Yesterday we went into town to pick up a new WOOFer - Dimitri. He’s from Brazil and is here in Ireland trying to learn English. I guess it’s easy for Brazilians to come to Ireland, and apparently there’s a lot of them. Anyways - before we picked him up, Hillary, Jane, Miriam, Zuzy (susie) and I took the car on the ferry, went to Cahirsiveen and had hot chocolate and pastries at the French Patisserie - Delicious! The bus must have been early because when we went to get him, he was sitting alone on the bench... poor guy. I guess he is twenty-three. He said people think he’s younger - I know how he feels! Haha. There was a lady who thought I was sixteen or seventeen the other day - merciful!
We went to a place called Dingle this past weekend. It’s a bit north of us, quite close actually, we just have to go around water to get to it, so it takes two hours - you could probably get there by boat in a half hour or so. Anyways, the town has been in lots of movies and is known for the dolphin - called Fungie. Fungie is famous because he has stayed in the same waters near Dingle for about twenty or so years. We didn’t really know what we were going to do when we got there, but hey - do we ever have a plan? Haha - We checked into our hostel. Scott, an Aussie, was in charge - a very nice man (and he wasn’t wearing shoes!). We got our room and headed out to check out the town. Our hostel was about a mile out of town - then, we walked around the main part of town in about ... oh, 20 minutes. We decided that, despite the wind and random rain, we were going to walk through people’s yards and cow pastures to get to the lighthouse. On our way, we met a dog (whom I ran with for a bit until he ditched me - probably for a lady friend), and we were surpassed by an older man. He was just having a nice brisk walk around the place. He was quite fast despite the wind that was pretty much blowing me over! He was chatting about this white bird that had just dive-bombed into the water to catch a fish, “Watch, he’s going to do it again - just keep your eye on him! Oh, and I’m sure Fungie - you know Fungie, our famous dolphin! He’ll be right over here, right near the cliffs. I’m sure of it. Oh! There he is!” Before we knew it, we had just saved ourselves twenty euros each to take a boat ride to see the famous dolphin. It was nuts! The next moment the old man was practically at the lighthouse in the distance, haha.
Eventually, we made it to the lighthouse - took a few jumping photos near the cliffs and each took to our own corner of pasture to ponder life, love and other mysteries. On our walk back, we were passing through some cow pastures and one herd decided to move from one big square to the other. In doing so, they had to use the same path we were using. We saw them walking onto the path and meandering onto the desired area of grass (we kept on walking towards them - we were closing in on them, but they’re just cows, right?) - when lo and behold we see a massive bull bringing up the rear. We all said things at the same time: Miriam - “That’s a bull!”, Jane - “(insert profanities)”, Hillary - “What does this mean? What does this mean?”, Me - “It’s half lion, half bull!”. And we lunged to the rocks that dropped off into the ocean. Trying not to fall down into the ocean, hiding oneself in rocks, and not getting killed by a beast is quite difficult. Don’t worry - it passed by in peace and we were once again on our merry way.
The next day we got things to have a picnic and we made our way out of town and up a small mountain. Up at the top, while we were making our lovely lunch wraps, we literally saw this dark cloud rush over to us and start dumping rain. We tried to take cover with this round stone structure - it helped a little... After a bit, it lightened up and we made our way back down the mountain and to the Catholic Church.
This church was lovely! Lot’s of trees and flowers around in, an old convent nearby and the inside was beautifully done. Hillary, Miriam and Jane ran into a retired priest and had a nice chat with him (he was quite the jokester, so I’m told). I was unable to meet the man because I had wandered earlier into the convent and was being shown some famous mosaic windows and wall paintings. Afterwards, we headed back to the hostel for a little nap in the sunshine that had decided to grace us with it’s presence. I bonded with the hostel cat after my nap.
We ended the day with a little dinner at a local pub. When we were about to be on our way out, three men came in with a banjo, guitar and mandolin - all the makings for an awesome show. We decided to stay for a bit, and I’m sure glad we did. The three men soon had everyone singing famous Irish pub songs like Dirty Old Town, Irish Rover, and my favourite - Galway Girl. It was a great ending to a great day.
Our ride home was quite the trip - We had gotten a ride from a guy we met from town. Meet Tommy - a twenty-five year old with a degree in accounting; working in Cahirsiveen at Jessica’s Discount Shop, but from Dingle. (Ps: He also thought I was 18 years old - so wrong. I’m the oldest and wisest of the crew, haha). Anyways, we had been driving for about half an hour or so and suddenly their is a garda (policeman) directing traffic off of the main road onto a country road (not that there is much of a difference). We go around for a while - searching for a way back onto the main road, but all roads are blocked. Why? Oh, because Kerry County decided to have a rally that afternoon. A modified car race around country and main roads. There were parked cars everywhere, people hopping fences and running through pastures - it was nuts. Basically we were stuck until the race ended. Poor Tommy was in all sorts of stress - but I feel like we all enjoyed the rendezvous. All in all, the trip was lovely!
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