DAY TWENTY-SIX: RAIN DELAY IN DINGLE

the laid-back crowd at Dick Mack's

Last night, weary of the either/or (seafood with a dealer's choice vegetarian option or pub food) character of Irish dining, we chose to brave the lines at Dick Mack's, a really cool beer garden/brewery/wood-fired pizza joint where dinner came from three very harried and overworked young guys working inside an old and small RV trailer who at first told us they weren't taking any more orders and then later weren't thrilled when Sandra Bullock paid for our pizza with a 50.  And we almost made it through the day without french fries/chips.  At this point, it seemed we might.

From there, impressed by the gestalt of Dick Mack's but not the pizza, we went on to Foxy John's, by day a dusty old hardware store, by night a tavern with two separate bars and a group of five English guys on a fishing holiday who I found surrounding my wife when I returned from the bar with beers.  At least I think it was a fishing holiday.  I couldn't really understand them, but do gather that one of them thought the other guy's shirt  reminded him of something the lead singer of the Housemartins might wear.  Or his name was Martin.  Maybe both.  

Still no fries.

After that we went to the Dingle Pub with one sorry goal in mind: french fries.  The unsatisfying pizza had "worn off," as Sandra Bullock likes to say.  As for me, I've become the Morgan Spurlock of french fries.  I won't order them myself, but if you offer them to me I am obliged to say "yes."  

Inside was chaos.  Not apocalyptic blue boat chaos, fortunately; more like bar scenes from any number of 1980s movies featuring Rob Lowe and Demi Moore chaos: a band, but not on a stage, people dancing, shouting, crammed into booths and tables, standing around.  American tourists with beards involuntarily doing the Grateful Dead fall down the stairs dance.  It was almost 9:30.  The chances of us getting fries here seemed slim.

Imagine our surprise when we were hustled off to a table and presented with a plate of fries before we'd even sat down.  We were stunned, not even sure if we'd said "chips" out loud or just thought them into existence, like how Facebook can target you with ads based on something you'd thought about a few minutes before.  "These can't be ours," Sandra Bullock said suspiciously.  

"They're ours now," I said.  We sat back and indulged, listening to the musicians make clear the connection between Irish folk music and American country music.  It makes sense, I thought, sitting there enjoying our mystically conjured fries.  Who were the people who invented country music?  Immigrants from Ireland and Scotland.  

We continued on into the night, ending at O'Flaherty's, where the disinterested locals crowd of Friday had morphed into a packed and enthusiastic Saturday crowd.  

This morning we awoke early, shaking off the cobwebs of last night, eager for our trip to Great Blasket Island, fingers crossed that the boat wouldn't be grounded by inclement weather.  The view out our hotel window, which still overlooked a bunch of garbage cans, was dry and sunny, despite the glum forecast of rain.  Like a well-oiled machine we piled into our dorky hiking clothes, bought sandwiches and strode excitedly to the pier... only to find our captain(?) slumped in the Dingle Bay Cruises office doorway, his manner bearing the weight of thousands of years of disappointment, tragic loss and melodic poetry.  "No," he said sadly when we asked if the boat was running today.  "It's been good all summer but now, this, our busiest time, they give us this."  He glanced up at the sky, near tears.  

We would not see evidence of the traditional Irish community that once called Great Blasket Island home.  Once numbering as many as 160 and speaking only Gaellic/Irish, the settlement, which had survived the great famine by eating potato seeds rather than potatoes, was ordered abandoned in 1953 by the Irish government.  Had we gotten to the island, we would've seen the ruins of this community, incredible views and trails and a minimum of tourists, according to our Irish friend Maire,  who lives near us in San Francisco and drives a luxury car.   Instead we were left on the pier with backpacks, ridiculous outdoors clothing and no plan B.

It wasn't raining.  The forecast had cleared up somewhat, the probability of moisture falling from 90 to 50 percent.  Why couldn't we go out?  "We went out yesterday," said the sad mariner.  "It was bad.  Not good."  I wasn't sure what he meant but would find out later. 

It's now that I can finally mention Pilar from the Tourist Information Office after Sandra Bullock scolded me for omitting her yesterday.  We wandered in there after our whisky tour and were immediately charmed by her combo Spain/Ireland accent and her (strong and repeated) suggestion that when we get to Kenmare we make sure to "go annoy Jim" at the tourist office because Jim is always sending people to Dingle and telling them to ask for Pilar.  Jim or no Jim, we'd totally ask for Pilar if we in advance knew Pilar existed.

Pilar suggested that, should our Blasket trip be cancelled, we should consider a walk to the Dingle lighthouse, among other pursuits.  Two hours round-trip, very pleasant, will kill a couple of hours and you can do it wearing those silly REI clothes and look like you at least are sort of wearing them on purpose.  

Dingle from the harbor. 

So that's what we did this morning, yet another pleasant surprise in a trip whose unintended benefit is that it's helping me form a coherent philosophy of traveling (and maybe even traveling through life) that has something to do with how great it is when things surprise you, exceed your expectations and come as the result of little or no advance planning (or the wrong advance planning).

There's not much of a trail, just worn down spots in the grass, and you have to hurdle some walls, walk up and down some stone steps and squeeze between small openings at points, but it's otherwise and easy walk.  You don't actually need REI outfits to do it.  You can do it in Topsiders along with your wife and still walk at twice the pace of us, causing a small bit of tension when we try to stave you off but can't because I walk too slow and then finally let you overtake us, defeated even more for the zip-off hiking pants we chose to wear while you wore shorts.

Lesser-known but still formidable cliffs.

We thought we were done with cliffs.  We were not.  These ones were about a fifth as high as the Cliffs of Moher and had no catchy handle to sear itself into visitors' heads ("Mini-cliffs of Dingle?") but in their own way were just as dramatic as their bit brothers to the north, not only for their views (we were looking out at, I later learned, the Skellin Islands and south to the Ring of Kerry) but also for their equally heart-stopping danger.   No close calls this time but so many signs warning us of the foolhardy nature of our quest or simply picturing a man falling to his death from the side of a crumbling cliff; and worse, an actual memorial cross, stuck a few feet from the cliff's edge, bearing the simple words:  Davey B.  2017.

R.I.P. Davey B.

We made it all the way to the end.  Four miles in, four miles out, more than a mile past the lighthouse and Hussey's Folly, a turret built in 1845 by a landowner just to give downtrodden, famine-starved locals something to do.  And what did we find at the end, perched atop the highest cliff and looking out at the endless Atlantic?  A pile of rocks, of course.  

Burial marker?  Stranded hikers trying to build a shelter?  More out-of-work famine survivors needing something to do?  We looked at it, then out at the water, up and down at all the cliffs.  The pile of rocks, like Nessie before it, remains an enigma.

We put our heads down and started back, glancing up now and then to regard the cliffs and the angry, roiling ocean, understanding

Enigmatic but wholly expected pile of rocks. 

now why, rain or no rain, there was no chance our disappointed captain was going out onto the water today.  "I haven't seen any boats," Sandra Bullock said earlier.  Now she saw one.  "Look."

Out there, looking halfway submerged, was a tour boat, possibly the one used for visits with Fungie the dolphin.  It was struggling to get back to the misleadingly calm waters of the harbor, bobbing violently up and down, its hull disappearing almost completely then reappearing, rinse and repeat.  We weren't close enough to see the faces of its passengers, but you can bet that if I was one of them I'd be sucking down Dramamine like M & Ms.

How about some numbers?

6 -- signs telling hikers, using increasingly colorful terms and images, that they were on their own if they chose to continue walking on these unstable cliffs.

1 -- cross, making that same message much clearer than signs ever could, no matter how graphic their depiction of a guy falling off a cliff.

18 -- speed, in km/h, of the wind in Dingle today, with gusts up to 30 km/h, or "fast enough to make you think one strong gust might send your wife sailing over the edge of a cliff."

58 -- combined age of the sisters from New Jersey that we met last night at O' Flaherty's bar.  Yesterday I watched a video of Rick Steves visiting O'Flahertys in 1999, when those same girls would've been about 8.  The video looked very current to me

3 -- members of last night's fishing holiday that we saw today packing up their gear on a dirt road about two-thirds of the way through our hike.  There were five last night.

Hikers beware.

1 -- total number of fish caught today by the guys on the fishing holiday. 

64 -- percentage chance of rain at 10 AM on Tuesday, when I'll be teeing off at the Kenmare Golf Club.  

We got back to our hotel at noon, silently offering words of thanks in Pilar's direction.  Upstairs, warm showers and the sandwiches we'd bought earlier awaited, along with an afternoon of lolling about our room, researching our next stop, texting with Princess Grace and Peter O'Toole, who will join us there.  Outside the rain finally arrived in sheets.  Our need for a fully-planned day had evaporated.  Tomorrow we get back in the car and drive to Kenmare.