Road Diaries: Through Canadian Hurricanes, Golden Rocks, and Ancient Fjords

June 22, Nova Scotia

I knew the temperature outside was freezing even before opening my eyes because the tip of my nose felt ice-cold.

The day began early with the beautiful song of a cardinal and the sweet melody of a Winter Wren. As I tried to picture where in the world I was, I noticed the rising clarity filtering through the thin walls of the tent. I couldn’t calculate the exact time because we changed time zones today. Still, a number made absolutely no difference in that perfect moment. I was overcome with the thrill of knowing I was in a remote, new place.

I tried to focus my mind on the previous two days to recall the places we visited. The first and most important was the Canadian border. In my mind, after all the doubts and vicissitudes, I believed that day would be memorable. Still, the entire process lasted no more than two minutes. There was no welcome photo with the flag, and not even a spot to pull over to register our first border crossing—one of the twenty-two we want to cross on this Pan-American journey. More than an hour later, we found a town to stretch our legs and grab a drink, and that’s where we finally took the photo, at Fredericton City Hall.

Still wrapped in the warmth of my sleeping bag, I thought about the photos I had taken. I wanted to look at them—at least the ones on my phone—but just sticking an arm out to search for it brought a shock of cold that rushed through my entire body, so I decided to sleep for another couple of hours.

After a while, I felt a pang of hunger and waited for Martín to wake up. Cooking is an activity we truly enjoy together. Ever since he was very small, he would help me wash, chop, and season the food; he loved smelling the spices and tasting the flavors. Now, as an adult, there is one area where he surpasses me. Besides his great seasoning, he has his own aesthetic for cooking and plating dishes. Today, he surprised me with incredible eggs.

We camped near the town of Baddeck in Nova Scotia. We took the loop highway that circles Cape Breton Island to visit Cape Breton Highlands National Park. This road, considered one of the most beautiful in North America, climbs from the ocean’s edge up to a plateau offering views of boreal forests, cliffs plunging directly into the sea, rivers, waterfalls, and a unique vegetation that is impossible to describe at this time of year.

Although only a day had passed since the summer solstice, the wind here was just beginning to gently caress the green buds opening their leaves to the sun. Each tree responded to the breeze with a distinct rhythm: bowing, shivering, and shaking its branches as if trying to break free from the earth holding it down. At times, their branches intertwined, and the trunks were packed so tightly that entire sections of the forest never received a single ray of light.

The sweet scent of flowers reached me, mingled with the salt-laden breeze and the flavors of regional cuisine: oysters, fish soups, and especially seafood chowder. At sunset, I found tones so intense they transformed the dark, damp rocks into walls of pure gold. Every curve of the road brought a new surprise: the contrast between the deep blue of the sky and the sea, the infinite greens glowing in the backlight, and the dark tones of the conifers breaking the monotony of those phosphorescent mountains.

June 24, The Storm

I didn’t write yesterday. Not because nothing happened, but because I didn’t have the time. We packed up camp, meticulously fitted the “Tetris” puzzle of the SUV, and set off under the rain toward the port of North Sydney to board a seven-hour ferry to our furthest destination: Newfoundland.

For me, it was a novelty to watch lines of semi-trucks and tractor-trailers enter the ship, followed by RVs, and finally, us in the passenger cars. They parked us, by my logic, in no specific order. However, the crew members, armed with red flashlights like workers on an airport runway, guided us with millimetric precision into the gaps left by the larger vehicles. We ended up parked sideways, occupying tiny spaces just centimeters away from the massive tires of a cargo container. Even getting out of the car was difficult, and reaching the lift was an even greater challenge. It was such a narrow labyrinth that we had to try several paths before reaching the ninth floor, where we had two assigned seats. Martín settled in front of a TV screen to watch the Colombia football match, which started at 11:00 PM—a time when the lounge was already filled with an endless concert of snoring.

We survived the sleepless night. Upon disembarking in Port aux Basques, we were greeted by a thick blanket of fog and a heavy downpour. The weather forecast: 48 hours of heavy rain with alerts for hurricane-force winds and flooding.

Newfoundland is not known for having good highways. It has a main route connecting the key points and a few smaller side roads. Today I am writing with my adrenaline still redlining. Driving from Port aux Basques to Steady Brook felt like a horror movie: a torrential deluge, fog that didn’t let you see two meters ahead, and winds that felt like they were lifting the SUV. We crossed a stretch where emergency lights flashed, signaling extreme danger. This area is called Wreckhouse—and it truly lives up to its name. I learned that the wind here is so brutal that, historically, it derailed trains and today flips trucks as if they were toys.

But the worst didn’t come from above; it came from below. Keeping the SUV stable was incredibly difficult. The highway seemed to have deep ruts: two channels carved into the asphalt that, when it rained, turned into perfect rivers. The tires hydroplaned, and the car lost traction at the slightest provocation. The mystery of the ruined road has an explanation: all the island’s heavy transport passes through here, and in winter everyone uses studded tires. Millions of steel studs grinding the pavement year after year end up digging those trenches.

We arrived at our destination, lit the fireplace, cooked a delicious meal, went to the launderette to wash our clothes, and rested. Tomorrow we will keep moving on the route. Right now, we are safe, processing what it means to drive, floating on rails of water in the middle of a Canadian hurricane.

It was two and a half hours of pure tension, gripping the steering wheel. The worst part was that we couldn’t stop to rest. There was nowhere to go. From the moment we got off the ship until we reached the cabin, we didn’t find an open café, a petrol station, or a restaurant. Nothing.

June 25 – Newfoundland

When the storm finally ended, we left the cabin that served as our refuge and headed toward western Newfoundland to find the island’s most iconic national park: Gros Morne. The sun came out timidly, and by midday, it was shining brightly in the blue sky.

We started our tour at the visitor center, where they helped us map out our route and showed us the must-see spots on a paper map. From there, leaving Deer Lake behind, we drove through boreal forests skirting Bonne Bay—a spectacular natural fjord—until we reached a small fishing village called Woody Point. It is a town so small it has only two streets: the access road that ends at the very last house, and “Water Street,” where a café, a restaurant, a hotel, a couple of craft shops, and a public library coexist.

In the restaurant—which was simultaneously an ice cream parlor, a bar, and an art gallery—we ordered traditional regional dishes: cod soup and poutine, Canada’s most classic dish consisting of chips topped with gravy and fresh cheese curds.

Leaving the town, we headed to the Tablelands. This strange place is unique on the planet. There, the earth fractured, and through its wound, one of the planet’s inner layers—the mantle—pushed up to the surface. It is a desolate, desert-like landscape surrounded by green forests. Although it might look like a lava field, no volcano exists here; the rocks are completely different in color and texture.

The peaks of the adjacent mountains, which rose during that cataclysm, spend most of their time covered in snow. Even in summer, amid the thaw, they continued to release water from their glaciers, which rushed down to form streams of pure, icy water. I was amazed by how life stubbornly struggled to survive in this impossible world: tiny, bright plants sprouted searching for sunlight, producing chlorophyll for a few short months before vanishing in the autumn.

After a four-kilometer hike, we went to look for an absolutely spectacular camping area. We pitched our tent right at the ocean’s edge, on an arm of the marine fjord that cuts so deep into the land it looks more like a lake. With the experience of the past few days, we set up camp quickly. We tried for over an hour to light a campfire, but the firewood was completely soaked from the storm, so we had to resort to our small gas stove.

We prepared some fried arepas in coconut oil—which my Venezuelan friend, Sofía, taught Martín how to make—and accompanied them with another Latin American classic: black beans with rice. Caraotas in Venezuela, gallo pinto in Costa Rica and Nicaragua, moros y cristianos in Cuba, and blancos y negros in Puerto Rico.

Meanwhile, the sky changed colors, painting the mountains, clouds, and water in shades of pink, while a bright crescent moon rose in the east. We ended the night laughing as we dressed for bed: one, two, three, four layers… until we lost count. Socks, gloves, a beanie, and extra blankets inside the sleeping bag to withstand the freezing night temperatures, which hovered right around zero degrees.

June 26 – The Fjords

That morning, we packed up camp and continued our route toward the north of the island.

We had lunch at a traditional Indigenous-cuisine restaurant that offered a very different menu, featuring dishes such as rabbit stew with root vegetables, cod soup, and moose burgers. This last dish is a culinary rarity in the rest of the country. In Canada, the commercial sale of wild game meat is strictly prohibited for public health reasons; however, Newfoundland and Labrador is the only province with a legal exemption allowing local restaurants to buy, prepare, and serve wild moose under special licenses. This enables First Nations restaurants and local communities to legally celebrate their sustainable hunting traditions.

In fact, although locals joke that there are more moose than people here, spotting one in the wild isn’t as easy as it seems. Moose aren’t even native to the island. At the beginning of the twentieth century, just four individuals were introduced, and having no natural predators here, they multiplied exponentially. Today, the population exceeds 100,000. Yet despite their abundance, they camouflage perfectly into the density of the boreal forest. And perhaps that’s for the best: behind that calm appearance hides a 500-kilogram giant that can become highly aggressive if it’s protecting its young or if you cross its path during the rutting season.

After leaving the restaurant, we headed to one of the places we were most eager to visit: Western Brook Pond. It is one of the oldest fjords on the planet, carved by ice over millennia.

From the road, we had seen the massive rock formations, but it was impossible to imagine how far away they were or the true height of those cliffs. We booked our spots, and although we could have taken a shuttle from the parking lot to the dock, Martín and I decided to walk the three kilometers. The trail crossed an ecosystem completely unfamiliar to us: a peat bog.

There is plenty of information out there about these wetlands, but at that moment, what captivated me was simply seeing and photographing something new. In spring, everything comes back to life, and I saw many unfamiliar plants with tiny flowers sprouting from the earth. Among them, my favorites were the dandelions, which glowed like little lanterns in the backlight as they swayed in the wind. In the puddles grew tiny stalks that looked like miniature bamboo, and among their green stems, I spotted a toad sunbathing. High up on a bare branch, I found a Yellow Warbler singing enthusiastically. I was thrilled because I had seen this bird in Colombia during its migration. Seeing it there made me realize that this tiny creature also connected, through its annual flight, the very landscapes we were just beginning to discover by road.

When we finally boarded the boat and began gliding over the deep blue waters, the freezing breeze made my eyes water, but I couldn’t look away from those rock walls. Deep green, dwarf forests seemed to cling stubbornly to the stone.

It was still the snowmelt season, and waterfalls born from those patches of snow plunged into the void. Some fell from such a height that the wind turned their droplets into mist before they could even touch the rock again.

We wrapped up that night camping inside a forest, ready to head out the next day to a far and remote place to visit a Viking village. But that story will have to wait until next week.

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