The Vacation Continues

Um, I said vacation, but definitely meant LEARNING EXPERIENCE.

Things continue to be generally wonderful in Ireland, rain aside. On Friday we saw Riverdance, and it actually met all the expectations I had, which were nonspecific and not particularly grand - but even if they had been heftier, I would not have been disappointed. I don't know what to say about Riverdance that some reviewer hasn't already said; the athleticism was outstanding, and they made an effort to involve some humor in surprising ways. Supposedly there is a storyline involved in the performance - "the history of Ireland" - but I believe those that claim this to be so are mistaken. There was an ominous sounding narrator who said poetic things about rivers flowing into the ocean and people living in the face of harsh environmental conditions, but his voice intervened infrequently and with no real attention to cohesiveness with the actual dancing, so I began ignoring him after the first act.

Killarney has been a popular tourist destination for hundreds of years. Wealthy English persons write about vacationing there well back into history, and nothing has really changed today. No wonder: the town is beautifully situated, and flourishing under a historically healthy economy. We didn't spend much time in Killarney itself, anyway, but did have a pleasant two nights at our hostel there, where we had Swiss and Polish roommates, all very nice, and an affordable breakfast each morning before heading out.

Saturday we went to Dingle, on the Dingle peninsula, for horseback riding. It was raining in the morning with hints of sun, but though we kept our fingers crossed, the bus ride to Dingle seemed to take us into rather than out of the rain. The scenery was breathtaking, though. You could literally take stunning pictures out the bus window. The rain had an effect on the light, actually, that intensified the gradient of green, but its accompanying fog insisted on veiling the most panoramic views off and on.

In lovely Dingle we took a taxi to the stable, met the management, and were showed to an equipment room to gear up in helmets and boots. The horses were tied outside, already saddled and waiting, many of them with the coarse heads and furred feet characteristic of draft crosses. They were, Katy our hostess informed me, mostly made up of Irish Draught crosses, with some hunter influence. We identified outselves according to experience, and I was assigned Charlie, a very harmless looking bay gelding of about 14.2 hands that liked to take advantage of an inexperienced rider and stop and graze on the trail. I introduced myself to him and mounted up, hoping I didn't make a fool out of myself in the English saddle, and after every one else did the same, we were off.

I would have needed at least one of the other girls to do the longer ride with me, and none of them met the experience requirements, so the six of us went together on the basic hour and a half ride for beginners. This was fine; we didn't break out of a walk until the last leg of the ride, but it was still a fairly intense journey up a mountainside slippery with rain. The horses were supremely sure-footed - Charlie only took a single misstep - despite an incline dense with rocks, water runoff streaming past on all sides so that at times we were moving through narrow cut-away points like miniature canyons. It had been, Katy said, an unusually wet summer. I wound up right behind her in our head-to-tail line, so we chatted about her job, the horses, and some of the differences between American and Irish philosophies with regard to horse training and riding. This came up after she mentioned the pretty mare she rode had been started under saddle that spring, and was four years old.

The rain was steady and the fog a complete seal on any view we might have had from the mountain, which was pretty disappointing, but the misty effect on the rugged rockiness, the contrast of the slick silver of wet rock, the black of rich mud, the blaze of lush grass, were all captivating in and of themselves. Sheep grazed on the mountain unrestrained, part of an Irish system of public land use for agriculture, swaths of colored paint over their backs identifying to whose flock they belonged, though they socialized freely with others of the same species without regard to human ownership. They scattered around us but weren't truly afraid.

Our anticlimactic arrival at the top of the mountain was short-lived. The fog stewed and didn't lift, leaving us blind to the "view for miles" Katy had promised when we set off on the ride. No one seemed to really mind. The horses were responsive and quiet and everyone seemed to be enjoying them at this point. We descended, snapped a group photo or two, and headed back to the stable. I gave Charlie a good bye rub and we called the taxi again, went back to the bus station, and shipped ourselves back to Killarney.

After splurging on dinner out, we went to the first pub with some activity and had barely sat down when a middle-aged Irish guy came up to our table holding a shot of whiskey in one hand and a Guinness in the other. "Are you Shamrockers?" he asked.

We had no idea what he was talking about. "No," someone said.

"Well, that's no bother, there's entertainment upstairs if you're interested. One of you can go ahead, have a listen, and then signal back to the others that it's good." He appeared very drunk, but studied us shrewdly for a response to this suggestion. We all stood up and told him we'd take his word for it.

As it turned out, he was the performer, and the Shamrockers were a group of mostly British tourists; some sort of tour bus hybrid. There were probably twenty of them, listening to the aforementioned man tell bawdy jokes and sing songs. He played a guitar and the bodhran, and drank three of the whiskey/Guinness pairs in about an hour just while we watched, having apparently been at it an hour beforehand. He could barely stand by the end of it, but it was good. And we didn't have to pay for it!

The apparent leader of the tour group asked us what our plans were for the rest of the night. We weren't sure. He told us we could slip into the Killarney Grand without paying the cover if we wanted to be adopted by the group. We had actually foregone the popular Grand because the cover was high, so naturally we leapt at this opportunity. A few more drinks and some random disco dancing ensued.

Somehow we slept sufficiently to roll out of bed the next morning in time to get ready and make our 10:30 tour bus of the Ring of Kerry. I have no use for tour busses, I learned, after our first stop at a walled "historic thatched village" required a five euro admission fee to walk through and look at the buildings and the resident obese bog pony. We milled around the otherwise barren roadstop, its restaurant/pub selling typical Irish souvenirs and 5 euro Irish coffees in tiny styrofoam cups.

Before I could truly turn on the tour bus concept, however, our driver announced a unique opportunity to stop and watch a working dog show - border collies and sheep! - put on by a local breeder who also had examples of the breeds of sheep farmed in Ireland. This time I willingly surrendered my 5 euro for a great half hour or so of nuanced demonstration with two brilliant dogs and about six authentic Irish sheep. The shepherd worked the dogs with a whistle and voice, and their obedience was absolutely incredible, as was their intense focus. I have been comitted to my Ibizan Hound idea, but it's hard not to be in love with Border Collies at the moment! This experience will receive more attention in a later post, but for the sake of today...

We also stopped for photos a few times in the Killarney National Park, an area where much of Far and Away was filmed, and the scenery out the window was, of course, stunning. On the other hand, the fog and rain never left, and the winding road made me tense and ill.

So, maybe not going to go on a tour bus again. I guess I needed to learn the lesson at some point!

We got home Sunday, did our best to recover, and then had class today. This afternoon we went shopping for things we wished we'd had while in the Killarney hostel, leaving time enough to get ready for dinner and the performance in Cork City of Beckett's Waiting for Godot. It was a great meal and a great show, but leaves me drowsy and reluctant to pack! So, I blog.

Tomorrow we are leaving for the Aran Islands, specifically Innismain, an isolated place where Gaelic is still the primary language and fishing is the sole source of income. This difficult lifestyle has been the subject of much literary and anthropological fascination over the years, so the opportunity to stay in the home of a native family, with no assignment but to wander, photograph, think, read and write, is amazing. We will be there Tuesday evening, and will stay Wednesday and much of Thursday before catching the ferry back to the mainland and being deposited in Galway around 7 pm. We have a hostel booked for Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights in this most popular of Irish cities - second only to Dublin - and nothing on the agenda except catching a NON-TOUR bus into Conemara to see the Cliffs of Moher and possibly take a horse ride on the beach, now that we have a mountain trek under our belts.

I use "we" loosely; it's not possible everyone in our troop of 12 will do the exact same thing. I am referring to my expectations of the trip, whether or not anyone else has the same idea, I don't know.

So, I apologize for the subpar quality of this post, but I wanted to get an update on here before I take off again, rather than letting the blog idle for another five days! I should be able to check my email in the hostel, and if I come across some free time I might get a post up, but it's best not to expect to hear from me until next Monday! After which, I'll be staying in Cork for awhile, as classes begin that week.