquitous coleslaw. Among the blissful choices of desserts were parfaits of partridgeberry or bake apple, the small yellow tundra fruit just ripening in August.

The early threat of rain on the day we headed for famous Western Brook fiord had, in fact, dissolved into warm sunshine by noonday. Thousands of years ago, these high inland cliffs bracketing what today is a huge pond fronted the Gulf of St. Lawrence. As the coastland lifted with the end of the ice ages, the fiord gradually was distanced some 3 miles from the Gulf. Two-hour boat rides into the fiord from a National Park Center pier on Western Brook Pond leave daily at 10 a.m., 1 p.m., and 4 p.m.

You reach the pier after a leisurely 45-minute hike from the parking lot over a tundra boardwalk that also winds through groves of black spruce, balsam, and larch. Pausing at a lookout where Western Brook widens into a tranquil lagoon, we spied a moose cow with her calf browsing in the undergrowth. A hundred yards farther along the bank was a caribou, part of one of the small herds protected in the park.

Mesmerized perhaps by the stately geologic aura of this remote corner of North America, where sea and ski have not changed in the millennium since Viking ships first landed at nearby L'Anse aux Meadows, we slowed our pace along the boardwalk.

Overcome with landscape, we finally stood still. Purple wild iris as thick as daisies carpeted the arctic marshes to the edge of the horizon.

For more information about Newfoundland, call (800) 563-6353.