from Baglio Spano: the Sicilian way

[Monday post]

As I type the last words of yesterday’s post and watch the sun come up over the orange trees just outside the baglio, it strikes me that it is Sunday. In travel, time is measured by how many days are in front of you and how many have passed. Dates, days of the week are irrelevant. Until you realize that they are very relevant to everyone around you.

Sunday is not a work day here. Nothing that can be closed stays open. Internet points? Forget it.

We drive into Marsala just to make certain that someone somewhere hasn’t decided to rebel and open the door to the world of the Internet for the likes of me. And there we find the obvious. This is a day for pleasure, not for work. People, crowds of them, dressed with great care, are out for The Stroll, and maybe The Capucci’o (with pastry), nothing more. In groups, in pairs, in embrace, arms, hands linked in a physical demonstration of connectedness. It is jarring how different their world is from ours back home.



Sunday stroll, 1



Sunday stroll, 2



Sunday stroll, 3


We interrupt our own hiking plans to join this sea of humanity. We stroll, we eat pastries.



selection



choosing the right one



my choices


…And I ask with my best smile a hotel clerk downtown if I can, for a moment, use his computer for two minutes. Ocean is there, of course, but equally significantly, I cannot tear myself away from an email check. The world may implode and I can live without learning of it from the NYT or CNN, but email? That’s another matter. [In fairness to myself, I am anxious to hear from family members who are in the midst of a number of significant events back home.]

Thus, yet again, our hike is pushed to a later hour. It cannot be helped. La passagiata (the stroll), the café, and the drive through hill towns (you haven’t lived until you’ve driven a five foot six inch wide car – with a 900 Euro deductible for damage to it – through twisting five foot seven inch wide lanes), admiring the symmetry of grape vine fields – it all takes time.








As if awakening from a siesta break, we finally abandon the car and start looking for the trail for this day at (please don’t laugh) 4 in the afternoon.

After realizing that this island is not full of recorded paths nor marked trails, Ed has succumbed to studying the printed word. He has lost himself to books and texts, poring over pages and pages of tourist matter to find the ideal path for the day.

On this Sunday, we are to climb a mountain that stands across the ravine from the Segesto Temple – possibly the most beautifully positioned ancient architectural wonder of the entire Mediterranean basin The goal is to view the temple from this more remote, neighboring peak, towering more than a thousand feet above the ravine.

The path begins by the creek and crosses over the water repeatedly before beginning the ascent. In places it is overgrown with shrubs, reeds and grasses. Ed reads this as I survey the terrain.
Ed, there is no path. What year is that book from?
1998.
It was “overgrown” in 1998? Let me tell you, it is “gone” in 2006. And the water level is, shall we say, “different” as well.




overgrown, wet, rocky


But we are old and foolish and we think we can make it. The going is absolutely treacherous. Vertigo be damned, I can’t be bothered. I am climbing up a mudslide, while reeds, made wet from an afternoon shower, are marking up my bare legs and a short denim skirt is absolutely saturated with water.

Yes, you read it right. I am hiking in a short denim skirt. Why this most inappropriate attire? It’s like this: we go from hiking to eating. Everyone around me is dressed up. Women are wearing pointy shoes and jewels. I refuse to go to Sunday dinner in hiking jeans. So I compromise with a denim skirt, thinking, how hard can it be to hike in a denim skirt? Never again.

By the time we are half way up, we can catch glimpses of the Doric columns across the ravine.



first view: looking up


It is inspiring. It makes us continue, up through the forest, up, climbing now between squat palms and sage brush, legs scratched to the core – until, three fourths of the way up, the path completely disappears.



next view: eye level


And still we continue, cross country now, looking for any possible way to reach the top of the mountain. We read that there is a jeep track on the other side. The idea of descending through the ravine is absolutely horrifying and so we are determined to reach the summit, just find the track down. We are rewarded with this:



slightly higher


Ed tells me later that the climb was absolutely too risky and should be eliminated from public consumption. But the view, oh the view!



from the top, looking down


We return to Marsala for dinner at La Botega del Carmine – a simple trattoria, empty when we arrive at 9, packed by the time we leave at 11. The meal, Sicilian to the core (it’s sort of like taking Italian cooking and turning up the spices a notch), is fantastic: my pasta, with fish and eggplant is faultless. Next come huge prawns, steamed in their shells in a spicy broth. But it is always the antipasto tray that stands out. Mounds of variously spiced and grilled vegetables, calamari, salami, couscous in the center (a Sicilian bow to the continent across the sea) – it is a wonderful assortment of flavors.



antipasto


I eat and watch the families around me. Behind us, the mother takes into her lap her sleepy four year old daughter. She smiles at me. I am sure she can tell I am moving back in time to my own images of daughters in restaurants, in laps.

The two men that run the show at the Botega are determined to please us. At the close of dinner, they place bottles of grappa and herby liqueurs for us to sample. The room is charged with the music of Italian banter and laughter. A Sicilian Sunday. No work. Not today.