Saint Andrews – Meanderings & Mind Munchies

Today, Greg and I drove nearly 2 hours to take a whale watching cruise from Saint Andrews by the Sea, New Brunswick.

Saint Andrews was nothing like what I expected. Again, I was thinking we’d be visiting a quaint fishing village like the one in the television program, The Republic of Doyle.

Instead, Saint Andrews was more like an upscale seaside resort town, complete with trendy shops, inns, and restaurants. Since I’m not a shopper, we didn’t spend a lot of time wandering the streets.

Our first stop was a restaurant called The Salty Bight to get some lunch before our cruise. Once again, seafood was on the menu. We both had the chowder.

As you can tell from the photo, it was low tide.

The waitress told us that the strip of land in the distance was Maine.

On our way to the wharf, we saw this artist painting a mural.

Whale watching cruise

Holy cow. The difference between the temperature in town vs. the temperature on the water was dramatic. Before we left, I asked one of the company employees whether I needed to take my jacket, since it was sweltering in town. She recommended that I take it.

Boy, was I glad I did! By the end of the cruise, I was wearing my winter hat, my long-sleeved hiking shirt, my sweatshirt, my down jacket, and my wind breaker.

We had a prime seat inside next to the open windows. Those little boys in the background were a godsend. They had eagle eyes and were able to spot wildlife before our captain and the two marine biologists did. There were five kids in that family. They were from the Netherlands.

We saw lots of wildlife on our cruise, although we almost missed our opportunity to see a whale.

Harbor seals. We also saw some gray seals.

A porbeagle shark. He disappeared before the captain was able to turn the boat around so those of us on the other side could get a good picture of him.

We also saw a good number of porpoises, but they were too quick to photograph. It was only thanks to the little boys from the Netherlands that I got to see them at all.

A salmon farm. Every few seconds a salmon would leap out of the water.

After three hours, our time on the water had expired, and we had yet to see a whale. Then a report came in from a captain on another boat that a finback whale had been spotted. We headed that way.

The whale was almost impossible to photograph. He only broke the surface of the water every few minutes for about a second and a half, and we never knew exactly where he would surface. Maybe if I had had Neal’s camera, I would have been able to get a decent photo of him. But if you look very carefully, in the center of this photo near the horizon line, is the back of the whale.

This is what the whale looked like when he surfaced. (I didn’t take this photo. Greg found it on the internet.) Finback whales are the second-longest whales after the blue whale.

On the way back to the wharf, the captain let the children on board have a turn at the wheel.

This little girl was the oldest of the five children from the Netherlands.

We arrived at the dock and hour and a half late, but at least we got to see our whale!

The tides in the Bay of Fundy are fascinating. Because of the tidal bore, some areas of the water were as smooth as glass while others rippled with white caps. Our captain even pointed out a number of whirlpools. At one point, he let go of the wheel, and the boat went around in circles.