During my visit to Newfoundland and Labrador, I really wanted to see Anticosti, and it turns out that the island can be perfectly incorporated into a trip to this province. WHS fans must take a ferry to Labrador to see Red Bay and they usually spend a night in Blanc Sablon or the surrounding area. From Blanc Sablon, a small Air Liaison plane flies to Sept-Iles and then to Port Menier, the only settlement on Anticosti. Next day is a flight back, so you basically have 24 hours on the island. A ticket purchased in advance is not very expensive (it cost me 400 CAD round trip), and the trip itself is an adventure. The plane from Blanc Sablon to Sept-Iles stops at four other airports along the way – St-Augustin, Chevery, La Romaine and Natashquan. These places on the southern coast of Labrador (though belonging to Quebec) have no road connection to the world (apart from the last one), and can only be reached by sea or air. I flew a small Beechcraft-19 plane with no boarding passes or airport security checks! I've flown many times in my life, but never like this. Unfortunately, the airline is not known for its punctuality - both flights were delayed by 7 hours! By the way - remember that flight times are in Quebec time zone, 1h 30 m difference with New Foundland time zone.

Anticosti is a large (from the eastern to the western tip it is about 300 kilometers) island in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Almost its entire coast was added to the UNESCO list in 2024 due to its unique paleontological heritage - Anticosti is basically one big library of knowledge about the history of life on Earth, in particular about the first great Ordovician extinction, which occurred over 400 million years ago. Despite its large size, Anticosti is almost uninhabited - there is only one settlement, Port Menier, where about 250 permanent residents live. The tourist season lasts from about mid-June, but there are few real travelers here - the majority of those who come here are tourists with guns, with which they hunt the exceptionally numerous deer here (the island has as many as 21 deers per square kilometer!).

I arrived before the season, which had its pluses and minuses. The plus was that there was no problem with renting a car, although it is not cheap – a one-day rental cost 230 CAD. For this, I got a Chevrolet, which is about 6 meters long and looks more like a tank than a car. The minus was that the only hotel on the island was fully booked, so my friend and I decided to spend the night in the car.

We drove almost 500 kilometers around the island and I was surprised how well organized it is. Although there are no asphalt roads here, the main artery – the Route Transanticostienne – is very well maintained and constantly being widened. In every place of interest there is infrastructure, including a toilet. In Port Menier there is also a gas station (with prices 50% higher than on the mainland), a grocery store and even a bar. There are indeed plenty of deer (specifically white-tailed deer), and in the settlement of Port Menier they approach people and let themselves be fed. It is shocking that a dozen or so or several dozen kilometers away these animals are treated to a shotgun blast. Deer on Anticosti do not have a natural enemy – there are no bears or wolves here, so their only enemy is homo sapiens. In addition to the deer, we also saw a fox twice – a red and a dark brown one.

In the morning we drove into the interior of the island in search of the great, 76-meter-high Chute Vaureal waterfall. The road to the waterfall is not short - from Port Menier it is about 150 kilometers, but it is definitely worth it. And of course we went to see what constitutes the OUV of this place, i.e. fossil hunting. There is no museum or interpretation center on the island, so we had to search on our own. The best for this purpose are the cliffs by the sea and indeed - we found a few specimens with imprinted shells.

To sum up - due to relatively poor accessibility, this will never be a very popular place. Nevertheless, it is worth stopping here for a 24-hour stay. Anticosti is undoubtedly unique, although its OUV is difficult to capture by an amateur.