DAY TWENTY-NINE: RING OF KERRY

The original plan, hatched even before Peter O'Toole and Princess Grace decided to join us for this leg of Sandra Bullock's sabbatical, was to drive the length of the famous and scenic Ring of Kerry (179km) with me behind the wheel of whatever car we rented.  I guess maybe we thought I'd be so well-adjusted to Irish driving by now that we'd meander through the dramatic countryside, stopping wherever the mood struck us.

This fantasy continued until last week, when I sheepishly asked my wife if maybe, um, we could get, like a driver?  Just for the Ring of Kerry.  To my everlasting relief, she agreed immediately.  I charitable moments I tell myself she was thinking of me, wanting to ensure that I enjoy the Ring of Kerry as a passenger, free of the white-knuckle responsibilities of driving.  For the other 23 hours of the day I understand that neither of us, nor probably our usually elegant and cool passengers, would have enjoyed the Ring of Kerry with me driving.

Instead we hired a driver and today each got a more complete, less frantic Ring of Kerry experience.  We just returned and have dinner reservations in a little over an hour (pro tip for Ireland travelers:  dinner reservations, even at places you wouldn't think require dinner reservations, are a must, at least in tourist destinations and tourist semi-destinations like Kenmare).  If I'd been driving, we'd still be out there, probably about halfway done and short likely every single stop we made today because we wouldn't know where to stop.

Would we have known to stop at Lady's View, in Killarney National Park, where the view of three Killarney Lakes is so calming it all but erases the presence of a bus full of Italian tourists that has also stopped at the view?  Probably not.

We might've stopped at the Kerry Bog Village because it's well-known enough to have several buses in its lot when we pulled in, but you know, we may have avoided it for the same reason and never learned about the causes of the 1845 potato blight, seen the inside of a sod cutter hut, a giant pile of peat or two Irish wolfhounds and these are all things I'm glad to have seen.  Would we have maybe arrived not at the exact moment the adjacent farm was fertilizing its fields and spared ourselves the nasty and lingering odor of same?  I don't like to talk about what-ifs (unless they support my narrative).

This goat is happy because
he has not been chosen.

We wouldn't have learned about the Puck Fair in Killorglin, in which a single goat is chosen from the fields, hoisted up onto a big tower and crowned "King Puck" while townspeople, visitors and, per Michael, our driver, "kids too young to drink; 14, 15 years old" imbibe Miner's Gala levels of alcohol.  "Doesn't seem like much fun for the goat," Sandra Bullock commented.

"There have been some misgivings from animal groups," Michael said.

If not for Michael there is no way we would've known to leave the Ring of Kerry and continue on the Skellig Ring, through a few towns and to the Cliffs of Kerry, which are  (per insider info from Michael, who finished college with a degree in accounting in 1990 and moved to New York, only to become an "Aer Lingus Carpenter" upon arrival.  "You get on the plane in Ireland and you're a college graduate," he explained.  "By the time you arrive in America, you're a carpenter.") are accessible on roads too narrow for tourist buses, as if such a thing exists in Ireland.

Cliffs of Kerry: Actually higher than Moher.

The cliffs were not mobbed and in their own way every bit as dramatic as the Cliffs of Moher, though entirely different.   And there, off in the distance, is Skillig Michael, site of a medieval-era monastery whose occupants survived, much to a horrified Sandra Bullock's dismay by eating the puffins on adjacent Puffin Island.  "How can you eat a puffin?" she moaned.  "They're so cute!"

If Skellig Michael sounds vaguely familiar, you are a Star Wars fan.  It served as Luke's island hideaway in "The Force Awakens" and "The Last Jedi."  They searched the entire galaxy for Luke Skywalker and it turned out he was hiding out on an island visible from the coast of Ireland.

"You're looking for Skywalker? He's out there."

Unlike our Skye Island tour with George, today's arrangement was strictly driver/passenger, which didn't stop us from pumping Michael for information the entire time.  Actually, I was the one doing this.  Encouraged by my brief assumption of a leadership role (my name was on the email and I sat in the front seat), I immediately peppered Michael with conversation as the rest of our group spent the first leg sitting mostly quiet or napping until eventually he assumed I was in charge.  

Emboldened, I scolded my team at our first stop.  "Look, you guys can join in whenever you want," I said.  Then I assigned each member of the team an area of interest.  "O'Toole, you're politics," I said.  "Princess, I understand that you're back there in the third row, but I'd like you to ask very specific questions about minutia.  Sandra Bullock, you're the floater.  You chime in whenever you want."

They responded well.  Almost too well.  I started to wonder if Michael was thinking, "Wow, he must've had a talking with them."  

Once a normal give-and-take vibe returned, we settled in to learn about the legendary Daniel O'Connell, the first Irish (and Catholic) member of Parliament (1841-1847) and only lay person to have an Irish church named after him.  "He was a bit like your Bill Clinton, though," Michael cautioned, referring to O'Connell's womanizing.  "On the whole, though, his positives outweighed his personal shortcomings."  Amen, Michael.  

S. Bullock (L) and Princess Grace, after the scolding.

We also learned that during the Great Famine the English offered to feed the starving citizens of Ireland -- with a catch.  They had to renounce their Catholicism which may or may not (we were never clear on this, actually, but sort of assumed it) have included dropping the O from their surnames.  Thus did O'Connors become Connors, O'Flahertys become Flahertys.  "Were they treated as sellouts by the Catholics?" I asked.

"There were some tensions."

O'Connell was raised by his uncles in a beautiful home on the coast.  We know this because we eventually went there.  It was our last stop, at a point where Michael had begun quoting Robert Frost:

But I have promises to keep,   

And miles to go before I sleep,   

And miles to go before I sleep.

Ireland?  St. Kitt's?  You tell me.

In other words, it was already 5 PM, we were an hour from Kenmare, and we were supposed by home by 5 PM.   But that final stop was almost the most eye-opening, as O'Connell's childhood home abutted a beach that, on a rare sunny day, looked like it'd been lifted from somewhere in the Caribbean.  Don't believe me?  Take a look at the photo.  Also, that was the moment that our son chose to call us to lay out his plan for taking control of his job situation, which in its own way was as awesome as the weirdly mis-located beach before us.

For the final hour, Michael and I talked about the All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championships and the sad story of a team that in 1982 almost beat the dreaded powerhouse Dublin team but lost by a hair, leaving members so in tatters that most of them turned to drink, six already dead.  If I could remember the name of the guy whose statue we passed in a small town inspired this story, I would tell you, but I can't remember the guy's name.  I remember that Michael was at the game, that the guy was a policeman (hurlers, while celebrities who play in front of 80,000 people, are not paid and have to hold down day jobs), that Michael met him much later and was disappointed by his wasted demeanor and fish-like handshake ("They say you should never meet your heroes.") and that the guy eventually died, after years of being bailed out by his celebrity, when he fell down a flight of stairs.

But that's it.  

I'm going to have to cut this short today because dinner is in 40 minutes and I'm still sitting here wearing shorts.  I'll make up for it by including many photos. 

Today's numbers:

6 -- total number of buses in the Kerry Bog Village parking lot when we arrived.

2 -- times that a shotgun-riding me, woozy from a beer at lunch, reached out to grab a phantom steering wheel that wasn't there while we tore down the Ring of Kerry's 1.5-lane roads.

191, 192 -- first three letters on the license plate of every car rented in Ireland.  Once you know this, drive accordingly.  Also, neophytes get a large N they must display in their back window for their first year as licensed drivers.   So all of you kids with a profile picture on your CDL can stop whining.  It could be worse.

7 -- number of years since Michael quit drinking.  "It wasn't a problem or anything.  You just get to an age where you don't want to do it anymore."

11 -- years this small development of townhomes about 15 minutes from Kenmare with two huge banners reading "NOW SELLING" has sat empty.  "The builder went broke," Michael explained.  "No buyers." 

4 -- cost, in Euros, to walk along the Cliffs of Kerry, which measure 300 meters at their highest.  They are on private land, hence the entry fee and, perhaps, the safety-first railings protecting adventurous visitors from getting too close.

3 -- times Michael actually drove over 100 km/h, even though it sure seemed that we were going about 150 the entire day.  Miles per hour.

I now how 15 minutes to wrap this up and change, so you're not even going to get a proofread today.  Maybe later.  You tardy readers will benefit.  

Tomorrow: kayaking Kenmare Bay, possibly during a rainstorm.