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(CNN) - Great Blasket, on the Atlantic periphery of Europe, is looking for a partner to become the full-time summer caretakers and unique residents of this unoccupied island off the west coast of Ireland.
As long as you are not a fan of electricity or hot water, you will embrace the majestic 4.5 square kilometers of an emerald island as your domain.
In addition to the sublime views, the generous rain maintains the lush landscape and the strong Atlantic breezes feed the wind turbine that generates enough electricity to charge your cell phone.
** Job Vacancy **
A unique position required - looking for long term management of Island Accommodation and Coffee Shop. Couple or two friends.
1st April 2020 - October 2020 accommodation and food provided.
Email Alice on info@greatblasketisland.net for more information pic.twitter.com/RJFfrr4QDH
- Great Blasket Island (@gbisland) January 10, 2020
The roles, suitable for a couple or two friends, involve the administration of the island's cafeteria and three vacation homes from April to October of this year. Accommodation and food are provided and wages are discussed in the application.
Candidates must be aware that they will face stiff competition.
"We had about 7,000 applications," Alice Hayes told CNN Travel on January 16, having published the job vacancy online just six days earlier.
Hayes and his partner, Billy O'Connor, live on the nearby Dingle Peninsula and O'Connor takes regular boat trips to the island in summer.
Together, the couple renewed the island huts, one of which was home to the legendary narrator Peig Sayers, whose autobiography in Irish "Peig", published in 1936, has been a standard text for generations of Irish students.
Sayers had "a very hard and difficult life on the island," says Hayes, and his famous gloomy book documented "the difficulties he went through."
The caretakers of the island in 2019 were Lesley Kehoe and Gordon Bond. Like Sayers, they shared their experiences of Great Blasket with the world, although their Instagram and Twitter accounts presented a more optimistic view of Atlantic life.
Ye can keep ye're #LoveIsland, we're sorted # OileánGrá 😋 #GreatBlasketIsland pic.twitter.com/EuPd0ffTA0
- Lesley (@island_lesley) January 12, 2020
However, Kehoe tells CNN Travel, aspiring caregivers should take note: "What you see on social media is not what it is about."
While she was posting "photos of campfires, fields and sunsets," what you didn't see is Kehoe "running around the cabins making beds" or "rows coming out of the cafeteria."
"You can easily forget that you receive up to 400 visitors per day," he adds. "You can be incredibly busy."
As for the life outside the network, Kehoe says that while you can use your cabin teapot to boil water for showers, after a few days he armed himself with courage and got used to showering with cold water.
Start your morning like that, she says, and "at least you know it's the coldest you'll be that day."
Water is fed by an island spring and pure water and fresh air have their benefits. "My skin, my hair, my overall health was incredible," says Kehoe.
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There is no electricity or Wi-Fi on the island, but, surprisingly, mobile Internet reception is excellent, thanks to a mast a few kilometers away on the mainland.
Of those 7,000 requests, and counting, that Hayes and O'Connor are analyzing, there will undoubtedly be a lot of people with a romantic vision of what the job entails.
However, Kehoe says that those who know they are the couple for the task will have the "instinct" that they are an islander on hold.
She says she and Bond couldn't return this year "for practical reasons," but "if we could do it again, we would."
The experience has not only been powerful for her and her partner, but they have also become friends for life with Hayes and O'Connor. She and Bond are now back in Kildare, near Dublin, but plan to repeat many visits.
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While there are those who criticize the "commercialization" of Great Blasket and its neighboring Blasket Islands, Kehoe believes that the global attention the island is receiving is ultimately beneficial.
“I think that the work that Billy and Alice do to keep the island alive is much more important than leaving it out there fossilizing. If that industry were not there, it would be only ruins. ”
For more information on Great Blasket Boat Tours, island accommodation and trips to Blasket Island, visit greatblasketisland.net.