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).

Vendicari Nature Reserve

Calamosche

Old fish processing plant.

These are everywhere.

Old church with domed roof, from Byzantine settlement.

Great beach in the Vendicari Nature Reserve.

Monti Di Palazzo Adriano

There is a whole other Sicily that a lot of visitors don’t see.  It is off the monumental, archaeological route and is not near the cities, the coast or the beaches.  It is the interior of Sicily, where hilltop towns are reached by long, bendy roads.  The interior is incredibly beautiful and wonderfully green at this time of year, well before the sun bakes it to a crisp brown.

Once you depart the coastal area, you leave the orange groves behind.  While gaining elevation, the olive groves and grape vines give way to cereal crops and grazing land for cattle, sheep and goats.  I have been intent on getting into this landscape, and today was the day, as we were greeted with blue sky and sunshine this morning.

Sunday is a great day for a drive as the roads are quiet.  The sensible Sicilians must have been heading out for Sunday lunch or a family get together in town.  And that was a good thing for us, as it gave us some time to get used to the bends and the hairpin turns.

It was only about 70 km to the beginning of our hike but it took some time to get there.  Then we had to find our way out of Palazzo Adriano, we ended up in the main piazza and then proceeded down a very narrow street that dead-ended.  John had to do some serious car manoeuvring to get us backed around a corner and turned around so we could get out.  The town of Palazzo Adriano was the setting for the movie 'Cinema Paradiso,' the piazza is really pretty and it was full of Sicilians near midday.

We got out of town and headed up the road, suddenly, a wayward black chicken came blasting out of the side of the road and crossed in front of the car.  John and I just howled with laughter, it was totally bizarre. Why did the chicken cross the road!?  I am certain that it was the chicken goddess Artemis.  We found the car park and started our hike.  Luckily, John put the hiking way points on our handheld GPS, otherwise we would never have found the trail.  The cattle chopped it up and it was very faint.  Since it has rained a lot, the trail was a muddy mess but we gained quite a bit of elevation right away.  Then things calmed down and we made our way down the mountain which was troubling, as we figured we would have to go back up again.

Then we had one of those travel moments that you have sometimes.  Way down the mountain a shepard was driving his flock.  Since sound travels so well up the mountain, we could hear with incredible clarity.  He was using different calls, the bells on the sheep were tinkling and we stopped and stood and watched.  I was thinking, this is why we travel, to witness these simple things which have this serenity about them, a shepard calling and moving his flock.  I thought that he must be calling to a dog to move the sheep.

After a while, we carried on and ended up meeting him and the flock on the track we were following.  We greeted him and were signaling with our normal gesture method of communication, if we should go around through the trees, he motioned that we should go right through the sheep.  I thought, oh brother, we are going to mess up his day, sheep are going to freak and scatter all over the place.  We walked through, some sheep ran ahead and some stayed behind, some went for the trees.  Then, he made a call and the sheep totally, and I mean totally, responded to his call, they stopped, turned and went to him.  The sheep down the road turned around and ran back past us to re-join the flock, it was extraordinary.  There was no dog, he did it all with his voice.  There is skill in everything that people do to make a living in this world.

Shortly after, we had to climb back up the bloody mountain.  It was relentlessly steep, straight up through the trees.  If we had not climbed the billion stairs in Amalfi we would have been doomed.  After slogging for what seemed like forever, we gained the ridge and walked and walked back to the car.  The hike took us 3.5 hours.  We ate a bit of lunch in the car and then took off as dark clouds were gathering and we wanted to get back to Sciacca prior to dark.

Tomorrow is a travel day, we move to southeastern Sicily, to the baroque town of Modica.

As usual, click on the pics to enlarge

Prizzi, I think!

Yeah, we leave Saskatchewan in winter and have to find snow in Sicily.

Piazza in Palazzo Adriano

Palazzo Adriano

San Vito Lo Capo

Yesterday, we really wanted to hike in the Zingaro Nature Reserve on the west coast. In 1980, the authorities wanted to build a coastal road through this piece of land, but the citizens protested and Sicily’s first nature reserve was established. It is said to be a beautiful area with subtropical plants and gorgeous little bays all backed by limestone mountains. The weather looked rather dicey but we took off anyway. When we arrived at Zingaro the wind was howling and it was pouring rain, it was really coming down, like west coast of BC rain. We waited a while, then had to give up as it looked socked-in. We drove to San Vito Lo Capo, which juts out into the sea. There was a little sun there and the sea was heavy due to the wind, so we took a few pics. Sicily has gorgeous beaches all over the place, the sand is really fine and sticks like glue. Our hiking intentions were a bust, so we drove a loop and headed back to Sciacca. However, there was cause for celebration today as we found latte fresco and panna fresca. That is, fresh milk and cream, which is needed for our tea. I don’t know if there is a lack of dairy cows in western Sicily or what, but the milk is a high temperature treated concoction that is stored at room temperature as it likely has an indefinite shelf life. The milk isn't great so we stopped at a large supermarket and found some fresh dairy.

Some critters on the road.

The hilltop town of Erice is up there.

Beach Walk

Our blog dates are out of whack.  Akragas was yesterday and the beach was today.  The weather was a bit dodgy today so when it cleared off we headed to the beach.  Our first attempt was a fail as the road was a mud hole so we had to abandon that one.  The next destination was 5 km closer to Sciacca and we found the right place to park.  These are the Italian equivalent of parks but there is still some development, a few beach bars/restaurants and a few places for lodging.  Everything is deserted in winter except for a few dogs barking and I think one bar is open.  Italian bars are cafes, they serve coffee and drinks.

It was pretty windy and the sky looked a bit ominous as we headed down the beach.  We got as far as Capo Bianco, the white cliffs in the pic, then we had to turn around as the tide was in and the waves made the beach in front of the cliffs impassable.

And that concludes this exciting blog post, hey, I did not blog about temples in this one.

Akragas

Yeah, I know, temples and more temples.  This is the last of the great archaeological parks, we had to go today as the weather was sunny and Greek temples are on the top of our priority list.  We never tire of looking at Greek temples as they are magnificent, but it is difficult to convey their size and the precision of their design through photographs.

Akragas was the Greek name, Agrigentum the Roman, the town was then known as Girgenti, which was an Arabic corruption of the Roman name.  In 1927, Mussolini ordered that the town be re-named Agrigento.

Akragas was founded in 580 BC by colonists from Gela, which had been settled in 688 BC by Rhodians and Cretans.  In 406 BC, the Carthaginians captured the city after a siege lasting eight months.  The city was burnt, and as usual, the people sold as slaves.  The Carthaginians were defeated in 340 BC by a tyrant ruler and the city was rebuilt.  It then fell to the Romans.

The Temple of Hera - 450 BC

The temple is incorrectly identified due to an incorrect interpretation of a Latin text regarding the temple.  The Romans restored the temple but it was completely destroyed above the lower column drums by an earthquake.  Reconstruction began in the 18th century.  It is made of local stone which would have been stuccoed over and painted.

The Temple of Concord -  430 BC

It was named Concord after an inscription in Latin was found nearby, the name has nothing to do with the temple. It is well preserved because it was converted into a church.  They hacked arches into the cella walls, a horrendous thing to do, but at least it resulted in the preservation of the temple.  In the 18th century the temple was restored.  The Sicilian sunshine has burnt the sandstone into a rich golden hue.

Heavy entablature but a very graceful temple.

The arches look completely foreign, they ruin the harmony.

Temple of Herakles - 490 - 480 BC

This is the first temple in Sicily where they used angle contraction to solve the Doric conflict.  The columns were re-erected in the 1920's.  Verres, a Roman governor of Sicily, had a habit of stealing valuable Sicilian art objects for himself.  He sent a group of soldiers at dawn to steal the cult statue of Herakles from the temple.  The citizens of Akragas got word of the plan, they were so enraged, they overpowered the soldiers and prevented the robbery of the cult statue.

Temple of Olympian Zeus - 5th Century BC

This was once a grand and unusual Greek temple.  The largest Doric Greek Temple ever built, it measured 60 x 340 feet and soared 120 feet above the foundation.  There was no peristyle (freestanding columns), rather, Doric half columns with an exterior circumference of 20 feet were attached to the exterior walls.  This is where it really gets interesting, between the columns, gigantic male figures called telamones, at 25 feet high, seemed to support the roof and were part of the walls.

The pediments were huge, the east pediment had a sculptured battle of gods and giants, while the west pediment demonstrated the fall of Troy.

Today, there is a lot of collapsed stone lying around.  The stone was pillaged in the 18th century to build a dock at a nearby port.  Pillaging of ancient ruins was not unusual, many popes oversaw the removal of marble from ancient buildings in Rome to build their churches.

A reconstructed telamone in the archaeological museum. Yes it is 25 feet tall, standing in a two story part of the museum

Model of the Temple of Olympian Zeus.  Notice how tiny the telemones look, this temple was very tall.

Critter getting some sun Temple of Herakles

Vase is red clay, black is painted.

Lion head water-spout from one of the temples.

The museum was deserted, it is loaded with artifacts, cases and cases and cases.

I think everybody is mistaken, the gods and goddesses were actually chickens.

Wonderful, terracotta head of Persephone.