after a scottish breakfast for nina, and porridge and continental breakfast for me, we decided to stay at this guest house for at least another night, since it's well located, so we could make it our base camp and have trips to the rest of the isle of skye. also the hosts were really friendly, the rooms were comfortable, breakfast was ample and delicious, and one had a great view over the sea from the breakfast room. also there were several bird houses around the house, so the bushes were full of chirping and twittering. so cute. while getting ready for today's trip we had turned on television and saw reports about the flood damages, and pictures from the exact road we wanted to take on day 04. puh, nasty. they said it was the wettest december for over hundred years. amazing how we got away with good weather so far. today morning it looked misty and cloudy, but no rain, with mild temperatures again. usually i start my gps tracker, place it at the car window and start driving, and it soon catches up with the current satellite location. but not today. so when we arrived at the parking lot, it was still searching for a signal. turning it off and on again for several times finally fixed it. so today's track starts not at the guest house, but right at our first destination, the "old man of storr"[001-028]. walking to the old man took a while on a steep gravel road, but it was a really beautiful landscape. even some asian tourists were there, and people walking their dogs, so we were not alone this time. also we were very lucky, because when we spotted the rocks, the old man was standing out because there was a wall of fog[008-010] behind him. a few minutes later, the fog was gone, and the rock was hard to spot, because the rock face behind him had the same colour. wohooo, lucky us. the hiking trail would have led on higher up the rocks, but we decided to go back to our car and drive on. daylight time is very limited here. next we headed on to the lealt falls[029-033], where one could walk down the cliff to an abandoned diatomite mine[031], which we did not do. instead we stayed atop and looked down. that was when an older indian man approached first nina, and than me and was talking about how wonderful god's creation was and other rather scary things you don't say to a stranger. but he did, and also he warned nina that the ground is very slippery where she stood[032]. well meant, but nina did not like the obtrusiveness at all and gave him a bad look. at last, he stopped. later that day, we came to the conclusion that this was when the indian guy lay a curse on nina. but more about that later in this bLog entry. close to the lealt falls are the mealt falls[034-041]. seems like the scots are pretty imaginative with names. there we met the indian guy again. also there's a sign with dinosaur prints, since there were a lot of traces of dinosaurs all over the area. we placed the little plastic dinosaur[040] we found on the first few days in edinburgh for comparison. only a few kilometres further northwards on the east coast of the isle of skye lies "staffin beach"[042-082] where we found a small group of seals[042-044,047-052,055,058-059,062,066]. while we tried to get as close to them as possible, they curiously watched our every move. so cute. one could also walk on a sort of artificial pier. this was really a beautiful place, so we spent quite a while there. again there were some fossil attractions around here, like dinosaur footprints one could see in the stones, but they are only visible during low tide. this meant we would have had to wait, which we did not want to; early sunset and such. also there was a big stone with such a footprint[077-078] right at the car park. next stop was "the quiraing"[087-121], a still moving landslip. the landscape was very impressive and beautiful, and so we went on a little hike here. "the quiraing" consists of a few rock formations, like "the needle" or "the table". we were rather unsure what was what, so we took our guesses. if you watched long enough you could see some people here and there also taking the hike, but they were all way ahead of us. so our only company were sheeps, which we sometimes surprised and then gave us a confused look to finally run away. too bad, i would have loved to touch one of those fluffy cotton balls on four legs. also we did not walk all the way to the top, but rather turned around and walked back to our car again. also we did not walk all the way to the top, but rather turned around and walked back to our car again. and while we were driving on, suddenly the sun came through the clouds and lit parts of "the quiraing"[104-119] which looked awesome, and forced us to stop again, jump out of the car and take more pictures. we stopped at the sartle grave yard[122-124] from which one had a great view into the big open area below. after a few more random stops[125-130] we reached the duntulm sea viewpoint[131-159] and duntulm castle[137-138,140,143-148,151], although the castle was already more of a ruin. again windy, again we were the only ones there, and again it was really beautiful there. it was another 30 minutes drive until we reached the place called "fairy glen"[160-179], near balnanock. it was already pretty dark when we got there, but we still got an impression of how awesome and magical this place must be during the daylight. some scenes from the movie "stardust" (the one from 2007 with robert de niro, michelle pfeiffer, and claire danes) were shot here. we will have to watch this movie again once we are home to see it ourselves. since it was so dark, nina wanted to bring her tripod, but she could not find it anywhere. we tried to reconstruct where and when she had seen or used it the last time today. turns out it was at the spot with the seals at ""staffin beach". and indeed a had a picture taken with my mobile phone where she has it in her hands on the artificial concrete pier we were walking on. so we jumped in the car, drove all the way back there, but unfortunately the tripod was already gone. we think it was the doing of the indian man's curse. a little sad and frustrated we drove back to the "high beech house" in pitch black, as it was already past 18:00 o'clock when we left the beach again. there is a commercial on tv that was filmed in "the quiraing", so the spot[096,101] we have just been to today. we were quite surprised to see this on tv. here is the ad on youtube. another unpleasant thing was that we did not make it to the hamlet "peinlich" today. but at least we got pretty close to it. too bad. also be advised that there are not many accommodations opened during the christmas and new year holidays. many of the hosts are on holidays themselves, or take an earned out time. so told us jonathan and pauline, who will also go abroad to some sunny hot beach, somewhere south; lucky them. but after several months having strangers in your house 24/7 i can totally relate to that. track for day 07.