When we get up today the sun is already shining, it is fantastic weather! We have breakfast in the hotel, the dining room is just beautiful with a fantastic view on the water and the 'rocher percé', the waitress is so nice and the food is very good.

We take the car and drive to a viewpoint with a lighthouse from where we also see some humpback whales swimming.

Then we go to the hotel to get ready for our boat trip to the island 'Isle de Bonaventure'. We drive to the seaport parking and then suddenly the weather changes and becomes overcast... We drive quickly back to the hotel to get our rain gear and get back to the parking, this only takes us 5 minutes.

Around 11am we get on the boat but the sea looks rough. Nathalie is a little bit worried about getting seasick but the captain reassures us and says to sit at the back of the boat outside. Just to be safe Nathalie takes a medicine for her stomach, better safe than sorry...

The boat brings us at the back of the 'Rocher Percé' and then behind the island where the colony of gannets resides.

The captain was right, no motion sickness today!

On our trip on the water we also see some seals and when we get closer to the gannets' colony we have an amazing view. On every inch of the cliffs there is a bird.

The boat goes on and arrives at the jetty where we have to leave the boat (not everybody must leave, some of us prefer to go up and down to Percé without getting of the boat).

We get a short introduction from a park ranger and have to walk about 45 minutes to the other side of the island where we will find the colony. It is only 3km walking but you need the time as it is going up most of the time.

Once we arrive at the colony we see thousands of gannets! With all these birds they still find their partner easily (we learned that they form a couple for life).

It is now beautiful weather and you can reach the birds up to about 2m distance. The colors are beautiful but it is quite noisy here and the smell of the guano is really bad. The viewpoint is covered but still due to the wind we got some souvenirs from the birds on us...

we walk back for another 45 minutes and at the jetty we get a nice soup at the local restaurant before getting back on the boat.

A bit before 4pm our boat arrives and will bring us back to Percé. From the jetty we see hundreds of gannets flying. When they see fish in the water, they all dive like an arrow straight down up to about 1m depth to catch a fish. It is beautiful to see, all these birds together over a space of about 25m2...

Once back in Percé we go to our car when a nice older man stops us. His car is parked next to ours and his battery is died so he asks us to help him jumpstart his car. He had a fridge plugged in his car and it drained his battery. After a nice chat and having started his car we say goodbye, he was so happy we could help him.

We then drive to another viewpoint where again we take some nice pictures.

We get back to the hotel for a well-deserved shower and a bit later we are back at the same restaurant as last night and enjoy again a great lobster. It was a great day!

Daytrip approx. 42 km