Dolphin Address 18
December 1th 2007
Fortunately you can spend the night practically anywhere in Ireland. Even if there is a sign saying you are not allowed to. You see, for the Irish this is a sign that it’s being done (or else it would not be forbidden), so they can do it too. Not a bother at all.
Thus I slept last night in Doolin. Now the bus has been shaking in the wind before, but this morning I feared a few times it would capsize.
So out I went. First I sealed myself waterproof and took the camera with me in the underwater housing. The wind was so stiff that I had to lean against it. The rain stung into my face like needles, but the scene the rolled beneath me beat everything I had ever seen before. Waves colliding threw up water in hissing towers, milling it to the molecule, rushing as a fine mist across the path.
However clever it seemed to keep my camera from getting wet by putting it inside the underwater housing, I had not taken into account that drops and tears where forming on the port glass, which gave quite a blur to the pictures. Therefore I dipped the port glass before each photo in a puddle (underwater you don’t have this problem). After I let myself blown back by the wind I drove to Lahinch over the mountain road. There was nobody surfing today. A kind of whipped cream water sloshed wearily up the beach.
Onwards to ‘Broken knee’, where the door of my car nearly was ripped off by the wind. There was white water as far as the eye could see. After that the ‘Boathouse Bay’. Where under quiet conditions trip waves as growling lion heads emerge out of the blue, there now were breathtaking water mountains. Finally at White Strand I walked along the right hand to the utmost point. There the water nearly came from each side and every now and then I did not know where or what to capture.
When the sun came through for a few precious moments the froth on the waves got to be blinding white. With 206 pics I had nearly filled my memory card. It will take at least a fortnight before the vizz will be restored. The good thing about it is that no jellyfish can have survived this ordeal. I did not see Dusty. She must have had her own fun.
To be continued,
Jan Ploeg, White Strand, December 1st 2007
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