And Then We Were Underground

This is a three part post...

Friday afternoon the sun was shining and it wasn't raining for a change. We left UCC around 2 for the famous Ring of Kerry, all 52 of us. The trip was a three day all inclusive tour organized through UCC.

Once on the bus I didn't put my camera away for a second, I kept trying to snap pictures out the bus window like the true tourist that I am. Only every time I tried to take a picture trees kept getting in every single one and messing it up, Emily can attest to that. I did manage to snag a few good ones like this...

After about an hour and a half (and long narrations about every little town we passed through from Mary, our tour guide) we made it to our first destination: Crag Cave. Now if you're like me, you would have no idea what that means or what kind of cave you'd be going into. For all I knew we were going in to a giant cave full of upside down sleeping bats and spider webs everywhere.

That was not the case though. Instead, we were lead down a stairwell to an underground complexed web of tunnels and cool structures made from calcite from the eroding limestone. The cave is 2.4 miles long, but we were only shown about 1000 feet of it. I can't imagine what the rest of it looks like. The part we saw was incredible and it felt like I was in some weird underworld that didn't belong on the Earth I walked on... something from the Lord of the Rings kind of deal.

The Candlestick

After about an hour we were off again, headed for our hotel and dinner. We stayed in a hotel called Ring of Kerry (how original) in a little town called Cahersiveen on the very western bit of county Kerry. Dinner was delicious. After the mass amount of rolls I ate, the seafood pie, and the tasty desert, I definitely rolled away from the table very full.

little Cream puff- like pastries with whipped cream and chocolate sauce

The night was not over however, we had some time to digest our food listening to some farmer from Valentia Island talk about his life. I'm not quite sure what he was talking about really. We then played a nice icebreaker game.... they made up a list of 10 questions one being "what would you like to name you're children". At least I ended up talking to Trevor and Kate who I already knew before hand so I guess I cheated in that respect. But we had a laugh out of it.

Finally, we ended the night with a céili. And for those who don't know... a céili is an irish dance party kind of like contra dancing (I dragged a few of you to our céili at home so you would be somewhat familiar with what we did! :) ). A local dance instructor taught us three céili dances and it felt like I was back on the Celtic Cats learning/ teaching the dances to the audience. It was good craic though and fun to dance again. And after a long day of exploring the underground and eating to my heart's content, it was finally time to catch some zzz's.