Today the weather was calm enough for us to get out to see the Blasket Islands off the coast of Dingle. We made our way to a pier a few miles from town and got on a boat for a five hour cruise.
The ride over to the islands took about an hour, we were going into the wind so the waves were pretty big and there was a lot of spray. The coastline is really pretty from the water too.
The Blasket Islands are fairly large islands not too far off the coast. They were inhabited by people until from at least 600 BC to 1952; when the government paid the 200 residents left there to move to the mainland because it could be hard to get supplies to them in bad weather. Our boat stopped in the harbor of the main island where there are still some houses standing.
We also saw some seals here watching the boat and popping their heads out of the water. Next we went around the side of the island to where there is a large puffin colony. The puffins come there to nest for a couple months then go back out to the middle of the Atlantic where they spend the rest of the year. They were quite small, and didn't come too close to the boat so it was hard to get a good photo.
Then we went over to the smaller island which was also once inhabited but now only has a couple holiday homes and a helicopter pad on it for the rich people that own it. The owner even brought in a herd of red deer to live on the island.
Then we headed back to the pier through an area where they often see different whales and dolphins, last week they saw a humpback whale. We saw a couple porpoises no whales though. In the distance we could also see the island Skellig Michael, which has an ancient thousand year old uninhibited monastery on it. Its the tiny pointed bump on the horizon in the photo. We wanted to go out there to see it, but unfortunately there were no tours going there because of the weather.
