Newfoundland and Labrador Tours

To help you prepare for your trip, we’ve put together a guide to Newfoundland and Labrador. Here you’ll find a map of the province, useful information on how to get there and what weather to expect, and a list of the most famous landmarks. 

• The island of Newfoundland lives according to its own time zone. It’s a half hour ahead of the rest of Canada. 
• Spanning 108,860 square kilometres (42,031 sq mi), Newfoundland is one of the world’s largest islands, ranking 16th in size. 
• The province capital of St. John’s is one of the oldest cities in North America.
• Newfoundland and Labrador sit in the migratory path of 10,000-year-old icebergs. Every summer thousands of icebergs drift from Greenland to Newfoundland’s northern and eastern shores. Photograph these giants on your next trip!
• Newfoundland and Labrador is the seabird capital of the world. Find 500,000 puffins, 25,000 gannets, and around 7 million storm petrels for starters. 
• The province is a premier whale watching destination. From May to September, you can spot 22 species of whales, including the world’s largest population of humpback whales.

Newfoundland and Labrador is the easternmost province in Canada, and it’s home to Cape Spear, the most easterly point in North America. The province comprises Newfoundland, an island in the Atlantic Ocean, Labrador, a part of the eastern Canadian mainland, and over 7,000 tiny islands. The Strait of Belle Isle separates the Labrador Peninsula from Newfoundland.  

Most visitors travel to the province by air. The major airports are St. John’s International Airport (YYT) and Deer Lake Airport (YDF). The province capital St. John’s is a 1.5-hour flight from Halifax, 3-hour flight from Toronto, 4-hour flight from New York, and 5-hour flight from London. Airlines flying in daily are Air Canada, Porter Airlines, and WestJet.

Our Newfoundland and Labrador tours (expect cruises) include airport transfers, so you can focus your energy on preparing for your upcoming adventures. Some of our tours also include a ferry trip from Newfoundland to Labrador, considered one of the world’s best pelagic seabird watching trips. Just don’t forget to set your clock back as Labrador is in a different time zone from Newfoundland!

Canada’s easternmost province enjoys a mild marine climate. The island of Newfoundland has an average summer temperature of 16°C (61°F) and winter temperatures loom around  0°C (32°F). July and August are the warmest months, with daytime temperatures at or above 20°C (68°F). In Labrador, winters are colder than in Newfoundland, but temperatures can jump up to  25°C (77°F) during summers.

Let’s not forget that the province is filled with the fresh sea air! Can you already feel the crisp air entering your lungs?

For a daily weather forecast, visit Canada Weather Office.

Newfoundland’s capital and the largest city, St. John’s is one of the most colourful cities on Earth. With jelly-bean row houses, the old city just makes you smile. The city’s major highlight is Signal Hill where Guglielmo Marconi received the first wireless transatlantic signal at Cabot Tower in 1901.

Countless pubs along George Street are perfect for a breather. The city’s “townies,” a slang term for St. John’s locals, will greet you with friendliness and warmth.

Quirky fact: St. John’s is often compared to a mini San Francisco due to its hilly terrain and colourful maze of streets. 

Designated a World Heritage Site in 1987, Gros Morne National Park is a geologist’s wonderland. The park is home to the Tableland Mountains, one of the few places in the world where you can walk on rocks from deep within the Earth’s crust. Thanks to these unique mountains, geologists were able to prove the theory of plate tectonics.

While the geological history will make your jaw drop, there’s also a remarkable landscape of mountains, forests, and fjords. It took nearly 500 million years for natural forces to carve out this epic scenery.

Spanning 1,805 sq km (696 sq mi), the ancient world of Gros Morne awaits you on our Newfoundland Circumnavigation Cruise.

Both a Unesco World Heritage Site and a National Historic Site, L’Anse aux Meadows holds evidence of the first European settlement in the New World. The story goes that the Greenlanders and Icelanders led by Leif Erikson landed at the site some 500 years before Christoper Columbus sailed the ocean blue. While Columbus gets credit for discovering America from the Old World, Erikson and his party were actually the first to do it.

Discovered in the 1960s by Norwegian archaeologists, L’Anse aux Meadows is the only authenticated Viking settlement in North America.

Feel like both an explorer and a historian on our Driving Tour Along the Viking Trail in Western Newfoundland where we visit L’Anse aux Meadows and much more.

Located in southern Labrador, Red Bay is yet another UNESCO World Heritage Site where you can learn Basque whaling history. It’s here where people from the Basque region of Europe produced the whale oil that lit the lamps of Europe about five centuries ago. In fact, Red Bay was the largest whaling port in the world in the 16th century.

Compare a small boat called chalupa, which the Basque whalers used to patrol the seas, with enormous whale bones. After a visit to Red Bay, you won’t come back with the same understanding about whale hunting.

We visit Red Bay on most of our trips to Labrador. Explore the site on our Driving Tour in Western Newfoundland or reach it on our Cruise Tour Around the Island of Newfoundland.

Newfoundland’s eastern community of Bonavista is where Italian explorer John Cabot landed on North America soil in 1497. With its craggy coastline, Bonavista is the perfect place to spot whales and mammoth icebergs migrating down from Greenland.

Visit this charming town on our unforgettable Wildlife Sightseeing Tour in Eastern Newfoundland. This adventure will take you the world’s largest gathering of humpback whales and North America's largest puffin colony. You won’t find a better place to fuel your wanderlust!

Once the unofficial capital of Labrador, Battle Harbour is the ultimate place to switch off. There you won’t find cell towers, paved roads or TVs. Established in the 1750s, the site is the best preserved traditional fishing village in the province. In 1909, American explorer Rober Peary transmitted the news of conquering the North Pole from the Marconi wireless station located in Battle Harbour.

Besides its heritage, the picturesque village is a whale watching destination second to none.

Contribute to the study of cataloguing the region’s whales on our Whale Watching and Sightseeing Tour where we spend four nights in quiet Battle Harbor.