Two hot otter tips

Wed 2nd May
Ok I'll not go on about the weather, I'll just say it's a cracking day in the Caribbean.
We had a full day today, no banjo practice this morning. We headed to Lochmaddy on North Uist and a quick visit to the information centre revealed two hot tips on where to see otters. We set off on the short walk to one of the locations. We spent about an hour in total next to the loch. I kept scanning the beaches on the little islands through our telescope but did not see any movement. About 3/4 hour in I glanced to my right and right in front of us was an otter swimming away. We spotted it a couple of other times but not so close.
Whilst walking back to the camper van we stubbled across three deer, who were not so keen to see us as we were them.
After lunch we headed to the St Kilda viewing point on North Uist. On route we stopped at yet another stunning sandy beach complete with dunes. It took an hour to walk along it and back.
Driving towards the viewing point we got a good view of St Kilda which is a couple of islands about 40 miles off North Uist. St Kilda was inhabited until 1930, when following a particularly bad winter the residents requested that the government evacuate them. It is now a world heritage site. The viewing point is up a hill and sadly when we got there St Kilda was not so easy to see, I think it was a little hazy higher up. To get a better look we went down to the Balranald RSPB nature reserve which is right on the coast. Using our telescope we managed to get a good view of St Kilda. The walk around the reserve took over 2 hours.
Tonight we travelled a little south to camp on the island of Benbecula.

Phil and Tina