Elephant Beach

We have just spent the weekend at a self-catering cottage on Elephant Beach Farm near Cape Dolphin. Having had snow showers on Thursday and with more forecast I wondered if we were going to make it but it had largely thawed by Friday afternoon, although the roads were still quite icy in places. In fact it was an amazing drive out there as there was a full moon and a clear sky so the mountains were all lit up in the moonlight.

Ben, the farmer had put a joint of beef in the oven for us so there were delicious smells in the cottage when we arrived and it was good to relax. Saturday morning we woke while the moon was still in the sky and were able to sit in bed watching a partial eclipse.


Later in the morning we drove a short distance and then walked to Elephant Beach (which is not on Elephant Beach Farm!). The beach is probably about 2 miles long and backed by sand dunes for most of it's length. Washed up at the top of the beach are skulls and bones of hundreds of whales, mostly quite small ones but there are also some huge and very old looking bones embedded in the sand.


Ben said when he was young as many as 50 or 60 pilot whales would beach at a time.

There were some large ponds behind the beach and we saw 5 black-necked swans on one of them as well as lots of geese.

Today we spent a relaxed morning at the cottage and on our way home took a detour up to Salvador, which was an interesting drive up a very indented stretch of coastline, where we had not been before. The roads were actually a lot more slippery with mud coming home than the ice when we went on Friday.