The starting photo is of an excellent tour that we took around Etna.
When we landed on our feet in a spacious apartment in via Antonino di Sangiuliano, Catania, we enjoyed our first day using our very own kitchen after finding the wonderful produce markets. We bought huge amounts of fresh fruits, including the delicious small Sicily pears that I tried for the first time, and salad vegetables, including old-fashioned tasty tomatoes. Carol had been disappointed in both Ireland and mainland Italy that there weren't obvious produce markets and when we did locate fruit and veg in shops and supermarkets the produce was not grown locally. In Catania she was happy! Now that I am settled in Malta, I am still enjoying the small Sicily pears that are shipped across regularly on the 2 hour sea trip.
We also equipped ourselves with a street map and undertook our first exploratory circuit of the main piazzas, picking up tourist brochures along the way. Back at the apartment, we stretched out on the two huge sofas and planned our itinerary. The main item on my agenda was to visit Mt Etna. Most of the brochures were as unhelpful as we had found the tourist information offices, but there was one that was clearly laid out and informed us precisely on what to expect from the tour. We chose the Etna Experience tour which didn't offer a trip to the mountain with optional cable car to the top at enormous additional expense. What it did offer was an informative tour of the Bove valley, the craters and lava flow and the Alcantara Canyons. We returned to the most helpful of the tourist offices and booked, making an arrangement to be picked up on one corner of the main square in the morning.
Whilst we were in Catania, there was a strike by garbage collectors and council employees who were fed-up that they hadn't been paid properly over the past year as the local council authority sank into debt. The council workers appeared to be well-organised and we saw them often in the main square, Piazza della Repubblica, having meetings and making dramatic statements like dumping a whole skip of garbage on the steps of the Council offices or hanging a For Sale sign on the statue of Catania's emblem, a pigmy elephant with an Egyptian needle on it's back. Like you, we also wondered about the origins of that emblem, but were unable to find out anything whilst we were there.
On the morning of the tour, we arrived in the main square to find that it had been closed off by the strike. We were thrown into confusion about where to wait and for a while we dithered with Carol hanging out on one corner whilst I commandeered the corner where all traffic seemed to be diverted. After the appointed hour had passed with nothing happening but the drama of the square, we decided to make one last desperate run on the tourist office. Suddenly, the women behind the desk had become very helpful and phoned the tour company to see what was happening. They were waiting for us a few streets away and sent someone to the office to walk us through the crush of diverted traffic to the 4WD jeep.
The tour was full, mostly with young travellers from all parts of the globe. Predominantly European couples with one or two Canadians. One young woman, now working in Brussels, spoke several languages and asked excellent questions of the driver/guide who was also very knowledgeable and skillful. How he managed to do a U-turn in that crowded, narrow street with that clumsy, large jeep is still a wonder for me. We soon left Catania behind and were out into the countryside heading towards the Bove Valley with the guide giving an excellent commentary and answering all kinds of complex questions about the social and cultural history of the area. For the first time, I got a glimpse of the unique position that Sicily holds in relation to Italy and the Mediterranean. The language is different from mainland Italy - not just a dialect, but a separate language that the guide informed us was in danger of dying out because it was no longer used in schools. He also talked about the resentment that people in Sicily felt about being the poor relation of mainland Italy. But when I enquired about any form of resistance movement, the answer was in terms of the locals needing all their resources to struggle against the volcano rather than the mainland.
The other interesting story that I started to hear pieces about from our guide was the cult of St Agatha. St Agatha's name had come up elsewhere in Italy and I have discovered there are also several links in Malta. Her horrible martyrdom was what first raised my interest and I've written about this in an earlier post related to the Knights of Malta. But Catania is St Agatha's home town and there are several churches and chapels dedicated to her with stories of how the saint was called upon by local villagers to stop ferocious lava flows from destroying their lives. Around Etna the villagers associated with particular St Agatha churches would process carrying the veil of St Agatha to oppose the flow which was miraculously halted. In particular, in 1444 and 1886 the lava flows were halted as they almost reached the first houses of Nicolosi and documentation of the natural facts by local historians at the time formed a foundation for the miraculous stories that were sparked in the hearts and minds of the faithful.
In addition to the miraculous St Agatha as protection from the volcano, people around Mt Etna have also developed a particular philosophy according to our guide. He argues that because people live continuously with the threat of the volcano looming over their future - "We may have no future" - people live for today and seek to enjoy the present to the full. A powerful example of the way in which the environment shapes the way we think and live our lives.
After driving up through the valley and picking out increasing evidence of the lava flows, we changed into 4WD and moved onto more rugged back roads up through chestnut forest which is the second stage of regeneration after a lava flow. We also did some trekking to investigate more closely how lava streams impacted on the environment. The jeep was often driving on the lava bed itself so it was no surprise when we blew a tyre as we crossed a lava stream in the forest. We all piled out so that our miraculous driver/guide could shift the vehicle to a more stable spot to start demonstrating his additional skills as mechanic. As we waited, some wandered off into the forest to look for mushrooms (they returned with fungus that our guide advised was highly poisonous), whilst others took photos or chatted. Carol took the opportunity to start identifying the botanical species in situ using a book salvaged from the jeep.
The blown tyre meant that we arrived a little late at our lunch spot which was a chalet high on a hillside with an interesting video about a recent eruption. Our guide seemed to make a point of going round to each of us to talk about the implications of the blown tyre. He expressed his relief when I told him that it had been an opportunity for Carol to sit and nurture her love of all things botanical. He explained that sometimes tourists became difficult and pointed out that a blown tyre was not in the brochure! Now was the opportunity for our driver/guide/mechanic to demonstrate his additional skills as chef and lunch host as he left us to prepare and lay-out our lunch on a nearby picnic table. When we were called over, we found a superb array of local cold dishes, cheeses, meats, breads and wine. Lunch was a great occasion that perhaps gave a little glimpse into the reality of Catanian philosophy about living in the moment!
After lunch, we had one more stop at the Alcantara Canyons. We climbed down lots of steps to the bottom of the canyon where an icy cold stream runs and the more adventurous youngsters took their shoes off and waded in. There were several canyoning parties just coming out of the canyon with their wetsuits and canyoning gear. The canyon is an excellent example of how ancient lava flows invaded the Alcantara river and the spectacular columnar basalt cliffs were formed.
Prior to our trip to Etna, we had tried to find out about the Virtu ferry crossing to Malta from the South of Sicily. We had been directed to the port area where the booking office was and discovered it was closed in the middle of the day like most Mediterranean businesses. I had then lead Carol on a somewhat disastrous exploratory circuit of Porto Vecchio and we got hopelessly trapped inside the port and couldn't find a way out to get back into the centre of Catania. Huge lorries thundered past with drivers making suggestive gestures out of the cabs and we ended up in a carpark on the way to the airport with a long walk back to town. So we were grateful when our miracle-working guide said that he would drop us at the port when we got back into Catania. We were then able to easily find the now open ferry office and make a booking from Pozzallo for Sunday which was in two days time. That just left us to make a decision about getting to Pozzallo in time for the morning ferry and I'll write about that in the next post.
But before leaving Catania, I want to mention two more things that we stumbled on whilst we were there. One was the Teatro Massimo Bellini where we went on a guided tour of this impressive baroque theatre and found out about the opera season that I think starts in November. The other was L'Opera dei Pupi which was a delightful family puppet theatre held in an upstairs room just off the main square. All the puppeteers were members of one family and the tradition was handed on over three generations. The show was in Italian but there was plenty of action with knights and ladies and saracens and jesters so we were able to follow some of the story. The knights fought each other with swords and cut off each others heads and arms. The ladies drove the knights to their heroic deeds by being impossibly beautiful and spurning their affection. I divided my attention between the delightful string puppets and their puppeteers above whose faces and bodies acted the role they were playing with great passion and tension. At one point, the jester was horribly trapped under the headless corpse of a saracen and was struggling to free himself. I was sitting in a corner on the front row and suddenly the jester called on me in English to help him which of course I had to do much to the delight of Carol and everyone else in the audience!
We enjoyed the theatre tour on our last morning in Catania before taking the bus down to overnight in Modica before catching the Malta ferry and I'll tell that story briefly in my next post.
No comments:
Post a Comment