Sicilian Hospitality

We arrived in Palermo early and promptly fed ourselves (fresh bread, ricotta and honey) before finding our way to the Catacombs (interesting wandering through halls of cadavers in various stages of decay while exhausted after an almost sleepless overnight boat journey!). We then headed west thinking we would trace the coast of Sicily anti-clockwise.

First impressions of Sicily… some of them lasting sadly = Europe’s Africa. Rubbish in huge piles on street corners (people go to the effort of taking their trash to the bin but the bin never gets emptied). Driving… children in bumper-car rides at the show could do a better job – lack of road rules maybe? Beautiful landscapes and beaches were overdeveloped and packed but 2 minutes down the road we could find a perfect place to ourselves.

Things improved greatly when we reached Balastrate and tried our first aranchini ball and a ‘gelati-in-a-bread-roll’ – followed by a shady eucalyptus tree campsite (we all know how much we love these!).

Sicily is thick with history (and the buildings left over) and we got to explore a few buildings… ignored a lot of them but more often than not they were in some stunning spots… normally on top of the biggest hill around. 

Erice is a medieval town on the top of a massive hill. Rather than ride up (lazy sods) we put our bikes in the cable car and explored while the weather/storms/cloud closed in around us.

Selinunte was impressive… the parts that had been rebuilt anyway!

The western coast was still rather uneventful and full of tourists so when we finally reached Sciacca we decided to head inland.

Great decision! Despite some navigation errors, soaring temperatures of over 40deg and the 1000m altitude climb this basically eliminated all other tourists and gave us great country-side to enjoy. 

Caltabellotta was incredible and we had the perfect day for the vistas. Access to the castle at the very top may have had a close gate but they didn’t fence it off enough to keep foreigners out.

We were buying lunch in the Marianopoli supermarket (way off the tourist trail) and were approached by Francesca (speaking English) who after being so surprised to find a couple of strangers in town, invited us to her home for lunch instead. Gabriel and Laura (Francesca’s parents) treated us to lunch and a shower – true Italian/Sicilian hospitality! We even were encouraged to make our own cannoli (waffle cone-type scroll filled with sugared ricotta and sometimes chocolate). This was followed by a tour of their wheat farm which was mid-harvest. A highlight especially for Tim who could not believe the hydraulic-controlled suspension on the harvester keeping it flat on steep ground – he has only ever seen the flat plains of NSW being harvested therefore no need for the function.

We ran into the occasional English-speaker in lots of small towns and even met a girl who had lived in Melbourne for a while… All of these people were much more useful and informative than all the tourist info offices we found. They pointed us in the direction of Ragusa, Modica and Scicli which all had great architecture (Baroque-style) and lots of stairs!

We’ve managed to find some Italian ‘street food’ which is full of flavour (lots of tomato pasta, eggplant and lemon chicken) although not as common as we could find in Spain. Thankfully Sicily seems to serve ‘rough’ red wine – which is exactly how we like it.

We have discovered a strange rule Italy-wide that we must wear a swimming cap when swimming in a pool (Emily finds this easy yet not justified hygiene-wise. Tim claims to have more hair on his legs than head!) and no shirts allowed – this is obviously something normal for a pair of fair-skinned Australians… but no clothes is also a rule!

We are not sure on the rule for free camping but we have not had any problems yet apart from being woken one morning by a pack of eight sheep-dog puppies. Very cute and unexpected. Yet not helpful in assisting to pack up the tent.

Natural park attractions have drawn us away from the coast as well. Cava Grande is a best shown by the pictures. We spent the entire day there. Flume Alcantara was beautiful for its basalt rocks and the gorge. Mount Etna was a very different landscape and although it is a UNESCO listed national park there is nothing indicating you can’t just walk around by yourself – so we did. We had a great day admiring the views and even playing in the scree slopes.

We now take our last car ferry to arrive back on mainland Europe…the toe of Italy’s boot.

Sardinia

Italy at long last…the purpose of the trip started as a holiday to Italy…Tim got hold of the idea and twisted it into the rest of Europe on bicycles. Anyway Sardinia = Sardegna (Italian) where the region’s flag is 4 blindfolded black faces… being from the most politically correct part of Australia we weren’t sure what to make of this. Read on Wikipedia = 4 Moors flag.

The density of population is confined to large towns leaving lots of open beautiful country-side and beaches to ourselves…another month and we would be sharing it with most of Germany and other tourists. Perfect timing!

We gave ourselves a week to cycle down the eastern coast - approx. 400km = easy… but we didn’t factor in how stunning the scenery was and how ‘distracted’ we became… it quickly became 2 weeks!

Bear rock!

ROCKS = granite and limestone - WOW…. Rock formations everywhere. Impressive cliff faces and each headland meant a hill to ride up before going down to the next beach. More often than not on each headland was a tower… we skipped a few but looking at our photos each look much the same and we are certainly “towered out”. Our favourite tower allowed us to climb up inside for a much more impressive view.

We never adopted the Spanish siesta lifestyle but we certainly have fallen into the Mediterranean way. We ride until late lunch when it is too hot to continue, find a tree or shady spot and eat/read/sleep until 5pm-ish and then ride on until a campsite.

The first real stop was Cala Gonone about half way down the east coast. Here we hired kayaks for 2 nights. Paddling into small caves in the massive limestone cliffs and camping on secluded beaches - certainly a highlight and long lasting memory.

Tim loves rocks… hence we found ourselves cycling along a beautiful road (sea level to 1000m) before spending a day exploring the Gorropu Canyon. Photos say more than words.

Tim decided for his birthday that he could still be young and stupid by climbing up a mountain top of sheer granite cliffs for sunrise… STUNNING! But getting down was much much harder… ropes would have been handy. Meanwhile Emily found herself under attack in the tent alone… a herd of donkeys showing far too much interest.

Eucalyptus trees are everywhere across the world… Sardinia made us feel right at home with lots of cloud free nights and the smell of gum leaves. We also felt at home the night we woke to a raging bushfire… fortunately downwind from us and already attended by the authorities.

Food = Dark cooking chocolate… remind us to try back in Australia… bought initially by accident but delicious and 1 piece is all we needed… never mind 1 piece = half a normal block! Gelati = best flavour has been ricotta and vincotto (caramelised jam). Pizza = most pizzerias don’t open until 7pm… we need to adjust our eating/riding pattern to eat more of this = plenty more to come we hope! Local honey and myrtle berry liqueur (Mirto) sound great but taste like medicine without the flavourings… yuk!

Sardinia’s capital, Cagliari was another bloody city so we rode through and headed west. Looking for a campsite we however found ourselves in a tourist site for a castle. The guy running the place was great! “I am closing now but do you want to camp here and then you can go up in your own time for sunset?” (shortened translation of real conversation using our hands) He also sold beer. We were sold!

Rocks… with so many rocks about we also found ourselves in a few caves = Grottos. The first was a stunning mirror cavern gouged out by sea as much as the underground river. The second could have been filled with snow! Eccentric aragonite forms a special type of Stalactite that grows in the most amazing formations.

We have just arrived in Sicily and are spoiling ourselves with Gelati (served in a sweet bread roll rather than cone!) to use wifi.