Province of Newfoundland and Labrador Transportation Tips by Redlats Top 5 Page for this destination

Travelling around Newfoundland

If you are touring Newfoundland (NL) you need to drive. Unless you stick to St. John's, there are many miles between attractions, and no public transport.

If you land up renting a car in Newfoundland, you can get hosed on mileage charges. If you stick to first-tier car rental companies (Hertz, Avis, Budget,etc.), they have a limited amount of free kilometres, and there is a significant price per kilometre beyond the free ones. By the way all the rental companies in websites like www.Expedia.ca or www.Destina.ca are those first-tier car rental companies.

After we got back we found that we paid as much for our 7 days in NL as we did for 17 days in Nova Scotia. I did a more extensive search and found that Enterprise Rent-a-car also have a limited mileage, but I remember their daily limit being higher and their mileage km surcharge being lower than the majors. Its probably worth persuing that, although they do not have an airport location.

If you are following our Newfoundland holiday, click here to get back to my Newfoundland page.

Mode: AROUND

Type: Car/Motor Home

Website: http://www.enterprise.com

Getting to Newfoundland

As Newfoundland (NL) is an island, there are only two ways to get to it - by air or by ferry. While planning our trip to NL, we struggled with those decisions.

Factors in your decision include where you wish to visit, how much time you have and the cost of the various options.

Check out the map to see where the ferry lands. The most common ferry runs from North Sydney, NS to Port aux Basques, NL - twice a day - once during daytime, once at night. A one-way trip (6 or 7 hours) for two is costs from $130 to $245 Cdn depending on sleeping accommodations. Port aux Basques is at the SW corner of Newfoundland.

Another ferry (three times a week) is available from mid-June to mid-September. This ferry runs from North Sydney, NS to Argentia, NL at the SE corner of Newfoundland. This one-way trip for two costs from $308 to $466 Cdn depending on sleeping accommodations and takes 14 hours.

Also it takes approximately 10 or 12 driving hours to get from one corner of NL to the other - from the SE corner to the SW corner or from the SE corner to the NE corner, or the SW corner to the NE corner for that matter.

In our case, we landed up going by air to St. John's. The advantage of that option was the additional price of including a stop from St. John's to Halifax to our round trip from Manitoba was less than $260 Cdn for the two of us, and flying meant that our travel day was shorter. This was tempered by the fact that car rentals on NL are more expensive than they are in NS - more on that in the next tip.

Mode: TO

Type: Ship/Boat

Website: http://www.marine-atlantic.ca/