TRAVEL TALES. IRELAND
Inis Mor: Times of Solitude
Travel Notes: Ireland Pt 1.
I boarded the last ferry in the afternoon. The wind was blowing hard against the boat. Drops of rain crashed against the cold windows. In a matter of minutes, I was standing on the pier, searching with my gaze for the hostel where I was supposed to spend my next three weeks: a pastel green building over some white concrete stairs.
Dave, the owner, cheerfully greeted me with Irish jokes one after another. He told me of the room where I would sleep together with the rest of the staff and informed me that dinner would be ready soon. Maddie, one of the other volunteers, cooked vegetarian fajitas. Once dinner was over and the kitchen cleaned, all the people from the hostel, including the staff, the tenants, and Dave, moved to the Pub next door on the corner of the building, Tigh Joe Mac. There would be about five or six people besides us inside, I assumed all were locals for the way they addressed the woman at the bar top. By the end of the night, only Maddie, Dave, and I were left drinking on a table. “This place isn’t going to be so bad after all,” I thought, gulping what was left of my pint of Guinness.
Tigh Joe Mac was your typical Irish Pub. It shared half of the first floor of Dave’s hostel, only separated by a concrete wall. The refectory table stretched along the length of the Pub and was divided by an elegant chimney right down in the middle. Behind the table was a collection of American police badges, hanging caps, and framed soccer jerseys. A mural of men in a rowboat faced the chimney on the other side of the living room. The bar, with barrels of Guinness, Carlsberg, Heineken, and Bulmers, was run by Barbara, a woman in her sixties with all the character and cynicism one would expect from an Irish grandmother. A warm yellow light illuminated the interior of Tigh Joe like a gas lamp from the 19th century. The place had that atmosphere that could only exist in the Pub of a small port on nights of wind, rain, and tranquility.
Despite being a tiny town there were a couple of other Pubs on the island. The most popular was Joe Watty’s, where tourists went dancing to the sound of live music played by the local band. I went a couple of times with the staff girls (I was the only male volunteer at that time). One night, a bachelor party was held in one corner of the Joe Watty’s while a group of women in their fifties drank in the opposite side. The ladies had the best atmosphere, laughing out loud and playing cards with plastic phallus headbands covered in whipped cream, which they would later clean with their mouths, proud of their accumulated experience. After a while, one of the women came to our table and asked me for my pants -some kind of challenge in her card game, I believe-. I gave her my pants, unaware that, on that specific night, I was wearing the only pink trousers I had.
By the time we got back to the hostel (with my pants on), the bachelor party had moved to the terrace. “What the hell is going on here?!,” exclaimed Dave as he found a live bonfire in front of his door. “You told us we could have a fire in front of the hostel Dave,” replied Maddie, who had hit it off with the boys from Cork. “On the beach Maddie! On the beach in front of the hostel!”, Dave answered with a logic difficult to refute.
As much as we brushed and scratched the next morning, a faint carbon shadow remained on the stone floor. Then we had to clean all the rooms occupied by the group of drunks with the smell of alcohol and vomit. At least they left several boxes of beer intact when they left.
Apart from that time, work in the hostel was easy. There were no more than five or six tenants every day. The annoying thing was the lack of order when cleaning. Everyone was doing what they wanted as long as the rooms were ready before eleven o’clock in the morning when the first ferry arrived. In addition to cleaning, we took turns cooking dinner once or twice a week. I cooked rice with boiled vegetables and chicken my first time. A little overcooked, but in my opinion quite decent compared to past experiences. Dave had a different idea, “It’s the worst food I’ve ever had in my life,” he said after the first bite. He said it so frankly that I thought he was joking, until he stood up and went out of the dining room, leaving the full plate on the table. At least Hellene, the hostel manager, thought it was kind of decent. She said it was just what she needed for the hangover tormenting her that evening.
Life in Inis Mor was pretty quiet. When I finished at the hostel, I jogged to the southeast end of the island to a meadow where roaming hares would freeze for a few seconds when they noticed my presence. It was difficult to distinguish their brown fur from the ground and the yellow grass. Locking my eyes on a fixed point on the horizon, I could see, out of the corner of my eye, the small brown figures fleeing to their burrows. Lying on the grass, breathing the fresh air and the Atlantic breeze, I let my thoughts be blown away by the wind along the clouds moving over my head. I closed my eyes to enjoy the moment; those ephemeral lapses of peace. At Inis Mor, I learned to appreciate solitude. To enjoy the silence, the waves crashing against the rocks and lifting the sea breeze fifteen meters into the air.
Other days I jog the opposite direction, past the ruins of old Celtic churches from the 11th century: stone buildings, without roofs and covered with long grass and rocks. Kilometer after kilometer, the entire island was segmented into mazes of stone walls that once protected crops from the raging North Atlantic wind and marked the land divisions since the first settlers began to deforest the island, consuming its woods just like the Vikings in Iceland. Cows, horses, and sheep grazed next to the Celtic ruins, and among the meadows of houses and farms scattered throughout the island. Inis Mor was ten kilometers long and had a narrow strait right in the middle. The west face was directly at the mercy of the ocean waves, whose force had reduced it to walls and cliffs over the centuries. On one of the cliffs, a hundred meters above the sea, stood the remains of the Dún Aonghus Fortress (also known as Dún Aonghasa), a semi-circular stone fort from the Bronze Age (1100 BC) with dramatic views of the island and the Atlantic.
In addition to farm animals, the island had its own seal colony that resided on the rocky eastern shores. On a good sunny day, the water was clear and cool like the Caribbean; on a normal day, cloudy and windy, the sea turned messy and icy.
Without a doubt, I saw the best sunsets alone in Dún Dúchathair, the black fortress on the southwest shore of the island. When the sun descended far below the horizon, behind the constant gray cloak of the ocean, and when the few clouds over the island were painted with pink and orange strokes. However, most of the time I watched the dusk from the terrace of the hostel when the last sun rays bathed the surface of a couple of abandoned fishing boats in the harbor. Some days the tide receded so much that it left them stranded on the sand of the bay; other days, strong winds and storms rocked them from one side to the other.
In the three weeks I stayed in Inis Mor, I became a regular at Tigh Joe. Although, the real clientele of a Pub earns its title through the years. The same faces occupy the same places inside the bar for decades. In the case of Tigh Joe Mac, the clientele was a couple of fishermen, a cattle breeder, an engineer, a pair of siblings in charge of the maritime rescue team, and an old man whose profession I do not know, but who sat on the same corner of the bar next to the front door without taking his eyes off the News or Football games on the television. Dave had lived on the island for several years, but it was clear from his interaction with the people at the Pub that he was still an outsider. And since Dave didn’t speak Gaelic, he would never be part of that community.
“Dún andoras!”, Barbara yelled at me one night I walked into the bar. Thinking that it was some kind of greeting, I responded in kind. “Dún andoras … Close the door!”, Barbara explained in a slightly less aggressive tone. Gaelic is the official second language in Ireland. It has Celtic roots and, according to Craig (an Irish friend whom I visited in Dublin before arriving at Inis Mor), it is a language that you are taught in school and nothing else. You do not use it again in real life. Only 2% of the population speaks it in their day-to-day; Inis Mor is one of the few places where people grew up with Gaelic as their mother tongue along with English. That night Barbara made sure I never forgot to close the door whenever I entered the bar. After that incident, every time I returned to the bar I had a new phrase to learn:
Go raibh maith agat u: Thank you.
Cén chaui bhfuil tú?: How are you?
Ba mhaith liom pionta Guinness: I would like a pint of Guinness.
Dún do clab né dúnainn mé duit é: Shut your mouth or I’ll shut it for you (Barbara enjoyed it when I practiced this phrase with the customers).
A significant part of the jolly atmosphere one experiences in a Pub is due to the character of the Irish people. Friendly, tough, and direct at the same time. Their sense of humor is similar to that of Mexicans; especially when it comes to teasing one another, or “echar carrilla”, as we call it in Mexico. For those of you who are not familiar with the term, “echar carrilla” is the way in which Mexicans interact with each other through teasing jokes. The only rule is to keep calm and know how to take the teasing for what it is, teasing. It is the same among the Irish. On one occasion, one of the maritime rescue siblings was being teased by the rest of the people at the Pub. Humiliated and insulted by the group of adults, especially Dave, whom I noticed was a natural teaser. The guy sat quietly with his beer, insult after insult. Subdued even by the comments of his older sister, he never lost control of his emotions.
Besides the Irish carrilla and my Gaelic classes with Barbara, I liked going to the Pub to chat with the people of the island. Livestock problems; local fishing and the effects of sharing their seas with European fishing groups; and the speculations of the future Brexit that felt closer by the day, especially for the Irish, whose economy depended to a large extent on their trade with the United Kingdom.
At some point, the rest of the volunteers left one after the other. Even Dave escaped to the beaches of southern Spain to vacation, leaving Hellene and me behind. For some reason, in those days we received more tenants than we expected. Hellene started to appreciate me more when, despite being quite slow with my duties, I always showed up willing to work and do what she asked me to do. I made it my principle to do what I had to do even though the idea of cleaning someone else’s toilets did not thrill me. By the time Dave returned and the new volunteers arrived, I had accumulated enough days off to escape to Galway for a weekend.
Galway, a former market town, had a nice bohemian charm. Among its colorful buildings and medieval constructions; its streets were full of artists who impress pedestrians with their harmonious voices and guitars.
On my second night in the City of Tribes, I ventured into a Pub famous for its live Irish music. It is a universal law that all buildings in Ireland were, are, or will be Pubs at some point in their existence. The small house where I was was no exception. Making my way through the tight crowd of people I reached the bar and sat down as soon as a seat was vacated. The bartender moved fast and agile, taking care of the endless number of orders that he received. I drank a couple of Guinness sitting down, barely differentiating the Irish melodies from the murmurs of the people. That night I didn’t feel like talking to anyone, and by then I had long reached the point where I stopped feeling sad or uncomfortable by being alone at a bar counter. Traveling alone is about enjoying the company of other people, as well as learning to be on your own. After all, the only person you will spend every moment of the rest of your life is with yourself. There are days when you just want to be invisible, a ghost that passes through the crowds without standing out at all, finding calm in solitude. Paradoxically, loneliness becomes your best company.
“I fuckin’ love Guinness” repeated the voice of Craig in my head with his Irish accent as I took another sip of my second pint of Stout, just like when we first stepped into the renowned brewery for the first time back in Dublin.
I returned to Inis Mor with the first ferry in the morning. The sunny day suited my sudden cheerful mood. I persuaded Alicia and Heloise, the new volunteers, to come with me to Poll na bPeist, the “Wormhole”. A perfectly rectangular natural pool carved into the stone of the island by the wind and tide of the ocean, famous for both its peculiar shape of an Olympic pool and the occasional high-diving competitions organized there by RedBull.
I felt my heart race and a slight pounding in my ears as I faced the icy waters of the Atlantic rising and falling inside the hole. A chill ran down my spine and settled on my limbs. I was afraid, but the same fear attracted me and called me to jump. Plum! The seaweed on the ocean floor touched the tip of my feet. As soon as I went back to the surface I swam out as fast as I could to get away from the cold.
One of the perks of working in a hostel is that you come across all kinds of people. Alicia, the new volunteer, was the granddaughter of Il Duce’s tennis instructor (not because her grandfather had a choice). Another interesting character was Crazy Steve, an American cook who baked pizza my last day on the island. I called him Crazy Steve because I don’t remember his name and well, he was a little crazy. When I asked him what his name was, he introduced himself with the name he had chosen after his “rebirth”. For Crazy Steve, his second coming occurred the day he left his family to venture on a self-reliance trip into the woods of Alaska, in the same style as the guy from Into The Wild. He was a likable character who would turn conversations into nihilistic monologues at the same time as his sight got lost into the horizon, acquiring the facial expression of a person whose body has been abandoned of any light and hope in life. After a few awkward seconds, he would come back to his senses and regain his characteristic carefree smile.
That last night at Tigh Joe we shared a table with the crew of the ferry to Doolin. A favorable coincidence, Doolin was my next stop and I had just spent the morning calling their company’s office, where they informed me that the ferries would be canceled the next few days due to bad weather and low demand. Jack, one of the crew members, informed me that they had brought the ferry to Inis Mor at the last minute to avoid the storms that hit Doolin at night and the next morning they would return to their town.
Written on October 10th, 2018.
Article based on Memorias del Este.
It was a pleasure to write for this Publication. I hope whatever happens from now on, we can all share similar spaces to write and read about this beautiful journey we call life.
