The first thing that's screeching in Newfoundland is my car. This battered little Mazda was in bad shape when I bought it a few months earlier from a dodgy dealer in the backblocks of Miami, and since then I've driven a fair chunk of the length and breadth of the continent. But despite churning through more oil than petrol, I'm determined to hit kilometre zero of the Trans-Canada Highway, in St John's, Newfoundland, next to North America's easternmost point, Cape Spear.

Newfoundland is what you'd imagine it to be: a place where people don't lock doors. (Example: I meet a couple of European backpackers who give me the number of an off-the-books B&B in Twillingate. I ring the owner about staying the night. She tells me she won't be home, but that I'm welcome to stay; and after turning off the main road "it's the big white house with a blue truck parked out the front". I find a lamp glowing in a guest room that's been set up in the attic. The next morning, there's still no sign of the owner, so I leave some money under her teapot and drive on.)

Darkness is closing in as I near St John's, and the minor miracle of my car making it to kilometre zero is eclipsed by my fear of encountering moose on the roads (every Newfoundlander I've met has cautioned me about driving at night due to the moose, and I've come close enough to a few by now to believe them).

It's completely dark by the time I start searching for a hostel. I've not even put down my bags before I'm confronted with a salt-shrivelled anchovy being waved in my face by the hostel manager. Once I take him up on the dare and swallow the thing, he reckons I'm a candidate for 'screeching in' and steers me in the direction of George Street.

Jammed with brightly-coloured timber-clad buildings, George Street has the most bars and clubs per capita anywhere in Canada, and is home to this initiation for outsiders (or, as they call any non-Newfoundlanders, "come-from-away's"). 'Screeching in' turns out to involve sculling a shot of Screech (or some other dark rum), kissing a cod (substituted for some other fish if there's no cod on hand), and the real test: reciting phrases in a Newfoundland accent deemed acceptable to the locals: something like a cross between Irish, Kiwi and Canadian - and definitely easier said than done if you don't want to offend your new-found mates.

(NB: tech glitchs saw the tags and mapping go haywire on this post!)