Today I am headed to Anticosti Island off of Quebec, Canada. I took a flight to Montreal yesterday, and now I am up at 4:30am to catch a small plane to Port Menier, the town in Anticosti. Anticosti Island is unlike any other place, with a population of 200, 350 miles of beautiful coastline, and 160,000 deer. It is sure to be a spectacular place. The only other people on my flight were a group of ladies going on a yoga retreat. They helped me translate some announcements as I don’t understand french. It was my first time being on a small flight like this, they even gave us earplugs. We stopped at Quebec City to refuel, and made it to Anticosti by 11am. I saw Michel and Julie at the fence of the airport waiting for me right when we landed. Michel Labrecque and Julie Ouimet are owners of Anticosti Ecotours, which is a branch of their company N2Pix. They run excursions, both on land and underwater with Anticosti Ecotours, and I will be joining them for the next 8 days to both dive and explore the island. I feel very lucky that I get the opportunity to dive here as only 24 divers are able to per season. And this was their first season!
Today we won’t be diving because of potential rain, so instead I will be exploring the island. Michel is leading a tour for two others at 2pm, and I will be joining. First I brought my bag up to the extra room that they have that I will be staying in and it is so beautiful. There is a view of the water!
I grabbed my camera and Michel and I picked up the two others and headed to the West side of the Island. We went to the Boulay Waterfalls, Bay St. Clair, the Calou Wreck, L’anse-aux-Fraises, and Cap-de-la-Vache-Qui-Pisse. It started to rain hard at the waterfalls, but it made it even better.
Bay St. Clair is where the old town used to be. When Henri Menier bought the island, he decided he wanted the town elsewhere and tore everything down. There are still some remnants of house structures though. There was a really friendly deer hanging around and I got to feed him a flower. I felt like Snow White.
We then drove over to the Wreck of the Calou. This is a wooden ship that is beached fully out of the water, not too far from town. We walked all around it and even inside through an opening at the stern. 
After that we headed to these beautiful cliffs. There were so many fossils that had been exposed by the erosion of the cliffs. I walked the whole beach looking for fossils and also collected a TON of sea urchin shells. I wanted to make an art project out of them later.
We drove back, and probably saw around 50 deer. Before dinner we went to where Julie and Michel store their boat, and prepped all the dive gear for the next day. The space that was available to store their boat is actually an ice rink where they normally store a zamboni. I analyzed my nitrox, set up my gear, and loaded weight into my BCD weight pockets and weight belt. Michel and Julie also made sure the boat was functioning and prepared well for the next day. 
We got back and had a version of poutine for dinner and then went to bed. This was a long day for me, and I want to get a good night’s rest before diving tomorrow!