5:00 p.m.
When I signed up for the Connemara Tour, I had no idea what to expect. The only information I had came from a small pamphlet highlighting some of the tour’s attractions: Ross Errily Friary, Cong Village, Kylemore Abbey. These names meant nothing to me. I knew the tour would be departing Galway’s coach station at 10:00 a.m. and returning at 5:30 p.m., and I knew I would be in for some stunning landscapes – the reason I decided to go – but I didn’t know much more. So this morning I took my seat near the back of the tour bus, along with three other girls from the group, and waited to see where it would take me.
“Welcome to the Cliffs of Moher tour!” Michael shouts over his microphone, his gray hair and tinted glasses reflecting in the large, driver-seat window. Confused, I look around to see the reactions of others; everyone seems to be doing the same. Immediately I think, did I get on the wrong bus?
“This is only my first day on the job,” he then says. He must be joking.
As we approach the roundabout, I hear Michael’s cheerful voice come back over the microphone. “Now which way do we go? I don’t seem to see any signs.” Suddenly, the large tour bus is circling the roundabout over and over and over again until I feel it might run into another car, or worse, tip over. These cars must be looking at us like we’re crazy. This guy can’t be serious.
Eventually, Michael, our Connemara and Cong tour guide for the day, chooses a road. He wasn’t taking us to the Cliffs of Moher, I had gotten on the correct bus, and this most certainly wasn’t his first day on the job. While he is a jokester, turns out, Michael is also a wealth of truthful information. As the bus makes its way around Connemara, one of Ireland’s most unspoiled areas, he explains the history of each attraction, throwing in a few random facts here and there along the way. The reason Ireland’s roads are so windy is because they were originally cow tracks. It costs more to shear a sheep than the cost of the wool. The upper lake of Lough Corrib is 60 feet above sea level while the lower lake is 30 feet above. Part of the reason the mountains in the distance are so green is because wild ferns cover them. Every farmer has two sheep dogs; they are trained by whistling. The information is never ending, and I am enjoying every minute of it.
“Woahhh,” Michael yells as he slams on the breaks. At this point, the bus is scaling up a winding, unmarked gravel path. We are in the poorer part of the Connemara region with nothing but dusty fog hovering over the vast mountaintops, small white cottages off in the distance, and livestock roaming the fields. I place my head as close to the window as possible to see what the commotion is all about. Two small horned sheep are standing in the middle of the road. Michael inches closer and motions for the sheep to move, even though they will move when they want to. After all, we are the ones in their way. After waiting a couple minutes for the sheep to pass, Michael informs us that these are Killer Sheep and points out their red marks. He says its blood on them, although I know he is joking and that it is only red dye. While the name implies danger, the sheep are just as normal as others, with the exception of blue or pink marks. “Blue sheep are boys and pink sheep are girls,” Michael jokes. “Satisfied with that answer?” After a few shouts of no, he describes that while the farmers fence in their land, it is hard for them to keep a hold of their own sheep. To keep track, each farmer places a colored dye on a different spot of the sheep, whether it’s the top of the head, on an ear, or near the back. “They’re like flags of countries,” Michael says. We leave the sheep and continue on.
Michael’s jokes and facts become less frequent on the final hour home. Instead, he plays a tape of traditional Irish music for us to listen to. Everything I have learned on this tour is still settling within me: Ross Errilly Friary, one of the best preserved medieval monastic sites in all of Ireland; Cong Village, where the Quiet Man movie was filmed in 1952; Kylemore Abbey, built in the 1860s for the family of English politician, Mitchell Henry, but later used as the monastic home for Benedictine Nuns. Without Michael as a guide, I doubt the Connemara tour would’ve been as eventful or enjoyable. Although I was a bit thrown off at first by his bluffs, I managed to make it home free of rides around roundabouts, but full of a new perspective on one of Ireland’s most scenic regions.
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