PERU-BOLIVIA: Day 7

Hunting for Puffins

For today we booked a full day excursion exploring 3 islands around Oban. In the morning it was already raining and this time it was really not much hope, that it is gonna better during the day. For the first leg we had to take a big ferry to the Isle of Mull.

Arriving on Mull we had to take the local bus for 1.5 hour ride to cross the island. I was already disappointed at this point, since I thought that I booked an organised trip and we going to transported to all the islands on the same ship one after the other.

Arriving at other side of the island it was still raining and we had to take again a ferry, which brought us finally to our first real destinataion of the day, the uninhabited island Staffa.

Staffa lies about 10 kilometres west of the Isle of Mull. The area is 33 hectares and the highest point is 42 metres above sea level.

The island is fully volcanic origin and by contrast, slow cooling of a second layer of basalt resulted in an extraordinary pattern of predominantly hexagonal columns which form the faces and walls of the principal cave, the Fingal´s Cave.

An other attracttion were the puffins nesting on the island. I know these cute birds already from the rocks of Shetland and from my plate on Iceland. By chance people do not eat here puffins, so this time I came into contact with them only via my camera.

After leaving the island the real surprise came. The rest of the islands we supposed to visit today were cancelled of the program, because of the weather condition. The ferry took us to Iona, where we had to wait for a regular ferry to take us back on Mull, where we took again the bus and the ferry after to Oban.
Iona is not much exciting, a small village with a pub and some houses and a mobile bank, which is going on after 2 hours on the next island.