Plank Road: Vendicari Nature Reserve

Our drive from Sciacca to Modica yesterday was interesting, in an outlandish Sicilian driving habit, sort of way. We laugh and laugh at the driving antics. Sicilians don’t seem to want to veer off their driving path, so when they overtake our car, they miss our side mirror by mere inches while flying by at high speed. Patience is non-existent, cars pass everywhere and the oncoming cars just have to get over. Driving in town is even more bizarre, I don’t know why turn signals are even installed on cars as they are never used. Road rules are not really adhered to, cars just converge and muddle through, somehow it works. Then some rouge driver will just cut right in front out of nowhere logical, and just carry on, anybody running a brake shop will do a brisk business here.

Cars stop everywhere in town and everybody just seems to manoeuver by. So, when we got to Modica, we just stopped right on the street, next to parked cars and waited for a guy to come on his little moped unit so we could follow him to our apartment. We just sat there for about 15 minutes and it was no issue at all because cars could just go around us, which is totally normal.

Then there will be some stylish woman in big sunglasses driving a BMW, who owns the road, no doubt. If you are not driving through town at break-neck speed, she lays on the horn, and then motors on by, we shriek and shake our heads, it is so hysterical it is unbelievable.

We are in a total state of navigation confusion over here in eastern Sicily. There are about a thousand roads leading into Modica, our apartment is up some narrow lanes which people do drive cars on but we don’t. Our GPS is bamboozled by the Sicilian roads, it will tell us to turn down some donkey trail, so we have to ignore it and watch for signs at the roundabouts and know which major town we should be heading for.

Driving in western Sicily is much easier as it seems less populated, the highways are bigger and they bypass the cites for the most part. Over here we drive right through every town and have to watch for signs all the time.

There are crates of oranges for sale along the highway near Sciacca, then suddenly the landscape is one mass of greenhouses, low ones with the plants growing on the ground. There are also fields of artichokes, some are being harvested right now. Which brings me to the food in Sicily, which is really good and cheap. I am talking about groceries, as we never eat out, which is insane I suppose, but whatever.

The Sicilians must be sugar addicts judging by the sweets that we see everywhere. They are also not a part of the anti-fat brigade, thankfully. We get serious high fat in the meat we buy at the butcher shops and the deli meat, well, oh my, it is fantastic. The butchers make the best sausage, they are not afraid to lay on the spice, which is great, we buy sausage in every place we stay and the best so far is here in Modica at the butcher shop we dropped into last night. Fat is our fuel for all the walking and climbing we do so it is food bliss for us. We also get the vegetables we love the most, which must be in season. We get cauliflower, zucchini, fennel, peppers, broccoli and mushrooms. Vegetables are really cheap and really good. They are sold all over the place, off the back of trucks, from vegetable stands on the street, in vegetable shops and in grocery stores. We spend a lot of time food shopping as we have to shop every second day, which we are not accustomed to.

After sitting in the car yesterday, we really wanted a good walk, so we set out for the Vendicari Nature Reserve. It is a really important Mediterranean bird migration route, the ponds dry out in summer but fill again in winter, which is right now. We walked for four hours and covered about 15km and saw nobody except for two people at the beginning and two at the end.

Fish had been processed in the area for thousands of years. The Romans made some fermented fish gut concoction called garum, which flavoured many Roman dishes. A tuna canning facility operated here until the 1940's.

We got to an old Byzantine settlement just before a rain came through. Luckily the old dome roof of the church was still intact so we waited out the downpour. We wanted to get back to Modica before dark as we need to read the billion road signs necessary to navigate so we took off around 4:00 p.m. and were glad to get back to our well stocked apartment. We normally like to rent from locals, but made an exception as we like the location of this apartment. This place is owned by two Canadians and they have the best outfitted kitchen ever, so we are enjoying real knives and great cookware. In our last apartment we were sawing through everything with a miniature steak knife with a plastic handle, I wouldn't even call it a knife. Normally we bring our own knife but since we did not check any luggage, our knife could not make the trip.

On the drive yesterday we stopped at Cala dei Turchi (Turk's Staircase).