The Irish Chronicles - Some Skulls in Connemara
Left Galway for Connemara on Bus Eirann. The city and it's suburbs receeded very rapidly and were in turn replaced by vast swathes of countryside. Ireland in the travelers mind is Connemara. Bleak is not such a good word for it so much as stark. There is a stark beauty to everything moving north up along the west of Ireland, dense moss covered pine forests that give way to bleak rocky bog terrain, little villages clustered around a crossroad and then stretches of nothing broken by stone walls older than anyone living today.
Drove alongside a fjord outside of Lenane. Looking at the vast green slopes of the mountains plunging down to the deep winding harbor that we couldn't even see the mouth of I turned to Corey and I said to him. "I can see why the vikings did what they did now. There's no where else to go but sea. And with a harbor like this and mountains on either side, no one fucks with your shit, no one.
Roads are small too, along the fjord there was a bend in the road that the bus met a car coming around and the road was too small for the wide turning bus and the car. We watched out the window as the first car put two of it's tires up on the collapsed rock wall and drove up over that and back on to the road. The van that came after was not so lucky and the bus rocked a bit as the van bumped into it and dragged along the side a bit before squeezing out.
Stayed in the Old Monastery Hostel in Letterfrack. The woman we talked to and gave our money to, Laura, a dancer from New Jersey, said that the place had been built by a number of people over the years and that a lot of love and insanity had gone into the place. There were goat skulls everywhere, nailed to the walls with tapestries, mirrors, books, Billie holiday records and old movie stills from the 1950's. The two living room areas were outside under a plastic shed roof attatched to the house, all the couches out there smelt of smoke and peat. Cats, rabbits and one quiet and elusive dog. The bathroom had a radio constantly playing classical music in the background. "Strange place!" said a German man reading on the couch while I was walking around taking pictures.
Woke up and had a meal of porridge oats and black currant jam. Found the entrance to Connemara park to get to what I had come here to do, climb Diamond Hill.
On the way in I had pointed at a dagger-like chunk of mountain that loomed in the distance and joked to Corey that that was Diamond Hill. When we checked in at the hostel there was a map on the wall and when I checked it I laughed to myself. That was Diamond Hill.
If you took the top 1,500-2,000 feet of the Presidential Range chopped it off and plopped it down next to the sea, you'd get an okay idea of what the mountains in Connemara are like. Vast hunks of metamorphic rock with some granite thrown in here and there breaching out of a vast grassy bogland that clings to the sides of the mountain creeping it's way up like a vine. The way up, most of the trail is a boardwalk, since the bogs retain so much moisture (it rains on and off in Connemara almost constantly) they can quickly become traps for hikers. Then once you get onto the mountain proper it's a straight climb to the top over a nearly sheer rock scramble. Wild goats would occasionally appear out of nowhere to bleat at you and then disappear off to a patch of grass somewhere.
Also ate at a bar when we arrived in Letterfrack. Good food, but tourists, especially hostel-ers don't seem to be too popular with the locals. Tried to make conversation with a man having a pint while we paid for our meal, I got a gruff yes that hung in the air before awkwardly plummeting to the floor below with the rest of the conversation tailing it.
Got on the bus after leaving the hostel. Spent most of the rest of the day traveling to the east coast and Dublin.