We were up at 4:30 this morning way before we should’ve been up. The rain came pouring down just as we started packing up. We went to the excursion building paid for the trip and had a last loo run

We were all decked out in beautiful big red life jackets., that are definitely not boob friendly 😂 and as you sit down the jackets slide up and you feel like a turtle struggling to come out of your shell!

We were shuttled into a little red spreed boat with two other people and a captain. The captain did not speak much English so with our broken, very broken bits of French and his broken English and a passenger in the boat that became our translator-by free will we managed to figure it out!

We were taken out to the first island where we saw many many puffins including, razorbills, guillemots, terns, and kittiwakes

We got to spend an hour on the island where there is an old lighthouse, the puffins nest in the banks and only lay one egg each season. They usually keep the same mate every season and use the same burrow as in previous years, and believe or not they can fly up to 55mph. Very cool little guys!

Once we returned to the boat to go to the next island we were greeted by our very enthusiastic young captain who had fished out a Sea Urchin with a mop with double handles!! He had cut it open for us to taste. Surprisingly enough they are very sweet not like anything you would expect, not fishy at all. Sadly we discovered we were actually eating the reproductive organs of the sea urchins. The Japanese believe them to be a great aphrodisiac and are highly valued! Peter was trying to convince us that were eating sea urchin poop, before we figured out what our captain was actually saying….although he was the first one to try it and quite enthusiastically too.

We were then shuttled to the next island flying in our little boat, we were hitting all the waves at quite a speed bouncing around all over the place. They should offer kidney belts on the boats not life jackets to survive this trip, a lot of laughter and bouncing.

The next island we went to had the limestone monoliths and we got to spend about half an hour walking around the monoliths and exploring the beach.

Difficult to imagine that these rock formations date back almost 500 million years to a time when a warm, shallow tropical sea covered today’s St. Lawrence Lowlands region.

It was time to get back into the boat and once again we’re bounced back to the mainland this time getting soaked in the process what a hoot!o

Once back in the vehicle we headed out towards sept Iles We stopped at a little town called Riviere-aux-Tonnerre at a grocery store which actually has everything but the kitchen sink. We grabbed much needed coffee and a few munchies and headed back out on the road again

Lots of road works along the way and no cell reception at all!

Lots of rivers, waterfalls and fireweed which is still in bloom here making for a very scenic drive.

Rain again on the drive to Sept Îles hopefully it clears up before we set up camp for the night!

The BunduTop has been a dream to pack up quickly in bad weather though!

We arrived in Sept-Îles for shrimp, yay… the rain stopped and sun shone again. We went to a lovely restaurant which was recommended to us by the campsite owner in Mingan.

The food was divine, the shrimp was amazing, the scallops and snow crab excellent, to top it off we had the best coconut cream pie I have ever had! Delish

Finally reached Port Cartier went into the wildlife reserve, about 30 Kim’s off the main road.. a winding dirt road absolutely stunning scenery!

Camped at Lac Walker Campground for the night..I’ll update with details when I get reception again