Killarney

September 20, 2023

The sun burst from the overcast in Killarney, then faded. We rode around the 26,000-acre national park in a carriage pulled by a horse named Maggie and driven by a young guy, Damian McCarthy, who said he inherited the job from his father.

The park is wild and lovely, bounded on the north by a huge lake, Lough Leane, and inhabited by a unique species of diminutive red deer. We walked around the remains of Ross Castle, built in 1410, later site of a Catholic Irish defensive stand against Protestant British Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell’s marauding “Ironsides” troops during the Irish Confederation Wars of 1640-1650. Damian said he could trace his family’s roots back to those Irish defenders, a McCarthy was one of the Irish chieftains. We told him we were from South Carolina. He said, joking, “if you were English you’d be walking back.”

When the ride ended Damian and his mother gave us a lift to the hotel. They noticed Sandy’s cough.

She got hot soup for dinner. The cough, thanks to allergies, seven hours on a cold aircraft, and the Dublin rain and chill, got worse. Around 2 AM it was time to get help. We got dressed and trudged to the lobby. The night-desk guy gave us the number for a local clinic, SouthDoc. A nurse answered and asked a few questions. She gave my message to the on-duty doctor. Within minutes he called, advising that he couldn’t see Sandy without a negative covid test result. Oddly, we had brought one.

At 2:30 AM I administered my first covid test. It wasn’t pleasant for the patient, but it did turn out negative. A cab carried us through the deserted, rain-slicked streets to SouthDoc. The duty physician, Dr. Phillips, and his nurse were the only ones present. He did his exam, listened, and prescribed a few things. The nurse called another cab.

We already had paid for a bus tour called the “Ring of Kerry” that circles the southwestern corner of the country. Sandy said no way, since she had her meds she would stay in bed and get better. I stuck with the plan. The sky was overcast and threatening. The other riders were, like me, oldsters, all couples, the typical tourist pack. I had a seat to myself.

We pushed out, the tour narrated by a veteran guide with a local brogue, who pointed out interesting and beautiful sites and told stories, some poking fun at his accent and those of others. We stopped at a rural scenic point and filed out, joined a few minutes later by four or five other tour buses, all nearly identical. The crowd milled around. The place offered, for a charge of seven euros, an exhibit of “famine habitations,” mockups of the hovels the starving Irish lived in during the 1840s famine. I grimaced and passed.

After snapping a few photos of the hills I realized I couldn’t remember which bus was mine. I climbed aboard three before finally recognizing our driver. “Take a picture of the front of the bus so you’ll remember it,” a lady said.

We made four or five more stops and gawked at mountains, rugged pastures, and quaint little towns. We saw husky Irish sheep, many splashed with red paint markings by their owners. When we reached the coast near Dingle the gray sky closed in, fog shrouded the mountaintops and the sea. Finally we stopped at an inn overlooking a rocky beach for lunch. “It’s one-thirty, be back on the bus at two-twenty,” the guide warned.

It seemed a friendly rustic place, but the employees herded us to the cafeteria past stacks of souvenirs for sale, including green-tipped tin horns, earrings, postcards, shamrock coffee mugs, and Irish-green dog blankets. How many of those do they sell, I wondered.

The cafeteria line crawled forward as folks ordered shepherd’s pie and fish ‘n chips. I ordered a ham sandwich and checked my watch. It was one of those classic souvenir-stop/lunch/restroom/back-on-the-bus tourist routines. Folks gulped their lunches and ran for their seats.

 We passed through Annascaul, Killorglin, Sneem, Waterville, Caherdaniel, Cahersiveen, and others, tiny hamlets wedged against mountainsides above the sea, and tourist-seeking towns packed with bars and restaurants, real estate and lawyers’ offices. The bus stopped, here and there and we all jumped out to snap pictures until mid-afternoon, when the chilly rain fell in buckets.

Around 4 PM we turned north and entered the wilder south end of the National Park, where the forest is thick and jungle-like, moss-covered dead logs left where they fell in a tangle of rocky, vernal underbrush.  We passed through the Kissing Tunnel, when the guide urged couples to smooch, and along the spectacular “Ladies View” named because Queen Elizabeth’s ladies in waiting urged her to visit.

The rain spattered against the windshield, the guide finally gave up suggesting photo stops. The crowd got antsy, ready for their warm hotels. The driver picked up his speed, slowing on the narrow two-lane road for ongoing auto traffic (I wondered what are those cars doing here?)

We entered the busy main highway through Killarney, traffic whizzed by. The bus pulled over at a gas station. We piled out, thanking the driver and scattered. I guessed I was a mile from our hotel. I didn’t have the number for a taxi and started hoofing it. Halfway along, holding my jacket snug against the rain I heard a clop-clopping sound. A horse-drawn carriage ambled by, the sides protected by plastic curtains.

I looked up, it was Damian McCarthy, our yesterday’s driver, heading home. He looked around and waved, then pulled over to the left. That’s correct, the left, the way they drive over here. I ran and jumped in. It was an early day for him, what with the rain. We clopped forward. At the hotel I jumped down, he waved and cruised back into traffic.