It’s said that the mysterious beauty of Newfoundland and Labrador is for the traveler, not the tourist. Canada’s most easterly province lies at a busy crossroads of nature. Grazing roadside herds of caribou and moose, 10,000 humpbacks breaching just offshore in Witless Bay, roaming black bears at Avalon Wilderness Reserve, icebergs floating off Cape Freels in summer, blueberry fields in Indian Bay and six botanical gardens are just some of the sites here.

The Great Northern Peninsula is a wilderness best explored from Gros Morne National Park, where you can wander over the earth’s mantle, see primeval rock formations, hike along a rugged coastline indented with sea caves and deep fjords and view the summer nesting site of thousands of Atlantic puffins.

There are several historic settlements. L’Anse aux Meadows, for example, is the New World’s earliest European settlement and Norse site featuring restored Viking sod houses. The province’s largest community is its capital, St. John’s, the oldest city in North America. Shop on historic Water Street, go on a pub crawl, catch a live folk music show and dine on doughboys, cod tongues and figgy duff (steamed pudding). The largely undisturbed wilderness of Labrador has a few isolated villages and the 16th-century Basque whaling station of Red Bay.