Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Weekend Adventure Trip

Now for this weekend. Since the two trips to Killarney seemed to blend together well, I went ahead and integrated them below. However, today was a totally different experience. Seven of us took a tour through Kerry, which included rock climbing, kayaking, and high speed boating!!! It was definitely the most taxing day I have had in a long time, but worth every moment.

We started the trip with rock climbing on actual rocks next to a beautiful mountain range. Although I did not get up as high as most people, it was a great experience. The weather was perfect- in the 50s and just breezy enough. That is actually a picture of me rock climbing. Do not expect to see it in too many places!

After rock climbing, we drove a little over an hour to a small town bordering the ocean called Portmagee (one word). We took a high speed boat that went between 40 and 50 miles per hour through the ocean and saw some great places! The boat was so fast that at points, the entire vehicle took off out of the water.

This is a picture of us in the uniforms they gave us to keep us dry. It felt a little like something Mike Rowe would wear in Dirty Jobs!

My favorite part about this particular segment was definitely seeing puffins!! There is a wildlife preserve on one of the islands there, and puffins go to the island two months a year to nest and hatch their young before disappearing again. They were everywhere!!!! We also saw some seal and cormorants, which were cute. Unfortunately, I am not going to post any pictures of these because the pictures I have don't really convey how adorable the animals were in reality. They moved so quickly that there aren't a lot of great shots, but they'll be posted on my Picasa account soon enough :-)

After that, we went back to Ross Castle and kayaked in the lake in front of the castle. Towards the end of the day and also because I had not kayaked since a disastrous experience in Florida, I was a little nervous, but when we got started, I LOVED it!!! We went right next to Inishfallen, the island with the old monastery, and got to see the islands and mountains from a completely different point of view.

This is our group in front of the castle. Incidentally, this is the same castle that we visited on Thursday with Professor Conner. It was great to see it from a different angle!

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