Aran Magic

I will admit it from the start, I am in love. The Aran Islands were so amazing, anyone who does not fall in love with them obviously does not have a heart...or a brain.
My time in on the Islands was full of illegal activities, questionable ethics, freezing swimming, too much Guinness and "cider", hanging off of cliffs, old men who like to 'shake hands' when drunk, and a really great time. When I think of the last few days I am stunned at how much I saw and experienced...it was amazing.
I am really overwhelmed trying to write about it so this may be a really garbled post but I will try my best! I arrived on Inish Mor on Friday afternoon and checked into my hostel that was right on the harbour. After a bit of wandering I walked up to the Artist's hostel where I was hoping to make a reservation for the next night. I met a couple from Minnesota who were hoping to get a room for that night. We could not find anyone who ran the hostel so finally I wandered up to the street and asked the neighbors. Now, a few minutes before I had joked that he was probably at the pub up the street and we all had a good laugh at Irish stereotypes...unfortunately I was right. So we wandered up to the pub, Joe Watty's..which is much better than Joe Mac's, and found the 'manager' of the hostel who was drinking a pint with his friends...so begins my story of my saga with John. John is probably in his 60's and is a great ol' nice guy when he is sober or tipsy and a wonderful musician when drunk...but not the other way around. Anyway back to my story, we found John who said no problem there will be a room for you tomorrow night and offered to make special arrangements for the couple to stay in his "cabin" for the night and he would stay on a couch in the house. He insisted we had a pint and with the weather so wonderful we had to oblige.
So a few hours later I met up with my old room ate Tessa, who is WWOOFing on a vegetable farm for a year, that night and we left a very weird pub I had popped into earlier called Joe Mac's and went to Joe Watty's where as it happens John was still there drinking and singing with his guitar. We had a great time catching up and much later I headed back to my hostel for the night.
Saturday I found a nice small place to have breakfast and guess who was there...John, he told me I could put my bags in one of the rooms in the house/hostel and he would be around later if I needed anything. So then I headed out and hired a bike and met up with Tessa at her house a few miles down the lower road of the Island.
After fixing out bikes up a bit...most of the gears are hardly working because of all the salt in the air.. we left for Dun Aenghus, an amazing fort, with some of her co-workers who were from England, France, and Switzerland. Over the next few hours we rode across the island, broke into Dun Aenghus by climbing over some fairly tall walls, had a picnic in a fenced off area of the fort, fell asleep by the cliffs...a safe distance away, went swimming in the very cold ocean, and then biked back across the island. Dun Aenghus was so amazing it deserves a bit more of an explanation. From far away it looks like a bunch of rocks standing up ... which it is... but it was built as a last resort to protect the island from invaders and it would have worked really well as it is a half mile-full mile walk up a big hill to the actual fort. When walking up the fort you can hear the ocean but, at least when we were there, you couldn't see the ocean. Once you enter though a doorway into the fort you emerge into a large half circular area with a big rock table in the middle. Once the cross the table you can finally see the ocean that you had heard while walking up the hill, and the ocean is all you can see...for miles. It was such an amazing feeling, knowing that you are nothing in this huge expanse of water...being around such an amazing site makes you feel different...realizing that something much bigger than you or your friends is around you, and not just in the physical sense.
After we climbed over a stone wall to a fenced off area of the fort we had a picnic and layed in the sun for a long time. It was an amazing feeling,
the sun hitting my arms, legs and face
The waves beating into the cliffs 300 feet below us
Seagulls peacefully crowing above us
Salt covering your face
And all around you this huge ancient fort made of stone
..it truly was an emotional/spiritual experience.
It was amazing, I layed down by the cliffs and stuck my head out over the edge and although it is always foolish I felt safe. Perhaps safer than I had felt climbing over fences to get there. Ancient areas really affect me, and many others. I am always skeptical about 'spiritual' areas but there was no denying this.
A bit later we biked back down to the lower road and a consensus decision was made that we all needed to go in the water. All 5 of us, at that point, locked arms and ran into the sea, immediately a huge wave hit us and most of us got knocked down in the water and over the next hour we kept on running in and out of the waves.
We biked back into town and I headed to the hostel to wash up and met up with one of my friends who took the ferry in that night to visit for a few days. We went back to Joe Watty's for the rest of the night with Tessa and can you guess who was there again? Ya...it was John who made us all shake his hand and talk to him for a while..this was mostly drunk John, and told me he overbooked the hostel so I would have to sleep in the 'cabin'..after making sure he would be sleeping in the house we settled into a corner of the pub. Late that night before we left I went up to John to make sure he got his stuff out of the 'cabin' and he was totally gone, he turned around and his eyes were...i guess in the back of his head! Needless to say he didn't really respond so I headed to the 'cabin' that on the side of the hostel. There were no lights on at all so i decided to see just how drunk John was and I found many empty beds in the house so I grabbed the bunk I had thrown my bags on earlier.
In the morning I left the Artist's hostel and stashed my bags down by the harbour, I had tried to pay John twice the day before for the bed but he had said 'ah, we will deal with it later' and I couldn't find him anywhere around the house or the pub or the breakfast joint I met my friend Tanya at that I had seem his at the day before. So we headed out to Tessa's house/farm and went to a Celtic mass that was really great to experience. Afterwards Tanya and I hung out with friends at the house and then headed back into town where again John was no where to be found, and he never got my 17 euro!
Now I am in Galway and am exhausted from my time in Aran...to think that I was only there for 2 full days! And even though I am really sunburned and tired I wouldn't trade those two days for anything, the Aran's truly are magical.