County Clare (continued)

More whatevers:

• The Aran isles are made up of four islands the smallest and closest to the Irish mainland is Innismeer. This is the island we visited. The people of the Aran Isles are fluent in Irish. It's been their primary language since Cromwell in the 17th century, when many Irish fled to the islands. Today many Irish send there kids to the islands for the summer to learn the Irish language. They stay with families where they learn Irish through immersion.
• I didn't find the locals to be particularly friendly toward the tourists, but I'm sure it gets old when four boats a day unload a fresh batch of people, especially in a region with so few people. By nature of living on an island for much of your life with 3oo people (max) you probably don't have gregarious tendencies.
• There were so many rocks on Innismeer that they'd stack them into walls just to get them out of the way. So it looks like there are crazy mazes all over the island. Check my flickr pages to see what I'm talking about. They would also mix layers of sand and seaweed on top of rocks to create fertile soil in order to be self sufficient.
• On the island there was this one church which was completely submerged by sand. You can still see into the church by looking through the roof. The site has become a cemetary which is at the same level as the church. It was pretty odd.
• Day 4 still no snakes.
• We got a flat tire on the way back from the Aran Isles to Spanish Point. No spare in the trunk. Took three hours to get a replacement car. But it turned out to be pretty cool because we met this wonderful man Mike Wolf (just now realized that Josh has a friend from San Marcus with the same name) who was originally from England who lived across the highway from where we parked. He was extremely helpful. There were three stangers, probably cussing across the street, on this very quiet stretch of highway, and he looked up taxis and check on us several times to make sure everything was ok. He showed Patty and I his conservatory and even gave me a copy of the Webb Society Deep-Sky Observer's Handbook Volume 9 that he put together in his spare time over 4 years. I will find his email address someday and send him a thank you message.
• Where we stopped with the flat tire was next to a field with a lot of cows. Mike told us this story of how the owner bought this special breed of bull from France that was particularly mean. It was so mean it broke the owner's ribs when he first approached it. So he called in the vet whose ankle he broke. The owner ended up having to call in the Irish military to take down the bull because he couldn't seem to take it down himself. Now that's one mean ass bull.
• Haven't seen a single big box store here. Haven't missed them. Unrelated thought, it's not easy to find bottled water here.
• I fucked up and left my windows open with the light on in my hotel room. When I got back several hours later, I had hundreds of tiny flying insects waiting in the room for me. Fortunately, I was told earlier in the night that Ireland doesn't have any mosquitoes, because if it, did I'd probably have West Nile virus right now. After living in a state where just about any creature could kill you, it's comforting to be in a land without any poisonous critters...not sure how much I believe this...
  
• The rumors are true, people like to drink here.
• Bands I can't stop listening to on this trip:
• Pela
• The Twilight Sad
• Apparat
  
• St. Vincent
• Oh, and Enya since she seems to be playing everywhere we go.