I was toying with the idea of a tour to Inishmore (big island) or a combo tour to Inisheer (small…read moreisland) with a Cliffs of Moher and Doolin detour. (I thought I may as well do a tour because, although doing the islands alone would cost me €10 less, the guide could give me insight that I would not otherwise get.) My gut said to do the latter, but so many locals said how the big island was awesome, so at the last minute, I changed my mind. I wish I hadn't. Either way, choosing to do the big island, I had many company options--all costing the same amount (€45). But, this tour seemed to be heavily supported by Tripadvisor, so I went with it. Given it was a tour, I expected a lot of education. Given it was a tour by a local, I expected a lot of knowledge.
The tour started well; we were whisked away by Michael Faherty on his bus from Galway's New Coach Station. We drove past the many beautiful fields of western Ireland, seeing many stone walls and sheep and horses and such, eventually arriving for the ferry. Michael talked for some of this 45-minute journey and played Irish music for the rest. On the ferry, we scrambled individually to just find a seat, as it was raining, so the seats on deck were empty--some people had to stand for the 45-minute ride. We arrived on the island, and Michael gave us our options: bus, bike or walk. A few took the bike option, so he rented them bikes. The rest of us got on his little bus and began our tour.
This is when I realized I should have just done the day on my own (or gone with the other tour). The bus windows were dirty--which, sure, it's hard to control the weather, but it meant getting good photos was hard, especially since Michael didn't stop very often or even slow down when pointing out a local church or school or while passing a beautiful field. Plus, well, he talked during the tour of the island but really didn't say much. He would say things like, "There's a church. We have three.... There's one of our schools; it has 143 students." But, he didn't really offer much more than that, nothing deep into the history of the island's religion, nothing about why the stone walls were built (or different from the ones on the mainland, which from my viewing seem to be different in that they are made of less square stones), nothing about the history of the island. He just stated the obvious, and stopped at the main points. Worse yet, for our two-hour tour of Dun Aengus, not only didn't he come (and therefore he gave us no history of the fort whatsoever beyond the blurb on his pamphlet), but we had to pay to get in. Granted it was only €4, but I saw another group (again, same price!) go in after their guide bought all their tickets. And, I remembered reading online that most of the tours were all-inclusive. I guess his wasn't.
We finally returned to town after making a few more stops and were dropped off to walk around town for an hour. We were asked to return to the ferry landing at 4:20 pm, although we didn't actually board until 5:00 pm.
Bottom line: This guy isn't rolling in the dough from these tours, but for a local who has lived on the island for seven generations, he really needs to beef up his lecture to make this tour worthwhile. I think he has such high reviews because he is a very nice guy and people are afraid of being mean to nice people. But, there has to be some benefit over just doing the tour yourself, and the tour I got really didn't give me one.
