Today we don’t have anything planned until this afternoon so we decided to take the opportunity to do some laundry then settled in for a morning by the pool. Unfortunately although the laundry went well, the sun didn’t want to play and although it was warm enough it was actually quite cloudy and windy so I didn’t bother going for a swim, Chris did and declared that it was warm once you got in but I wasn’t convinced so I carried on reading my book by the pool. We had some lunch then went up to the room to sort out the washing and have a shower in time for the bus to pick us up to take us up to the observatory. We were picked up on time but there seemed to be a bit of a computer error as some of the people in the group almost didn’t go as they had been told completely different times but in the end we set off with everyone we expected. We are driving up to the observatories and stopping on the way up for a picnic – hopefully they have a note of what we ordered because we can’t remember, then it will be up to the top of the mountain to drive round the thirteen observatories at the top and watch the sunset then we break out the telescopes and do some star gazing. It was a very well organised trip, we stopped at an old sheep farm on the way up for the picnic, the company lease the land from the owners but it has pretty much been abandoned apart from the tent they had set up for us to have our picnic in, all the accommodation and sheep sheering buildings are just abandoned like something out of a horror movie. The food was really good for a picnic we both had chicken which was quite tasty, aided by the fact they gave you soy sauce to put on the rice! Then it was time to continue to drive to the top, on the way we saw an ash cloud from the volcano but it is so far away it doesn’t affect us. When we got to the top, we drove round the loop road and Jeff pointed out the various observatories, the UK telescope had the doors open but I am not sure if they were actually looking for something. We had a little walk round, observatories seem to come in all shapes and sizes, then we picked a spot and watched the sun go down. Unfortunately there were a bit of cloud at the top which meant we didn’t see a true sunset but it did at least make the clouds very pretty colours. Then it was time to head off to where we were going to set up the telescopes. While we were waiting for it to get fully dark we were given hot chocolate and brownies the hot chocolate was nice and warming but the brownies were really nice and somehow they were still warm! By the time we had eaten these some stars and planets had appeared although there was still a little bit of cloud. This is one of the few land based places on earth where you can see both the northern star and the southern cross, it wasn’t easy to find either to start off with and to be honest the best view we got of the southern cross was on the way back down the mountain when we stopped at the visitor centre but we did see Sirius, Venus, Jupiter, the Jewel Box cluster then finally the moon, it was actually very well organised and people were very good at taking their turn looking through the telescope, we had a fantastic view of Jupiter and as always the moon was spectacular, it probably would have been nice if the moon hadn’t been so bright as it did make it hard to see other stars but the whole thing was fantastic. Unfortunately all too soon it was time to come backdown the mountain, we stopped at the visitor centre which is at about 9,000 feet and had a great view of the southern cross, then it was time to hand back the parkers they had given us and get back into the van to head back the hotel, the drive down in the dark was a little exciting and we got back to the hotel about 11pm where we had a bit of a relax then jumped into bed as tomorrow is our last full day on the islands, I can’t believe that we will be back on the mainland in the next 48 hours!
