22.7.2012 – 22.7.2012  31 °C

A nice leisurely start today. It only took us half an hour to get to Plymouth and the first thing we did was hunt up the tourist info to find out about seeing the Plymouth rock.  As it turned out the “rock” that the pilgrims landed onto was actually not too far from the info office, right next to the replica of the Mayflower!

The Mayflower is a bit reminiscent of the Endeavour. The first thing I noticed is how small the Mayflower would have been! It transported just over a hundred pilgrims to the New World in order to start a new life. It took the pilgrims over 60 days to reach Cape Cod (where they actually landed first) at the outset of winter. They were supposed to land on the banks of the Hudson River, in Virginia (where a London company settlement had already been established) but storms pushed them off course. Sadly, more than 50% of the pilgrims passed away during that first miserable winter, mainly from pneumonia and scurvy.. It’s amazing that any survived that first winter because farming was almost impossible on the Cape Cod coastline (too sandy, windy and cold). It wasn’t until the spring that the pilgrims moved from Cape Cod to the mainland that they were able to start full scale farming.

We didn’t go on board the Mayflower (it is setup with characters from the Mayflower explaining the trip and the living conditions) but instead continued walking along the foreshore to the “rock” of Plymouth. You can’t really miss seeing where the rock is located because in great American style they have built a huge Greek style Parthenon over the top of the precious rock.. Pretty funny, when you actually realise how small the rock is… It is debatable whether the pilgrims ever stepped off the Mayflower and onto this rock as it is not mentioned in any of the journals of the Mayflower travellers but it is a nice symbol of their struggle to build a nation. The reason that historians know so much about the Mayflower crossing is because two of the passengers kept detailed journals of the trip and their first years in Plymouth (which used to be spelt Plimoth!).

From the underwhelming rock, we decided to do a quick drive around the historic part of town before we drove out to Plimoth Plantation (named after one of the journals). PP is a tourist attraction that has a replica of the original town of Plimoth. The town is populated with actors who are playing the roles of the settlers from the 17^th C. They speak in old English, dress like pilgrims and actually pretend to be the pilgrims. The actors know the history of the character they are playing, they work in the fields (just like the pilgrims did), cook their dinner.. literally you are walking back to the 17^th C!! I have to say it is very well setup.. I even heard some pilgrim gossip!!! Apparently one of the settlers has shacked up with his maid!!! They aren’t married, and she is looking a little big around the waist… It is great! I got right into it, (like I said I was gossiping away with one of the good wives) but it is pretty hard though to explain where you come from when your country hasn’t been discovered yet…. 🙂

Did you know that the pilgrims weren’t actually the first settlers into Nth America?? I didn’t! There was already a settlement down in “Werginia” (Virginia) as the good wife explained to me.. Apparently the settlement down in Virginia was populated with trappers etc from the London company. So why is the Plymouth settlement so famous, I hear you ask? Well, it is famous because ½ of the settlers died in the first winter, and they created the first permanent settlement that was not created for profitable reasons. They came to America to make a better life. Speaking of which, I was surprised to learn that not everyone who came out on the Mayflower were puritans! I had always thought that the first settlers in Plymouth were here because they were chased out of England and the Netherlands due to their religious beliefs… ½ of the people who came out on the Mayflower were puritans but the other half were just looking for a better life!! Another of the “good mistresses” explained to me that William Brewster had all of the settlers going to church twice a day on a Sunday.. which she thought was a bit of joke considering the amount of work that the settlers needed to do each day just to put food on their tables!!! She was telling me this whilst she weeded the overgrown corn crop (Yes, I did help weed whilst I was talking to her)… See what I mean about the actors being in character.. this poor lady was weeding this large paddock filled with weeds and some sick looking corn plants!

The other part of the attraction is a replica of an Indian village it is populated with modern day native peoples who are dressed in traditional outfits, are doing traditional tasks but try to relate the village to modern life… They explain how their ancestors would have gone about gathering their food, building their houses, cooking etc but all from a modern perspective…. Unlike, the pilgrim actors these are native peoples who tell their story from a modern perspective. I found the village hard work (how do you meld the 21^st C with the 17^th C??) I guess also because I thought it was so much fun the role playing in the pilgrim town…..

We left Plimoth Plantation mid afternoon and started our drive down towards Cape Cod. We drove over the bridge onto the island and headed north east along the bay side of the island. We drove for well over an hour finally arriving at Eastham. The drive along the bay was interesting but was not what I was expecting at all. I had a picture in my head of what Cape Cod would look like… Grey-ish (with white trim) low rise houses half hidden amongst grey grass covered sand hills. Sadly, my Hollywood picture was quickly dashed (and so might yours if you had a similar picture).. The bay side of the island is stock standard USA houses (two story, clap board houses) on large sized suburban blocks surrounded by trees! We couldn’t even really see the water!!! Very few of the beaches are public, we drove down to one of the public beaches to discover that you had to pay 15 dollars to park your car!!!! Needless to say, we didn’t pay to park and go to a flat bay sided beach…. On top of all of this Cape Cod is a LONG island so it took us ages to get anywhere near the Cape Cod National Sea Shore.

Luckily for us, and regular Americans, part of Cape Cod was protected by JFK in the 60s so that everyone could access parts of the shore (as well as protect the animals and plants that call the cape home). We stopped for the night right near the entry to the park. After checking in we did go for a drive out to the Atlantic sea shore. Here in the protected area I could see my ideal of low rise small greyish houses hidden amongst the grass covered sand dunes! It was also lovely to see a big white washed light house perched up on the headland!! We went for a walk down to the ocean (no need for us to pay to park because we are NP members) to take some snaps. My gosh, the water temp is chilly!!! I couldn’t believe the amount of people still down on the beach with their togs on.. I was looking for my jumper! We also saw a friendly seal swimming along parallel to the shore! How often do you get to see a seal swimming in the ocean?

Once the sun started to drop lower in the sky we went hunting a supermarket and grabbed some veges and chops for dinner (which D bbq-ed for us!). More Cape Cod tomorrow, we’ll head up to Provincetown (the tip of the Cape) before we start our journey towards NYC!!

Song of the Day– AC/DC, For those about to rock