Advertisement
Published: February 5th 2007
Edit Blog Post
Connemara in the Fog
A shot from the 10 minutes we were covered by fog So option #1 for this past weekend was to go up to Tory Island - a little island about 15 kilometers off the north coast of Ireland which has apparently claimed independence from the republic, has its own king, and is nothing but rocks. We were to go with the Gaelic speaking Drama society who was headed up to Tory Island to perform its current production about heaven and hell fighting over the soul of a girl who had just died. (Of course, we wouldn't have understood since the entire play is in Irish, and all I can do in that language is order a pint.) My friends Katie, Emily, and I had met the playwright - a student at NUIG - and other members of the Drama Society at the Gaelic speaking club in Galway last Thursday. We were invited to attend said excursion after talking with them about the politics of random countries, including Colombia and Belarus, for a couple hours. I'm not making this up. However, as fun as the weekend probably would have been, we opted not to go to Tory Island because (as Katie said) our organs may have been harvested and sold on the black
market. I'm just kidding - I have yet to meet an unfriendly Irish person, so I'm sure our organs would have been quite safe.
Instead we went with option #2:
Saturday a group of us APIers hopped on a bus tour to Connemara, the region that runs along Ireland's west coast just north of Galway. We started the day off with some more doughnuts from the market (see previous entry) . . . so with our stomachs full of amazing sugary goodness, we set out. As our tour guide said, we got a "craic-er" of a day for it - the sun was shining and it was fairly warm, so it was amazing to be out and about. Connemara, as we discovered, is basically your picture-perfect Ireland - complete with sheep, ponies, stone walls, sheep, cottages, lakes, bogs and sheep. As Rick Steves (the God of travel writing) says, it's "real" Ireland. I believe him . . .
During the tour we drove through a deserted famine village called Rossaveel (I think they are one in the same, although I can't be 100% sure since the names of things all kind of run together. . . ) A
APIers
Molly, Emily, Me, Catherine, and Jenny at one of our stops during the tour lot of the buildings had been restored, so we got a sense of what things looked like around here circa 1845. Very picturesque. We also saw the Twelve Bens/Maamturk Mountains, and drove through the Connemara National Park. Everything we saw was absolutely beautiful . . . basically it felt like an adventure into "Ireland postcard and calendar land." Some of the landscapes confused me a bit sense they seemed like a fantabulous mix of Hawaii, New Hampshire, and the desert . . . but I guess Ireland never ceases to surprise me.
One of the more notable stops along the tour was Kylemore Abbey. This is one of those places that everyone knows what it looks like before they visit because it pops up on the front page of almost every travel guide for Ireland. I guess this status is well deserved, especially when you see it on a day like we had. I personally didn't go inside . . . I (once again) consulted Rick Steves on this matter, and he said it was overpriced. I think I got a pretty good feel for the place from poking around outside . . . and in the gift shop (haha).
Hawaii?
Apparently not Plus, how different can churches and mausoleums really get from each other?
Overall, the tour was excellent . . . I was a little disappointed not to actually be able to catch a sheep in order to take my picture with it (they're faster than you think . . . ), and I would say the O'Neachtain tour guides would benefit from not repeating everything they say about three times . . . but otherwise it was a great day. The five of us even managed to finagle the price down from 20 to 14 euros and get dropped off at our apartment complex . . . so no arguments here.
On Sunday Katie, Emily, and I went with the NUIG mountaineering club back into Connemara to hike in the Maamturk Mountains. We were a little worried because we woke up to a lovely display of heavy fog, but that cleared when we were about half way to our destination and we got another lovely day. Our group was about twenty-five people in total - most of us Americans (of course . . . it seems like, as much as you try to avoid it, we all move in
Kylemore Abbey
Emily and me at Kylemore packs). And, coming from a country with marked and cleared trails, I don't think any of us had any idea of what we were getting ourselves into. When our guide pulled out a map of the terrain and started guessing at the best way to make it up the bog/sheep/rock infested mountain, we pretty well figured it out. Basically it was an exercise in figuring out the best way up . . . and it was AWESOME. We had gotten a sense of Connemara the day before, but apparently everything grows even more beautiful when you're completely out of breath and staring at if from a much higher altitude. The hike was definitely difficult . . . I became quite familiar with the "squishing" noise within the first five minutes, and my hiking books were covered in mud up to the ankle. In addition, there was the obvious incline of more than 45 degrees, and the places that I grew thankful for my climbing wall experience. It took us a good 2-3 hours to summit the mountain, but the view was more than worth it. Talk about the best way to get a feel for Ireland . . . There
The Hikers
Katie, Emily, and Me at the beginning of our hike were some interesting times on the hike - like the time when you realize that you've drunk a little too much water to last 5 hours without a bathroom, yet there are no bushes on mountains in Ireland . . . and the whole hiking down a mountain that is covered in bog thing. Let's just say I fell a few times. Hey - it was squishy, so it was actually kind of fun. Plus, one of our guides thought it would be fun to throw some bog on my head. . . I think this hike made me one with the land. It was awesome.
As if the hike wasn't great enough, we topped off the day with a stop by the pub (I got a hot Irish Whiskey - I was pleasantly surprised), and a bus ride complete with a sing along and boys belting Brittany Spears. Time of my life.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.124s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 13; qc: 61; dbt: 0.0688s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb