At the beginning of the semester, I joined the Environmental Society. It is one of the smaller societies on campus, and as I learned, made up of mostly environmental science students and postgrads who research plant genetics. Every year, the club goes whale watching in Baltimore, Co. Cork. This ain't your regular Baltimore, MD; it's a small, peaceful town with only a few pubs. I went along on the weekend of Nov 7-8. This was my first (and only) trip with non-Americans. There were about 20 people, and included a majority of Irish students, sprinkled with Belgians, Germans, French, South Koreans, and Swiss.
The drive down to Baltimore took the better part of the day. After a 3 or so hour trip to Cork, it took another 3 hours to go about half the distance to Baltimore because of the small, winding roads. Once there and at our hostel (at which we were the only guests), we found out that the owner forgot we were coming and told us to climb in the window to find the spare key. Obviously, this wasn't a place riddled with crime.
A handful of us took a walk down the the cliffs that line the entrance to the Baltimore harbour. Here was a 'famous' white obelisk called the Beacon that tipped ships off to the whereabouts of the harbour entrance, apparently difficult to find otherwise. This was one of the southernmost points of the island of Ireland. The wind was unbelievably strong. So strong that most of my pictures are blurry. The whole area was apparently a cow pasture sometimes, based on the landmines that were strewn about. It was a beautiful place to watch the sunset.
The folks at Casey's Restaurant and Hotel (listed in the Michelin Guidebook!) were kind enough to host 20 rowdy college kids (their daughter is a TCD student, so they may have felt obligated). We had a wonderful dinner (that lasted about 3 and a half hours) and conversation there. I learned that Cork is partial to Murphy's Stout, the southwest's answer to Guinness (a mighty good answer too). I had seafood chowder with seafood from a few miles away and beef and Guinness stew, along with the loads of mash, veg, and leek custard that were piled on the table.
So, this trip to Cork was 2/3 funded by the Students Union (nice!). But as a condition of getting the money, we said that we would do some beach clean-up or something (they didn't think that whale watching and eco-tourism was a good enough reason to front the money). After walking around before dinner, we realized there were no beaches. So we talked to the owner about cleaning up in town or something and she was delighted to get some help! She offered us rubber gloves, trash bags and some dirty areas (which we found to be similar to the poor parts of The Hamptons). She was so excited that she wanted us to stay for a picture for the town newspaper. Once we had our way of not losing funding, we went to the other bar in town and hung out for a few hours.
The next morning was our trip to go whale watching. BAD NEWS. It was too violent at sea to go whale watching. What?!?! The reason we came to Cork is ruined?!? Well, Captain Nick could offer us a discounted trip through the harbour and up the river to look for seals, birds, and otters (officially the cutest animal ever). We took him up on it and saw some great scenery, a whole lot of birds, a few seals, and a log that Captain Nick thought was an otter. Our suspicion was that there were no otters there ever and he was using them as a way to keep our attention. Interesting sights included: a small island that was home to a single male goat (his donkey friends were transported to shore, but he was forgotten about), a seal sunning itself on a rock, and a castle or church covered head to toe in ivy.
After a pleasant boat ride, we went to clean the town like the noble environmentalists we are! But wait, there was no garbage in this town to speak of! Our haul was mostly bags of empty liquor bottles thrown in the woods, most likely by teenagers circumnavigating their parents and the drinking age. We still got our picture taken by Mrs. Casey though, and we were instantly village heroes!
Our quick trip to Cork was over then, and we started back for Dublin.
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