Aviemore.

We have a reading week this week, so two of our classes were cancelled, and we had one, which was later cancelled when our prof realized he wasn’t going to be here anyway. This being the case, one of our classmate’s suggested going up to try and watch stags fight in the highlands, particularly, the Highlands Wildlife Park in Aviemore.

We were only going to stay for a night, and so, it wasn’t very expensive. My classmate very much reminds me of me back home, she is the organizer, but for our class. I don’t even want to get into that, though I probably somehow will at some point…

Anyway, she found a hostel, found out who was coming, and booked it, while we all booked Megabus up to Aviemore (Aveemore). There were two buses going up, and so, I took the later one, with some other classmates.

The bus trip was 4 hours, when, in reality, it should probably take 2, but it was not so bad. I got to talk to Brian a bit, another Canadian, who had missed a month of classes because of visa issues, and he told me of his travels to New Zealand, etc. Most of the time, we slept, or listened to music afterwards. I just stared out the window and took pictures, yay, picture freak me and listened to music. Taking in the scenery, enjoying every moment of this beautiful country. Even saw a baby Highland cow, which is quite fuzzy and cute.
Someone told me I’d get bored of looking out the windows here, but that’s not the case.

When we got to Aviemore, we had the slight predicament of getting to the hostel, as it was 5 miles away. Pretty far walk, but luckily two of our classmates had driven up, so they picked us up and took us back to the hostel, after we stocked up on breakfast and dinner food. Once there, we tossed our stuff in our rooms, and headed to the kitchen to make our pasta. I’ve never stayed in a hostel before, but it wasn’t bad. About 6 beds in a room, a common area, and kitchen. You make your own bed with the sheets provided. We wound up having made too much pasta, and so we shared our food around.

View from our room.

I was excited by how many of us had actually come on the trip, at least 20 of us. Such a large number, and everyone open to trying things. It’s sometimes a pain in the ass at home to get a large group of my friends to do something. Anyway, after eating, we all wrapped up and set off to walk to the nearby loch to drink and make a fire.

After blindly stepping through pitch black, we hit the beach, and bam, there was the night sky. I’ve seen decent night skies, up in upstate NY, and up in Rhode Island, but never have I seen so beautiful a sky as this one. It was so dark, and there were so many stars, so many in the sky, it was ridiculous. Even the tiniest of stars were so bright out here. It was also so dark, there was a shadow of glow along the mountains in the distance. I wish I had a camera decent enough to somewhat help my explanation, but there’s nothing like a sky like that that gets me. And here we were, sitting on the edge of a loch, with a fire we started, drinks around, a guitar, and nothing but this massive sky above us. Nothing sits in your heart like this, or makes you feel so tiny and like nothing else really is as big a problem.

The stars at night on the loch, stolen from my classmate (he has a DSLR!)

More from my classmate, see the glow I was talking about?

It was great times, drinking alongside the fire; so many countries, all getting along and bonding, in this tiny place. We later headed back because of our curfew and hung out some more before passing out in our beds.

Some of us.

Some more!

In the morning, we all got up, made our breakfast, and headed out. The wildlife park idea had been abandoned so we took a walk instead to what was supposed to be a trail. On the way, we saw red squirrels and gorgeous fall foliage. I haven’t seen much of it in Edinburgh, I think the leaves just fall off the trees instead of turning first…hmm… Anyway, the trail wound up being a climb to the top of one of the Cairngorm Mountains, which involved me and Nina trying not to die from sliding in our non-hiking shoes like idiots. It’s always so great at the end of those hikes though, because then you see how high up you are, and the views are magnificent. We walked back down in a loop which brought us through this reindeer park, which was pretty awesome, because some of them came right up to us and they were soo cute!

Sign warning us in the reindeer park.

Petting some reindeer!

This one particularly loved Gorka!

My classmate and I walking in the distance (from another's camera).

So worth it.

So much for red stags, but I got to pet a reindeer! We closed up and walked back to the hostel, back to town for food and on the bus for our journey back home, where I was glad to take off my wet shoes.. I’m pretty happy, and I really enjoyed the trip. I’m just becoming more nature-y by the day. 4 hour hikes and all. Pssh…

Hahaha. And pronunciation fights with the classmates are always good fun.
Anyway,
If I could’ve been able to show you guys the beauty I’ve seen though, especially that night sky, man, I would’ve given anything to.