Day 3: I which we discover that what the Irish mean by "hill" is "really big mountain"

Greetings from the middle of nowhere! We are in Letterfrak today, a lovely tiny town near the bogs and the Atlantic Ocean.

I did finally get a really good night's sleep last night; it was wonderful and has raised my spirits immeasurably. We started our morning with a "full Irish breakfast" back at the Cong Hostel, which involved more meat than I think I've ever seen on one plate. Then we headed out of Cong. We did finally get a really good map, but we still managed to make a full circle almost back to Cong! Luckily, it wasn't a very long drive, and we made it to Letterfrak after lots of lovely Irish countryside. I would like to pause here to mention Irish driving. The Irish are a wonderful, friendly bunch of people, but watching them drive at 100km/hour on windy, narrow back roads makes me actually nauseous! the stone walls are soooo close to the sides of the roads and everyone drives sooooo fast.

That being said, the countryside was beautiful, and we saw lots of sheep! We made it to Letterfrak (a town so small it has one intersection) by mid-day, at which point we checked into our very cool hostel. This place is decorated all crazy, has a make-shift bar on the patio at night, and has a cat, a puppy, and three kittens (I think i could move in). The puppy is the cutest, sweetest little thing ever, and she's good therapy as we miss Sebastian.

After checking in, we picked up some lunch from the local grocery store and headed out for a hike through the bogs (like swamps, but with more peat), which are apparently very endangered. We planned to hike up Diamond Hill...let me just say that the Irish have severely misnamed this place- it is definitely a mountain, and a large one at that! For those of you who have hiked Mousilauke, it's about as steep, but quite a bit shorter (2.5 hours round trip). Hiking here is interesting, because there are NO trees, so the views are great the entire time. The other thing with no trees and being near an ocean is that the wind is vicious! I think small children or dogs could actually get blown off the mountain! We made it to the top and took lots of pictures! We also met a middle aged couple at the top who reappeared at our hostel to look around just a couple of minutes ago! Along the way there were sheep, ponies, and lots of bog. It was very cool and well worth the killer hike. We got a nice cup of tea when we got back down to the bottom, and then headed back to the hostel to play with the puppy some more.

We're hoping to catch dinner and the US vs Ghana game at a pub tonight, and then we'll probably take it easy and hang around the (very awesome) hostel.

Cheers,
Emily