Following our salt-water
swimming pool relax-a-thon in Finale, we decided to find a beach-side campsite
for the final stop-over before catching the boat back to the mainland – or
going to Italia as the Sicilianos say!
As we were paying at the
campsite I had my credit card refused – probably just a dirty magnetic band or
chip I thought… then it was refused at the supermarket in Finale where it had
worked the day before… A quick call to the bank confirmed that it had been
blocked, as there were a number of attempted purchases from Sears and Roebuck
in the States… No idea what links there might be between Sicily and organised
crime in the USA…
So, fingers crossed the
cards we are left with are not compromised!
We’d heard good things about
Camping Marinello in Oliveri from other travellers and decided to give it a go.
As it happened, it was just along the coast from a spectacular cliff-top sanctuary
at Tyndaris – another church built on an ancient Greek settlement that we
thought we might have a go at, via the steep ascent from the campsite before we
left.
Marinello turned out to be a real gem, with a
large and clean public access beach with just a couple of private bits away in
the distance.
The campsite was busy when
we arrived, with a large group of friendly French camping-caristes from their
national federation and a smattering of campers from a variety of countries –
including my first sighting of a camper on Maltese plates. We managed to get a
nice shady spot near the sea in a little row with campers from France, Austria,
Switzerland and the Czech Republic – and I added the Czech ‘ahoy!’ to my
smattering of international ways to say ‘hello!’
The bay that Oliveri is in
is adjacent to a natural park ‘Laghetti di Marinello’ and super pretty. It also
attracts a number of floating gin palaces that anchor up over the weekend,
making for a very swish vista from our beach-side viewpoint. This was taken
just before the other 50 boats turned up…
After much prevarication/
lazing about on the beach, we decided to make the ascent on Tyndaris ‘early’
one morning - that’s just before 11:00 for us… By then, the temperature was in
the low 30s – which we’ve been used to for a while – and we’d packed water…
After about 45 minutes of
airless, hot and sweaty almost vertical climbing (OK – a bit steep then) we
were treated to some incredible views of both the sanctuary and looking back
down to the lagoons.
Unfortunately, the remaining
500m looked like they might just be the cause of a medivac as we had run out of
water and the temperature was soaring and we were flagging…
So we headed back, looking
down on where our camper was parked and with the sound of the sanctuary bells
tolling ominously behind us.
Later, over one of those now
familiar chats I’ve grown used to with women from other countries over the mysteries
of the washing machine, I met a German woman from Marburg who had just come
back from doing the 8km ascent to Tyndaris on a mountain bike (by road) – time
for me to raise my game on fitness levels I think!
After another perfect
afternoon lazing on the beach, we decided to treat ourselves to a ‘last night
in Sicily’ meal at the nearby restaurant. Over a chilled carafe of local wine
we tucked into swordfish and watched the sky over the hills behind us turn a pastel
pink, as we sat looking out over the bay – perfect!
We decided to take the
motorway for the last leg to the port at Messina, especially as they had been
largely free on the rest of our trip around the island. This leg cost us the
princely sum of just over 3 Euros – so our total motorway bill for Sicily came
in at about 5 Euro – genius! It looks as if most of the southern part of Italy
has free motorways – something we almost missed by not paying enough attention
to the map legend!
Getting the boat back was a
doddle – we just turned up at the port and literally drove onto a ferry that
was about to depart.
So, thanks Sicilia, it’s
been an amazing month and there is still so much that we didn’t see – the best
way to leave somewhere I think!
S.
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