spectacular day in Forillon. The following morning, we drove into Gaspé. With a population of about 15,000, it’s the peninsula’s largest town and we took advantage of the shopping opportunities to stock up on essentials at the local supermarket along with some wonderful organicmeat, cheese, and deli items at Le Marché des Saveurs on rue de la Reine. Next we paid a visit to the Museé de la Gaspésie and Jacques Cartier National Historic Site on Route 132. A recently added exhibit takes visitors on a stunning visual journey around the Gaspé coast. Fromwest to east, from the sea to the mountains, from the past to the present, visitors explore the region and meet the men and women who shaped it. A monument
protect against potential attacks by German submarines. Our destination next morning, Percé, is the peninsula’s most famous tourist destination, with its iconic Rocher Percé (Percé Rock) posed majestically just offshore. You can’t miss “The Rock” as you drive in. At 1,420 feet long / 300 feet wide, 433 meters long / 88meters high, it is to Québec what Sugar Loaf is to Brazil. Its name translated is “pierced rock” and comes from a natural arch at its base. We chose to go by boat the following morning, joining Croisieres Julien Cloutier, one of the town’s top cruise operators, for an excursion from the village wharf to Parc National de L’Ile Bonaventure-et-du-Rocher-Percé.
A 3 kilometer trail leads from the Grand Grave Interpretive Center past cliff-lined coves to the dramatic tip of Cap-Gaspé in Forillon National Park.
Bonaventure Island is all about birds and this extraordinary 3.5-square-mile / 5.9 square-kilometer islet just offshore from Percé is home to some 224 species of avian wildlife, including one of the largest and most accessible colonies of Northern gannets in the world. Some 120,000 of these big white birds (with wingspans up to 6 feet / 1.8 meters) flap and scrap about at the edge of dizzying cliffs at the island’s southeastern rim. Cormorants, puffins, kittiwakes, guillemots, and others also flutter about, competing for nesting space along the cliffs. Following a 90-minute narrated cruise along Bonaventure Island’s sheer-sided cliffs, boats drop passengers at the
outside commemorates Cartier’s 1534 landing. Heading south again, our next stop was nearby Fort Prével, a former WorldWar II shore battery complex, redesigned in the 1990s as a tourist resort and featuring a five-room inn, cabins, a restaurant, an 18-hole golf course, and a cozy little hillside campground with 28 full-service sites—one of which would be ours for the night. Golfers love the 18-hole Fort Prével course that drapes a dramatic headland overlooking the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The panoramic views served a more serious purpose during WorldWar II when massive cannons were put in place here to
COAST TO COAST SPRING 2016 11
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