That's right. I've been here exactly 2 months and in 2 months I'll be on a plane on my way home. Kind of a bummer, kind of a relief. I love it here, but that's not to say I'm not stoked to come home and see all my friends and family. I miss you all a metric ton. I know it's been a while since my last post and I do apologize for that, but I really haven't done anything too exciting since we went to Inis Oirr. Sunday I went on a hike with the mountaineering club. Being from Colorado and having climbed mountains before I decided I could go on the most challenging route seeing as how the mountain is probably only 2km (approx. 6000 feet) or so tall. This proved to be one of the worst choices of my life. It started out rough, going over hills and rocks, and was a lot of fun and my confidence was high. As it turns out the Irish don't use trails and shortly after the rest of the group split off we found ourselves hopping on rocks across creeks, and walking through marshes.
It started off very flat, quickly became a swamp with random drop offs into creeks hidden by bushes. We walked along a quite easy path for a while, aside from being wet and having to watch where we step. After a while we came to a cool little lake hanging out in a valley. It turns out this mountain range is a big horseshoe shaped ridge around the lake. We could see this the whole hike. We wandered along through bog until we came to the side of the mountain, where we meandered down and into the valley, by the lake. We marched through rocky beaches and across creeks and streams, hopping from rock to rock to get across.
shortly after we had to start trekking back up the mountain, and this meant we had to climb over rocks and such. When I say climb over rocks I MEAN climbing over rocks. This was by far the funnest part of the hike. When we got over the rocks we had a good view of the lake and they handed out chocolate as a "morale booster." Having a lot of fun so far I was curious as to why we needed our morale boosted, then I realized the near impossible task ahead of us. Hiking up the side of the mountain, no trail, over rocks and bushes and bog like terrain at a 50 degree angle (not exaggerating)
We hiked up this in a very round about way, and it nearly killed me. The rocks were not good footholds and several times I found myself grasping at bushes as the ground gave way and I slid down the mountain. Several times I found myself on all fours literally clambering up the mountain, which proved much easier than walking. After seemingly hours of hell we made it to the top.... just in time for it to cloud over and give us no visibility at all. There we stopped for lunch and rest, then followed the ridge along up to the very highest summit, which was up a stone covered staircase type climb. Not as bad as the first, but still decently challenging. After that it was a long and tedious downward slope that was a knee and toe killer. After a while of heading down we crossed a cool little bridge by a lake, that was a good place for pictures. After we made it back to the bus we had to wait for one group to get back, and then we headed to a pub for some food and drink after a hard days hike. Unfortunately I got food poisoning from it... fun. Other than the hike I've just been doing the same old things, day after day, weekend after weekend. Hopefully my traveling will pick up soon and I'll have more fun stuff to talk about. This weekend is the world famous Cork Jazz Festival and so far it's been amazing. Last night we saw the ending set of a Queen cover band that rocked us.
That's all for now, I'll try to be better at keeping this updated.
It started off very flat, quickly became a swamp with random drop offs into creeks hidden by bushes. We walked along a quite easy path for a while, aside from being wet and having to watch where we step. After a while we came to a cool little lake hanging out in a valley. It turns out this mountain range is a big horseshoe shaped ridge around the lake. We could see this the whole hike. We wandered along through bog until we came to the side of the mountain, where we meandered down and into the valley, by the lake. We marched through rocky beaches and across creeks and streams, hopping from rock to rock to get across.
We hiked up this in a very round about way, and it nearly killed me. The rocks were not good footholds and several times I found myself grasping at bushes as the ground gave way and I slid down the mountain. Several times I found myself on all fours literally clambering up the mountain, which proved much easier than walking. After seemingly hours of hell we made it to the top.... just in time for it to cloud over and give us no visibility at all. There we stopped for lunch and rest, then followed the ridge along up to the very highest summit, which was up a stone covered staircase type climb. Not as bad as the first, but still decently challenging. After that it was a long and tedious downward slope that was a knee and toe killer. After a while of heading down we crossed a cool little bridge by a lake, that was a good place for pictures. After we made it back to the bus we had to wait for one group to get back, and then we headed to a pub for some food and drink after a hard days hike. Unfortunately I got food poisoning from it... fun. Other than the hike I've just been doing the same old things, day after day, weekend after weekend. Hopefully my traveling will pick up soon and I'll have more fun stuff to talk about. This weekend is the world famous Cork Jazz Festival and so far it's been amazing. Last night we saw the ending set of a Queen cover band that rocked us. 
