Fogo Island

 Remember ‘Gilligan’s Island’? “It was a 3 hour tour…”

The ferry ride to Fogo Island is just over an hour, unless you miss the first ferry and have to take the second ‘milk run’ boat that stops at a smaller piece of land between the mainland and Fogo Island. So despite leaving at 6:45am to catch the 7:30 departure, we were about 3 vehicles from getting on the “Express”.  Line ups for Fogo Island are brutal!  The normal ferry is out for maintenance leaving 2 smaller ferries to replace it.  We were warned several times to make sure we were in the line up to return to the mainland at least 2 hours in advance.   Duly noted.  

Fogo Island has different terrain than the mainland of Newfoundland.  There’s not a lot of trees or tall vegetation.  This is caribou land.  Very rocky and bare. 

Houses are still colourful, but are built right into the rocks. 

We headed straight for the town of Tilting.  Many of its homes are original, and some even have the old root cellars built into the hills.  Surprisingly, it has the only white sand beach we have seen in this province. 

And the people in the village of Joe Batt’s Arm have a great sense of humour!

The town of Fogo itself has a big rock, almost a mountain, called Brimstone Head.  This has been identified as one of the four corners of earth by the Flat Earth Society. A hiking trail takes you to the top, but we opted to head back early to the ferry.  Maybe we can catch the 2pm departure.  

Except when we lined up, before 2pm mind you, there were already 36 vehicles in front of us. And trust me, the only ferry working cannot hold nearly that many.  

Turns out the ferry scheduled for noon lost power as it came into the dock on the opposite side from where we waited. It started again, but my thought is, with the experience of the Baltimore Bridge fresh in everyone’s mind, the authorities did not want to move it without federal approval.  Meanwhile, it blocked access to the port, leaving the second ferry without a place to land or unload.  

So we and 59 other vehicles are sitting, patiently and many with a sense of humour and inevitability, for the system to start working again.  So far, it’s 8pm.  

“It was a 3 hour tour…”

W

Update:

We loaded at 8:45pm. I got a shot of the sunset from the boat.