Two taxis, a bus, a plane, two trains, a ferry and a car after leaving our flat in London, we finally arrived on the island of Salina – 17 hours later.
Our trip was not off to a good start! First, we missed our coach to the airport as we were standing at the wrong stop (yes Thad, I know you told me so!), but caught the next coach and got to the airport on time. I was sick on the plane, and then when we touched down we discovered that neither of our bank cards worked (cheers HSBC) and that our shipping company had forgotten to give us the ever important quarantine forms for our stuff to get into Australia. Joy!
Anyway, it’s all OK now. Thad and I caught up on sleep, a luxurious 13hrs on the first night, our cards are fixed and we are now so relaxed we might stop breathing.
Our accommodation, La Casa Del Melograno, is awesome, an old building in the classic island style with tiled floors, airy rooms and a fantastic view of the other islands. The owner, Emanuele, is very nice. He even gave us wine. Mmm.
We spent each of our 3 days on a different island. On the first day we walked to Lingua, a smaller town on our island, to go swimming. The snorkelling wasn’t that great but it was so nice to finally swim in the ocean again and get out feeling all nice and salty. After sunbaking a bit, we went to the nearest restaurant and, being tightarses, shared one meal, called pane custanu (i think). We thought it was like pizza but turned out to be more like bruschetta, pile high with fresh cherry tomatoes, capers, basil leaves, grilled peppers and aubergines and mozzarella. It was amazing, and we barely finished half each. Hooray for being cheap!
The way of life in Salina seems so relaxed, a stark contrast to London’s chaos. Residents cruise around on mopeds or 3 wheeled mini trucks, stopping for chats or coffee whenever they feel. The food is fresh, the wine tasty, the air clean. I could so spend a summer here.
The next day we headed to nearby Lipari but unfortunately missed our first ferry so we ended up arriving at about 2 – smack bang in the middle of Italy’s 3 hour lunch break. With everything closed, we had no idea where to find our ideal snorkelling spot, but a man who worked on the ferries told us to go to a nearby beach. I jumped in and had a look around, it was a bit beachy to be great snorkelling, needed to go near the rocks for that, but I was shocked to see, about 2 metres from the shore, a huge octopus! I went and got Thad to come and have a look but the octopus wasn’t too keen on 2 curious snorkellers hovering above it and made a swifty wriggly escape across the ocean floor.
We started swimming across the beach, until Thad almost swam headlong into a jellyfish and, remembering that someone at our accomodation got stung the day before, decided we’d had enough snorkelling for now!
Yesterday we headed to Stromboli, the looming volcano that we can see from our balcony on a clear day, a pillar of smoke billowing from the top. We arrived at around 11 and although the calm blue waters and volcanic sand beaches looked very inviting, we decided to scale the volcano instead.
After cutting through a little village, we hit the old mule track which criss-crossed its way up the the side of the volcano through dense vegetation. As we walked along the path, little green and yellow geckos ran from their sunning spots and dived headlong into the surrounding cane. I insisted on yelling LIZARD at the top of my voice whenever we saw one, much to Thad’s dismay. The area was also aflurry with butterflies, which I balked at the sight of continuously, convinced each one was a weird, aggressive and deadly form of wasp.
We eventually hit the 290m mark, without too much trouble. The walk hadn’t been difficult, although we were hot and a wee bit peckish. Continuing up the path, the incline increased dramatically and our nice stone-laid path changed to loose rocks or deep volcanic ash. We soldiered on though, our only hesitation was when we stumbled across a beehive next to the path. But hey, we had gotten this far, no time to give up now.
We arrived at 400m, panting, hungry, thirsty, covered in dirt and slightly paranoid that an army of bees were not far behind, to find ourselves clinging to the side of a landslide of ash, making its way into the blue Mediterranean below. The volcanic crater towered above us, capped in cloudes that crackled and boomed as the cool air hit the steam emerging from the crater.
We sat, observed and caught our breath before deciding that we were absolutely starving and volcanoes are nice and all, but where’s the pizza?? The path we chose to take down proved to be a moor decision – it crossed about 5 valleys that we had to climb up and stumble down. We did however stumble across a graveyard from 900 AD, partially overgrown with rusted borders and cracked headstones that were doubling as sunning rocks for the resident lizards.
We finally got back to the main town at around 3 pm to find that, yes, you’re right, it was siesta time. So gotta get used to this closing in the middle of the day thing. We waited an excruciating hour for the pizzerias to open, only to discover that it was another 2 hours to wait, so we grabbed some from the bakery instead.
Even though it was fast approaching ferry time, we couldn’t resist going for a quick dip before bolting down the main street, barefoot and snorkels in hand, just in time to catch a ferry back to Salina for our last night.
