We visited Mistaken point on Canada Day 2018 and was greated with cake at the visitor center. It was rainy and cold, not the best for a hike out to the fossil site.

The visitor center is on the highway at Portugal Cove South, outside the sites boundary. It is about 2 h by car from St. John and you will need a car to get to there.  You also need to join a tour to get into the core zone. We had pre-booked a tour on the website at 13:00, the only one that day. Quite a steep price, 24 CAD per person. The visitor center was small and kind of boring. No cafes or store around either, so bring some food and drinks because the tour took about 2-3 hours.

First there is 10 km drive to a parking lot followed by a 3 km hike through the marshland. Some places were really wet, so hiking boots are recommended. The rain and wind really made it a cold walk, but as a miracle it stopped raining when we got to the core zone 😊. The site is by the ocean and sometimes whales can be seen although we didn’t.

At the actual site we had to take off our shoes and put on some soft slippers before we could walk out on the fossil site. On our tour in Canada we visited all the fossil sites, and this was clearly the most interesting one.

The fossils are 500 million years old, and there were so many and so visible. Really amazing.

If you are visiting on a rainy day, bring extra socks. The slippers you are wearing on the rocks get wet and so does your socks.

From the parking lot at Mistaken point, there is a 10 km short detour on gravel road to Cape Race Lighthouse. In 1904 they put up a Marconi wireless radio station at the lighthouse. I 1912 it was all over the news, when they received distress calls from Titanic. There is a small museum on the site. Worth a visit to this outpost when you are in the area.

### Randi & Svein