Day Forty - 20/10/2012 - County Clare

     At the recommendation of one of the guests at the hostel, we booked a tour with the Galway Tour Company, said to be a good value with a decent itinerary.  The bus picked us up at the hostel, and we got a discount (Kinlay House Galway has to be one of the nicest hostels in Ireland).  The bus first stopped at Dunguaire Castle in Kinvarra, County Galway, a small castle overlooking an expansive region of Galway Bay.  The tour bus was inhabited mostly by Americans, with a spattering of Russians and Asians.  To my dismay (and that of my travelling companions) the castle stop was so small that there was no single opportunity to get a picture without loads of tourists doing the same thing.  Feeling rather unsatisfied with the prospect of spending the whole day on the tourist trap of a bus, sticking out like sore thumbs, we got back on the bus for our next stop.  As we drove through County Galway, the bus driver started to grow on me as he took time to point out the history of the passing countryside.  Connacht, the west region of Ireland, was the worst hit by the Great Famine of 1845, with most of its residents dependent on the potato.  The land at this point in time was owned mostly by Anglo-Irish landlords who leased the land to Irish tenant farmers.  When the Irish farmers could no longer afford their rent, they were evicted, and essentially starved or emigrated.  The relief program of the time was modeled with a laissez-faire mentality, and so aimed not to affect market forces.  Thus, food aid could not be given for free, but the labour exchanged for food also must not be productive so as to not unfairly influence the market.  One of these projects involved building "penny walls", later known as famine walls.  These stone walls were built over the surrounding mountains, literally going nowhere, and often times built in incoherent order.  They stood as haunting reminders of the past through the remainder of County Galway.  On a more uplifting note, we passed a local celebrity, the dancing dog.  This particular dog goes mad when a tour bus comes by and runs in circles, before chasing the bus.
     We stopped at a bed and breakfast along the way that had agreed to let us use their toilets.  Our bus driver encouraged us to buy coffee as compensation.  I decided to forgo the awkward venture and instead admire the view of Galway Bay from the coastline.
     Another stop at Ballyvaughan for the earthen faerie rings, or fairy forts.  These structures were actually the residence of Stone Age peoples, who formed partially enclosed circles by means of building up about 2m of earth wall forming an enclosure in which they would build three houses.  These houses shared a food store built into the ground, which later peoples deemed to be an entrance to the Underworld, spawning the superstition and immediately making the rings the domain of faeries.
     After that, we made a stop at the Poulnabrone dolmen, a 5800 year old tomb built by Stone Age people to bury their important dead.  The tomb housed some thirty bodies, resting south of Ballyvaughan, in the tundra-like environment of stone.  The remarkable formation resembles a deck of cards, with two portal stones supporting a capstone 1,8m above the ground.  The capstone weighs some 1,2 tonnes, supported by relatively slender stones in a configuration seemingly unlikely to survive for millennia.  The Poulnabrone dolmen is, in fact, the oldest known dolmen in the world.
     At this point, after warming up to the concept of touring by bus, we stopped in Doolin, County Clare for lunch.  Our entire bus (including the two that had been following us) stopped at O'Connors, next door to the Doolin Chocolate Factory.  During lunch, Andrew and Melina related some of their adventures in Country Kerry, and the infamous Ring of Kerry.  They said that the tourism today was small-scaled compared to Kerry, where every stop had a minimum of six buses, and the pubs contained literally not a single Irish soul.  After a delicious lunch of seafood chowder, we went to the chocolate factory, where I bought a slice of Stout Fudge, a dark chocolate fudge with a hint of Guinness, in other words, a slice of heaven.
     Finally, it was time for the hallmark of the trip: The Cliffs of Moher.  Located in County Clare, with a magnificient view of the Aran Islands, the Cliffs are indeed hard to capture in words.  Pictures may show the majestic beauty but inevitably lose the scale.  The cliffs span 8 kilometres, and the car park rests somewhere in the middle, letting you choose to go left or right.  To the right is O'Brien's Tower, and to the left are the main span on the cliffs.  Just below the Tower, out to sea, is the Branaunmore sea stack, a pillar of rock jutting out of the sea, inhabited by puffins, and causing some impressive ocean spray.  Upon arriving at the cliffs, Meng and I quickly headed towards the left (definitely a place to utilize the buddy system) towards the cliffs.  There is an asphalt path constructed about 5 metres from the edge of the cliffs, with a 1 metre wall built to protect a natural habitat in the grassy ground atop the cliffs.  Furthur up the cliffs is a staircase of stone, leading up to a viewpoint.  So far, I had been wondering about the stories I had heard of being able to walk up to the edge of the cliffs and look over, unlike American tourist sites.  So far, everything was walled off and very protected.  A little ways up the cliff, about a half kilometre, we reached the end of the official path, but that hadn't stopped an endless train of people hopping the stone wall to continue on the unpaved clifftops.  These were the cliffs I had heard of.  In a sort of sick irony, the spot where everyone was hopping the stone wall was marked as a memorial to those that had died on the cliffs, providing a word of caution as you slipped over the pavement into a muddy, mostly single-file path.  At points, the path widened up and even became grassy.  At other points, it was maybe half a metre wide, with a 200 metre sheer rock face to one side and a muddy slope to the other.  I may have risked more than was necessary to get some shots of the drop, but I did employ the army crawl and aforementioned buddy system.  Pleasantly, the cliffs were not very crowded, especially considering the amount of traffic that the area normally gets.  All things considered, the Cliffs of Moher alone made the trip to Galway worthwhile.  I did not spend any time in the visitor centre as it was a brilliantly clear day, but they have built it into the side of the cliffs like a hobbit hole, allowing you to view the cliffs from an indoor venue.
     On the return trip to Galway city, we stopped at a place known as the Baby Cliffs, a miniature of the Cliffs of Moher, which was nice in that it was visited solely by our bus.
     Back in the city, I decided that, despite the bus driver's charm, I had definitely had my fill of guided tours, and would avoid them in the future.  We had dinner at McDonough's, where Meng got fried Plaice and Andrew tried fried Ray (which was quite bony).  Afterwards, we wandered back towards the hostel, stopping by a gelato shop when suddenly the sound of drums and brass was heard.  I looked towards the street to see two people on stilts, swinging flaming batons, leading the St. Patrick Brass Band Society through High Street.  A small crowd had started to follow them.  They passed the gelato shop twice as we made our purchases.
     We returned to the King's Head for some drinks with three Russian students we met at the hostel.  We had a lively conversation about politics and American misconceptions of Russia.  It was humbling to realise just how fortunate I really am.