Entries about ecotourism

Watching whales in Nova Scotia costs about half of what it does in New Brunswick, about $25 vs $45 when we went. We had seen a couple whales or porpoises (couldn't really tell) through the longviews at the park earlier in the day, but it was pretty cool to be so close. We stopped next to one school (?) of whales for about half an hour, as they swam around and leaped and napped. The boats that they take us on are fishing / lobster boats, with seats bolted in for tourist season. The take this year of lobsters, we heard, sold for very low prices (as changing diets on Wall Street reduce demand, according to an article I read earlier), starting the season at a wholesale lobster price of $2.50/lb and currently at $4/lb. That also answered the question of how it was possible for us to each have a lobster and 2 oysters for under $10 at a small restaurant the day before...

This place was truly awesome. It's a massive mountainous park, with peaks around 500m and valleys around sea level, so needless to say the views are spectacular. There are many footpaths (and biking paths but we had no bikes), ranging from 15 minutes to several hours. As we entered the park we lost a hubcap as a result of Sue driving over a curb, so the car is down to 1 of 4, and there was a fox on the road immediately after that. Inside the park there was a lot of nature, we saw a mother (no antlers) and baby moose from a distance and forest in a lot of different states (old growth, wetlands, barren (possibly from forest fires). We only spent a day there, and definitely regret going to PEI instead of spending another day or two in the park.

Our first stop in Cape Breton was an empty stone beach with lovely water, abd I couldn't resist going for a swim. It was cold - after about 5 minutes I was starting to feel frostbite everywhere, which is an interesting sensation. I quickly left the water and walked along the beach, and learned to skip stones under Sue's leadership. It was a great beach for it, some areas had nothing but skipping stones, no need to look for well-shaped ones. Sue almost hit me with a really big rock, luckily I moved out of the way.

Sue was meditating on the rocks,

we did some walking around there. The wind was fairly strong, so there were decent waves, which was pretty cool.

Sue had me pose for this picture, skillfully choreographed to look Photoshopped. Adjusting my height and finger placement and shape, and keeping my position while she waited for people to pass by, made my hand and back hurt. Fortunately they've since recovered.