Achill Day-o

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Galwegian Ger, Polish Magda and myself sit on the bench of the Annexe Inn. We have a Sunday morning breakfast pint -to honour Kris Kristofferson's song- facing the sun and the sea in Keel, in the Achill island. The place is close to Dooagh, the village where some Don Allum arrived after rowing accross the Atlantic Ocean in 1982. A mean invisible rain is falling down. It gets you wet without notice.

We talk about peoples crossing oceans in ancient times. Apparently some scientists have recently found cannabis, cocaine and other American drugs in the lungs and tissue of Egyptian mummies. They wonder whether some native American crossed the ocean long ago and ended up sharing their stuff with the Pharaoh. That, or else someone with a sense of humour had an original party inside the museum not so long ago.

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The day before we had hiked the island's mountains with the Galway University Mountaneering Club. We walked up hills covered by wet bog, passing by the eerie sight of the deserted village of Slievemore. Its ruins remind of the mid-19th Century potato famine that decimated the area.

Up in the hills, the fog may catch you in the edge of the cliff. 'You cannot see anything but this is the highest cliff in Western Europe, more than 600 metres', a young red haired Achillian lady mountaneer tells me.

Suddenly a gust of wind pushes us closer to the edge. 'There are a lot of fairies in this area. People hear voices in the mist and so on', says she. These are not nice creatures: they are much more scary than what you may think'.

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Another spooky story comes from the hostel where we spent the night. The Valley House Hostel was the scenery of the brutal attack on its lady owner in 1894. She survived both the beating and his lover's attempt to burn her alive together with the building. Her ghost still wanders the hostels corridors and scares the occassional tourist on his way to the toilet in the middle of the night. There is a black and white portrait of the culprit of the beating and burning. His face tells of a man not to joke with.

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Down in the pub, the crowd gulps Guinness and other brews by the fireplace. A couple of musicians play old folk tunes using a flute, a concertina (small accordion) and a bodhrán (the traditional drum made of goat skin). An older man with a sailor hat joins the scene. Everyone falls silent waiting for him to sing. I expect some old Irish tune about rebels, misty green hills and so on. Instead, he starts with a loud 'Daaaay-o'!, followed by 'day-ay-ay-o', and of course 'day light come and me wan'go home'. The bad spirits banish away.

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Seals, New Yorkers and other Árainn creatures

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I take a toy plane (six passengers) to Inis Mór, the largest of the Aran islands (Oileáin Árann).

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The ten minutes flight is shaky and low, but not scary, because it really feels you are in a harmless little toy.

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The passengers clap upon landing on a lazy sunday morning Inis Mór (Árainn in Irish). A Japanese woman with long black hair armed with a Nikon and high heels does not clap. She is on a three day trip from New York. A tripod made of black and grey plastic balls hangs out of her purse.

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I order 'full Irish breakfast', a healthy mix of sausages (three kinds), bacon, fried eggs and beans. I want to go to the old pagan fortress of Dún Aonghasa, a circle of stones on the top of a 100mts cliff in the middle of a karstic landscape.

I ask a bald man for directions. His name is John. He tells me about his time as a peace-keeper in Lebanon in the eighties. He has been working as a musician in the pubs of the island for the last seven years. He tells me about arguments with Israeli soldiers, who didn't know that their president then had been born in Belfast. Former Israel president Chaim Herzog was born in Belfast in 1918.

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I walk down the road towards the pagan fort. An old tall German guy accompannied by a dog overtakes me, tells me to walk on the right because we are not in the continent. We talk about the crisis. He mentions an NGO based somewhere in the island and staffed by foreigners that promotes respect for the environment and renewable positive energy.

Although the NGO sounds a bit scary, they are probably doing a good job, because the place looks green, natural and clean all over. However, when I continue walking I find a beach that appears to be full of inflated plastic garbage bags.

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I come closer to realize the garbage bags are actually grey Oceanic seals. They lay placid in the water looking at the passersby in a very Sundayish attitute.

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The seals jump in the water and swim around with only their noses sticking out of the water. I look in the water line to spot the fin of a shark. Normally where there are seals there are sharks but I don't see anything. A large grey seal remains sitting on the rock looking at me. Maybe it's the matriarch.

In the past some sailors, with obviously unhealthy eyesight and great imagination, thought seals were women waiting for them in the shore. They got close to the rocks and ended up shipwrecked.

This seal is actually very cute. I spend some time in the beach contemplating the scenario and realize it's too late to reach the old pagan fortress. Time to fly back to the Connemara shore.

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Full moon on the Burren

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The path to the Poulnabrone Dolmen, in the Burren, is muddy and full of potholes. Black crows fly around the old electricity posts. The night is slowly falling.

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The dolmen stands lonely in the flat land blown by a cold sea breeze. I take the path back, now under a full moon. A blackbird sings hidden in a bush behind me. It sounds like a baby laughing. I walk quick back to the car.



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