The blue and green journey

I can never thank my past self enough for having stuck to the plan.
I had messed up. After having already bought the tickets to Kerry Airport, in Ireland, and paid for a room in a pretty island called Portmagee, I found out it took two buses and a taxi to get there, as neither my friend nor I had the money to rent a car.
Thank God we wore broke. The entire bus trip we looked mesmerised out the window. Trees, mountains, rivers, sky - it was all a splendid mix of blue and green. Bookworms like myself tend to keep in a mind box the best images created while reading landscape descriptions. We hope to physically find them one day, but how can nature compete to the vastness of imagination?
Well, it can. County Kerry looked like a living ghost of readings past.
The taxi picked us up in a gas station. Bill was a retired truck driver who turned his van into some sort of community taxi just to keep moving. The man went ballistic when told we were from Brazil. All his passengers were enthusiastically informed of our nationality too. They spoke Irish Gaelic, but he reminded them from time to time to speak English in our behalf.
He was so excited he decided to drive around a little longer, so we could take a better look at the place and listen to what he thought should be shared. At some point, a very humble man in his nineties stepped in. He told us he used to be an Olympic athlete. He had even been to Brazil once. There was a lot he could still remember from his golden years.
All the way to Portmagee our ears were dazzled by extraordinary stories while our eyes were still astonished by the raw beauty of the Irish countryside. The view from inside the car was idyllic. Industrial progress seemed like a terrible nightmare we had just woken from that morning.
Every time we passed another car or a pedestrian, the drivers would honk and the people would wave. We would later find out that was just out of cordiality and they didn’t even know each other. I felt like a Disney character about to sing and dance for a musical number.
Bill informed us Portmagee had less than four hundred inhabitants and its main street, by the quayside, could be entirely walked in three minutes.
He dropped us off. It was mid-September. With Summer finally giving in to Autumn, the weather could not be better. The tiny island smelled strongly of salt and fish.
Never before had I so truly assimilated what they say about how we should cherish our journey, no matter how great the destination. I do now.