Kenmare, Ring
of Kerry
After a night’s sleep that
felt deeper than a black hole, we got dressed hurriedly in time for breakfast.
Our hostess brought out the infamous Irish breakfast, a plate of every kind of
animal, meat and delicious fat. The slices of bacon were Canadian-style: thick
and salty ham. The sausages were juicy. My favorites were the fried medallions
of pudding: one was grayish and full of pork and cereal, the other was dark and
made of blood. She said that she made the pudding herself. The whole plate was
set off by charred pieces of tomato and potato. This would be the first of many
devastating breakfasts.
As we set off towards Kenmare, the sky was
rainless and the roads were narrow. Disobeying trees and bushes lined the slim
strips of cement and I stifled a gasp every time a bus came careening from the
opposite direction. I squealed over quant little houses with brightly painted
doors and window frames, some rose red, others royal blue. M relished the
driving and would bark out orders at me to take pictures of the scenery.
By the time we had dropped off our things at the Abbeycourt bed & breakfast, the afternoon was already nearing evening so we decided to have a quick picnic inside an abandoned church next door. The gray stone walls were overtaken by vines and its floor was now a bed of weeds, yellow buttercups and wild bushes. We perched ourselves on one of the windows, feet dangling, gazing over the cemetery and fields in the distance. Our sandwiches had too much mustard, the wind was whipping and a drizzle started to descend, but nothing could have been more magical than that picnic in the ruins. I thought of the people who used to come here every Sunday and the priest who thumped his sermons. As the drizzle started resembling rain, we ran back to the car and went on to the Ring of Kerry.
We took a small detour before
arriving at the famed tourist site. Off the side of the road, we noticed a
mysterious gate with castle-like towers on either side. The gate itself was red
with rust but the wooden doors and iron fastenings seemed new. A charming
little window peaked out the front of the tower but the door leading up to it
was locked. We decided to follow the path in the hopes of finding a hidden
castle whose minor traits were reflected in the gate. What we found instead was
a dusty road full of potholes. Our poor little car bumped and dipped along the
worst-maintained road in the world. Tossed around like a macarena, I was afraid
our car couldn’t survive it. Finally, we saw a “private property” sign and knew
it was time to turn back, resigned to the fact that there were no castles, just
holes.
Soon after our unsuccessful
side-adventure, we arrived at the Ring of Kerry. It took my breath away. The
Ring is a peninsula of mountains, rocky islands and water almost as clear as
the Caribbean. And all throughout the wet mossy green were the white puffy
butts of sheep with their heads buried in the grass. It seems they do nothing
else but eat. From far away they looked like white boulders. Our first stop was
the prehistoric Staigue Fort, one of several around the Ring of Kerry, made
entirely of stacked drystones. The flat, brittle slabs of stone were held
together with nothing but gravity and the weight of overlaying stones. The fort
was entirely circular with a low entrance and the inside seemed almost like an
arena with its many steps and small alcoves that historians suspected were used
for storage. I marveled how it had survived so long since they didn’t use any
kind of mortar or cement and I could feel the crumbling bits of stone as I
climbed up. From the top of the fort, I could take in the furry tufts of green
and brown grass. Patches of long, sweeping grass seemed blanched, closer to
sheep’s wool than vegetation. The wind would run its fingers through them and
they trembled as if from a strong tickling.
M however was more
preoccupied with trying to pet one of the sheep grazing nearby. One of them,
with a black face and bored expression, stared, sized him up and decided to
take his family far from the intruding human. After the fort, we stopped at a
beach that reminded me of the Dominican Republic the sand was so fine and the
water so clear. The temperature of the water though was nothing like the
Caribbean. M decided that cold water meant swimming water so he stripped down
to his swim trunks and went dashing in. He wasn’t the only one either: a
middle-aged man in a Speedo and a big black dog were his fellow swimmers. The
dog lost his orange ball in the crashing waves and M went to retrieve it for
him. The dog came running gleefully back towards its owners and even took a wet
victory lap around my jeans.
We couldn’t help but stop at
almost every lookout point the view was so gorgeous. Every vantage point was a
postcard waiting to be snapped as the hills rolled beneath us, lined with
stone-stacked fences, gray-roofed houses and giving away to a sparkling water
full of mysterious islands. As we drove further into the Ring of Kerry, the
roads got narrower, more winding and ever closer to the edge of cliffs. The GPS
started showing blank spaces instead of roads. After much dizziness on my part
and M's roller coaster driving, we finally made it to a small portside town
called Portmagee where we collapsed into heapings of buttery crab claws and
Guinness. A group of younger people attracted my attention. They jested and
drank and just like in Kilkenny, they paid close attention to the golf game. I
wondered if they were fishermen or what kinds of jobs they could have here. All
of the guys had muddy jeans and one had a blonde girlfriend.
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