Lunga and Staffa

As I mentioned in my post about Iona, we took a day trip by boat to see the Islands of Staffa and Lunga.

Lunga, one of the Treshnish isles, is all about the puffins. It also includes something called Harp Rock, which is a rock shaped like, you know, a harp.

There was a somewhat comic bit at the beginning of the boat trip. We boarded on Iona, and then took the boat across the strait to the isle of Mull to pick up more people, but a large busload of people hadn't arrived yet. We spent about half an hour being shuffled away from the dock by other boats coming in, and got to watch the rather lengthy process of loading the Royal Mail truck onto the Ferry.

Once properly underway, the boat took us to Staffa first, but we were advised by the captain to stay on board if we wanted to see Lunga -- the people who got off on Staffa were people who wanted to spend the day there. I'm not sure what one does with an entire day on Staffa, but more on that below. We stayed aboard and headed over to Lunga. As we approached, the boat did a zig-zag pattern that seemed to encourage the local dolphin population to chase after us and leap out of the water. I have many many pictures of boat wake that -- I swear -- is a spot where a dolphin had just been.

Once on Lunga, we made our way across loose rock, then ascended a stone stairs up to the top of the cliff that forms pretty much the entire edge of the island.

I started climbing up Lunga almost immediately, with instructions from Chris, Flex and Nealie to let them know if I found anything interesting. I did, signaling them to come on up just a little ways and check out some ruins of stone structures. It turns out these were the remnants of old "blackhouses".

I continued up while Chris, Flex and Nealie checked out the puffins. The puffins breed along a sheer cliff.

I found the view on top of Lunga to be spectacular and signaled Chris, Flex and Nealie to come on up. Once we had all taken in the view, we went back down admire the puffins.

We wandered the island a bit, although we never to go to Harp rock (is appears that this would have involved a path that ran right along that sheer cliff I keep mentioning -- and after the climb to the top of the island, no one was too keen on a precarious cliff trail).

A different boat came right on schedule to pick us up, and took us to Staffa. Once at Staffa, we went directly to Fingal's cave.

Once we had checked out the cave, we also spent some time checking out the tide pools that form on the basalt outside the cave.

We did not go up to the top of Staffa, so I have no idea what's up there. As mentioned above, apparently there is enough going on up there to make it worth spending the day.