Paradise Found

Get out of town

In spite of Charlottetown and Summerside’s more urban charms, to really appreciate PEI you need to leave the city lights behind and go explore the many charming fishing villages that ring its shores. Along the way, slow down and enjoy the brilliant cobalt blue waters lapping at red sandstone cliffs capped with brilliant green fields. The views in every direction — highlighted by all manner of differently shaped lighthouses — are straight out of a tourism brochure.

The island’s trademark red soil takes its color from the high iron oxide content, which rusts on exposure to air. You’ll see it everywhere, on rural roads and all along PEI’s expansive sand beaches. For a truly unique souvenir, pick up a dirt shirt — a plain white cotton tee that’s spent a few weeks buried under beach sand, which permanently stains it a unique reddish brown hue. Every shirt is unique, and you can buy them in most villages.

The island’s natural sand beaches rank among its greatest attractions, and by June, the water is the perfect temperature for a refreshing dip. It sounds surprising, but warmed by the sun, the shallow waters off PEI’s beaches are the warmest north of the Carolinas.

The beaches are also a great place to see wildlife, whether it’s crabs and sea life trapped in tide pools by the outgoing tide or an almost endless variety of birds. More than 330 different species of birds can be seen on PEI, from giants like great blue herons, ospreys and bald eagles to offshore sea birds like gannets and petrels and shorebirds including endangered piping plovers. With such incredible diversity, it’s little wonder that PEI attracts bird watchers from all over North America.

If you prefer more active pursuits, be sure to pack your golf clubs, since PEI offers more than 30 outstanding courses to choose from. For the most part, booking a tee time is easy, and green fees are comparatively cheap. The tough part is dealing with the sea breezes and simply keeping your eye on the ball, as the ocean views tend to be more than just a bit distracting.

Golf not your bag? Then pull out the bike and go stretch your legs. Picking a route is as easy as consulting the provincial road map, with no shortage of glorious seaside journeys to choose from. Or try riding a section of the Confederation Trail, which stretches over a 170-mile path across the length of the island from Tignish to Elmira. Built on a former railway bed, it’s flat, safe and extremely well maintained, with small towns to explore every few miles and convenient parking access all along the way. Can’t fit a bike on your boat? There are dozens of places to rent bikes all across the island, including e-bikes for those who’d rather coast than pedal.

For the super ambitious, the newest craze on PEI is the Island Walk, a 440-mile coastal trek that essentially circumnavigates the entire province. It is said to take a little over a month to complete the trail, walking somewhere around 15 to 18 miles per day; however, most walkers break the trek into sections and do a different chunk each year.

If you’re not that keen to stretch your legs, consider taking a guided kayak tour. Kayaking is popular in most harbors including Victoria, Morell, Malpeque, North Rustico and Ellerslie, where local guides can teach you about the island’s unique estuary ecosystems. Kayaks provide a wonderful way to explore shallow rivers and inlets without fear of being stuck at low tide, while calm waters and spectacular views make the experience one you won’t soon forget.
Most kayak tours will also touch upon the seafood industry and explain those multiple rows of floats seen spanning most bays and coves. The floats reveal the location of mussel socks, used in the harvest of blue mussels for both local consumption and export all around the world.

Blue mussels are one of the most important shellfish crops on the island, and they’re harvested on rope-like underwater structures called mussel socks, which hang suspended in the water from the rows of floats. Mussel larvae drift freely in the current, looking for things to adhere to — normally rocks, but a hunk of rope also works as far as they’re concerned. Fishers simply lift the ropes from time to time and harvest mussels of market size, leaving the smaller ones to grow. It’s a lot easier than diving and scraping bottom rocks, and a lot more productive as well. Each year, PEI mussel farmers harvest a whopping 37 million pounds of blue mussels to feed hungry diners across the globe. Most bays and coves on the island are dotted by mussel socks, their floats appearing as row after row of dotted lines in the water.

Virtually every small village in PEI has a place somewhere in the harbor to buy seafood straight from the water. The catch varies by what’s in season at the time, but you can usually rely on finding lobster, scallops, oysters, mussels and incredibly tasty haddock at any time of year. PEI has long been known for its agriculture and seafood, so it comes as little surprise that the island has developed into a bit of a culinary mecca. Outstanding restaurants offering a dizzying array of fare can now be found right across PEI, and have given rise to a growing number of food festivals, including the PEI Shellfish Festival, Burger Love, Lobster Love and PEI Fall Flavours. There’s even a PEI Culinary Trail and some Culinary Boot Camps that allow visitors to fully immerse in a celebration of food quite unlike any other.

For the freshest seafood possible, dig out your fishing rod and try your hand at catching a striped bass. Native to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, striped bass populations crashed decades ago due to intensive commercial overfishing. However, a harvest moratorium has allowed striped bass — or as the locals call “stripers” — to rebound, and today they’re found everywhere along the island’s shorelines. The best way to catch them is by using floating popper-type lures that make plenty of commotion when retrieved. The fish attack floating lures with gusto, fight hard when hooked, and taste wonderful when pan fried in butter. Best of all, since you’re fishing in saltwater, there’s no license required.

PEI might be Canada’s most compact province, but you’ll quickly find there’s so much to do here that it’s tough to fit it all in just one trip. With excellent marine facilities and magnificent shorelines leading to adventure in every direction, it’s the kind of place that’s sure to leave one enchanted — and hungering to plan a return visit.