Island Travels

I just could see Jim in the weak light of pre dawn. He was rattling round the trailer, getting dressed for the day.

“What time is it anyway?” I asked him.

“Four-thirty.”

“You know, even if I had all the talent in the world, I could never be a photographer,” I told him. “I can never see the day that I would wake at 4.30 and think ‘great, it’s time to get up’.”

Jim laughed. “It gives me an excuse to get up and wander about early in the morning – If I didn’t have my camera anyone who saw me would think I was crazy.”

We were at Change Islands. Not only were we at the end of a road – we were at the end of a road that we had to take a ferry to get to. We found a spot for our trailer overlooking the water and parked the truck. The kayaks were sat down by the water. For three days Jim was up before dawn taking photos. We walked the town and walked the trails.

Change, like many small Newfoundland outports, has a wonderful system of hiking trails. As the fishing has collapsed, the townsfolk need to put in their required fourteen weeks work to be able to collect employment insurance (dole). Hiking trails, complete with railings, stairs and observation decks have been built as make work projects. And because of the nature and location of these towns, they have been built on some spectacular areas of coastline. Our favourite trail here was the ‘squid jiggers’ trail. It wound around the coast and back into the far end of town.

We visited the museum just down the road from our campsite. This place was built and organized by one man. When we arrived, he scampered across the road from his boat shed to open the museum for us. Then he proceeded to explain nearly every thing that he had on display.

He lifted up a small guillotine like object.

“This is a cutter for the old cigars - they had letters printed down their side. When you couldn’t afford to buy a whole cigar you could just buy a letter”. He laughed as he pointed to the name. “The old timers used to wait until the M was for sale – it’s the biggest one.”

We were about to leave when he asked us to stay a bit longer.

“I always play a tune on the squeeze box for anyone who comes by.” He ran into the back, and came running back with the instrument. He sat on one of the display chairs and ripped out a tune.

We wandered back down the road.

“Now that is what I call a tour,” Jim commented.

It was our last afternoon in the islands. We decided to go for one more paddle. The local kids were swinging and diving from a rope hanging from the main bridge. We dodged them in our kayaks as we paddled out to the end of the channel (or as it’s called here in Newfoundland the ‘tickle’). We were deciding which way to go when we saw a large dark grey back break the smooth water. A smaller one was right behind.

“Follow those whales,” was the decision.

We paddled like crazy. We paralleled their course - making sure to stay between them and the shore. After about 500 meters we’d stop and drum our fingers on our boats to let the whales know we were there. Then we’d wait for them to come up for air. Their breathing was loud – really loud.

We got closer but we didn’t want to get too close. We got good at guessing where they’d be when they surfaced. Up they’d come, give a big hissing sigh and then down they’d go again.

We’d been paddling with them for about half an hour and were kind of aiming for a small rock outcrop. We sat there but the whales were off schedule. We sat, drummed and scanned the water.

“They’re UNDER our boats,” Jim said as he looked down into the water. Seconds later a huge (and I am talking size of a bus) humpback whale surfaced by the rocky outcrop. She was only about twenty meters from us.

With a loud hard blow, she turned hard to the left. We saw her whole body as she scraped by the rocks went down again and headed back to the channel.

We looked at each other – speechless for a moment or two.

“Well Jim - does that count for your ‘close encounter with a whale’?” I asked.

“Yes – I’d say that would do it,” he replied.

We had checked out the whales – they had checked us out. We decided it was time for us to paddle off home.