Farewell Peckham

So! - off to a new continent! – Pablo Bazzaco dropped us off at Cornuda train station – just down the road from Pederroba. Quite funny really, we sussed we needed platform 2 – on the other side of the tracks – and I was searching for the inevitable underpass or bridge, only to realise you just walk across the tracks! We looked both ways before crossing.

Then an enjoyable journey to Padova, an hour away. One thing struck me, well, two- EVERY, and I mean every, every house has a wood store (for their fire/BBQ) and every single spare bit of land is used for growing what we think is Maize – for polenta. After that we got the high speed train to Milan, then a bus to the airport. Note: was a bit odd when we left Italy, all the train tracks have been sprayed with something white – no idea, and the sky was really grey for the first time – it felt like getting a train in Zermatt.

Two flights later, after stopping in Athens, we landed in Cairo. One thing struck us as we flew over Cairo – how HUGE it is. You may laugh, but we both had stereotypical images of Cairo being like something out of an Indiana Jones movie – you know, dusty streets with bazaars and horse drawn carts. Such muppets! – it turns out they have a population of 20 million! Over twice that of London.

We met our rep, a nice guy called Mohamed , who I gave far too much money for our Visas in all he confusion at 3 in the morning, and we jumped in our taxi to the hotel. Not any ordinary hotel. We did a search on the web to check reviews – we’ve booked a package so it is all pre ordained anyhow. The reviews are the worst I have ever seen! – such quotes as “Even if you have paid in advance, cancel , lose your money, and go elsewhere – you will thank me!”

As it turns out, on initial inspection, it’s just fine for £40 a night, and they have the biggest pool in the world. We were immediately introduced to the world of “backsheesh” – i.e. tipping for anything and everything. The barman was more friendly than possible, then his friend drove us round the complex (at 4.30am) – opportunity for another backsheesh. I think we’ll get the hang of it.

Day 2: I got my hair cut today – another learning experience! – This time, after the usual “cut throat” trimming, he got a pair of closed scissors, wrapped cotton tightly round the tip and sprayed alcohol on the cotton. I thought he was going to de-wax my ears, but oh no, he, then set it on fire – and proceeded to burn off the hairs on my ears – Bloody hot it was! Very effective though. Then, he got a roll of cotton and formed a little “cradle” of thread in his hands, and used the cotton to pluck the hairs from inside and outside my ears – kind of like in a scissor motion. Very painful indeed but I have been assured my hairs won’t grow back for 2 months now. He even trimmed my nasal hairs.

I was offered a shave too but the cut throat makes me nervous so I declined, though feeling how baby soft my ears are now I think I’ll go for a full shave soon…

So far the Egyptians are proving to be very welcoming and friendly. Also, we can see the great pyramids of Gisa from out hotel roof – a taste of things to come. We’ve got our tour “pre briefing / welcome meeting” in an hour followed by a Nile dinner cruise. Tomorrow we go and see the great pyramids, then it’s an overnight train to Aswan where we pick up our boat for 3 nights (our Nile cruise only actually consists of 4 days on water.. )

(You can see the pyramids from our hotel roof bar)

Day ?...

.. Well, the “Nile dinner cruise” was the con we thought it would be, but good fun none the less, and more importantly it gave us a chance to meet the rest of our group – who are pretty much all 20-something Australians, and a nice crowd too. Dinner was so-so, the wine was a rip off and gave me a dreadful hangover but they had some good dancing – one particular bit where a chap spun around in a circular “dress”, much like a spinning top, for a good 10 minutes without stopping, was the most impressive bit. Time for a good sleep after that.

The next morning we set off in a coach to the pyramids.. at last! – our first stop was the stepped pyramid – though to be the oldest pyramid in existence. When you see it on the Discovery Channel it looks small. When you approach it, it looks small, when you walk up to it, it’s HUGE! – very impressive.

…A bit of history for you – at first they buried their royalty in tombs underground (waiting for their resurrection), but people robbed the tombs, so they build a large square slab of stones over the tombs to protect them. The problem often though, was that the construction was finished before the “owner” had died, and with his new “house” ready, the Kings would have him killed so he could “move in” so to speak. So one owner got clever and told his construction team to keep working, and add another layer on top of the first “slab” – a smaller one this time. Still he was not ready to die, so another slab added, and so on – and you end up with a stepped pyramid.

Shortly after visiting the stepped pyramid (note to self: must add macro in Word to type “Pyramid”) we went to a rather shabby one that is almost unique in that it has hieroglyphics inside the tomb. You aren’t allowed to take pictures, which of course I did. It was a cramped and steep climb down, then lots of stooping, but nothing compared to the tunnels in Vietnam.

(so old, like 3000BC)

(spacious too)

All very fascinating – by the way, the hawkers are as persistent as we’d heard they would be, but we have the knack of looking thoroughly disinterested by now after 10 months of it. I am however tiring of “where you from?”, “London”, “Ahhh! You like David Beckham!?!”. “no – don’t know what you are talking about”. I’ve tried replying, “Austria”, but they know how to say hello in just about every language of the World.

After a lunch break it was off to the Greta Pyramids themselves. Small problem. As we got off the coach I realised I had left my smokes behind and skipped back to the coach, and went for the stairs, only to fall over…. Some advice – and I don’t have much to give. NEVER run up stairs.

I fell forward, put my hands out, and I remember, as I made contact, thinking “Oh my god, my finger is going to snap off backwards!” – it bent back that far. Just in time, my other hand took the weight off but I was in pain, but at the same time relieved as I didn’t hear a snapping sound (I snapped a toe in England and I know the sound well). Then I noticed the blood. A lot of blood.

I turned my hand over to find a cut that ran from one side to the other on the upper segment of my ring finger on my right hand, and it was bleeding like hell. I pulled the slit open to be greeted by the sight of fat and “insidy stuff”. At first I through it was bone and I’d snapped my finger and pushed the bone through (there was nothing sharp on the steps at all) but after some pulling and prodding we ascertained I’d probably not broken it. By now my hands were covered in blood and a crowd was forming.

Fortunately , one of our “gang” is a first aider and before I could blink he had rubber gloves on and was cleaning the wound with salt solution etc. He cleaned it up and put a plaster on – stopping the kind bus driver from trying to clean it with his own tissues. As the gash was (is) on the inside of my finder it is quite easy to stop the bleeding by simply curling my finder inwards. So, happy that it was clean, and knowing not a lot could be done there, we carried onto the pyramids. I didn’t take any pictures. Two of the girls in the group nearly fell over when they saw it open! I doubt you’d want to see. Definitely a stitch job under normal circumstances, but we figured we could deal with it. Healing is healing, and the thing is to keep it clean.

We cleaned it with Iodine (ouch!) and applied a few “butterfly stitches” from a sterile kit we have and put a plaster over the top to hold it all in place, and then bandaged it to keep it clean. I’m on day three now and there is no sign of infection, though I have no idea what infection looks like, other than from films! – no smell and no ganky stuff, and no bleeding so we are hoping it heals in time for swimming in a week or so, though I have my doubts. We’ll see. I really thought I’d lost a finger for a short while! If it looks at all odd we’ll see a doctor, though we are on such a tight schedule with the tour it’s hard to know when that will be possible. (You may notice me holding my hand up in a lot of pyramid photos – now you know why – to stop the bleeding lol!)

Back to pointy things…

(One of the great pyramids)

A spectacular place, if not surrounded by the city itself.

After walking around the great pyramids we opted for the ubiquitous camel rides :- )

(Pretty cool hey!?!)

(yep – that’s me, on a camel, smoking a camel light – oh the irony)

(Something Kirstin has always wanted to do)

It was great fun, we even had a bit of a “camel canter” – tricky with only one hand available, but then it made me ride “western style”!

Pushing on (you have no idea how much they rush you on a tour) we went to see the Sphynx..

All fantastic stuff and a real dream realised.

Getting tired now and still more to do! – it was time for the tour group special of the day, you know, the bit where they take you to some shop and fleece you with tat to take home as gifts. On this occasion it was a perfumery, where they have bottles of flower oil, which they claim is the base to all perfumes. Funnily all their oils were supposed to be the base for all the famous expensive brands. Odd that. Especially when they told us that the big companies just add alcohol and sell it for 10 times more. Seems to simple to me… Still a lot of shopping ensued and the rest of the group loved it.

The host was very entertaining. We didn’t buy anything, but it was enjoyable all the same.

At last, some rest for three hours, then we hit the train station for our overnight “First class” train.

Not too bad – a 14 hour journey in what are basically old fashioned business class plane seats. We got sporadic sleep and marvelled at the scenery – mostly desert and very, very basic stone huts and very, very poor communities. No pics I’m afraid as experience has taught me that pics from moving trains/cars though glass just don’t work.

At last we arrived at Aswan.

By now we are knackered! And the fun continues! – No time for rest – more sight seeing. First up was the Aswan Great Dam.

Not that interesting to be honest, although it is the second largest dam in the world apparently.

Onwards and it was the Philae temple next – located on an island. We took a small motor boat to the island.

(The approach)

(inside)

Really fascinating again. The temple was actually moved about 50 meters to a new island when the dam was built, else it would be underwater (which it was for a while). The project was started just after I was born. A lot of the carvings have been mutilated – they don’t know by whom, but the assumption is that it was the Christians, who viewed the Egyptian religion as Pagan. A crying shame, but as I said to Kirstin, if it were not for religion, the temples would not have been built in the first place…

No time for rest – next stop was out “Nubian dinner”. The Nubians (translates to People of Gold) are darker than Egyptians and are pretty close to African. We caught a boat to one of their villages up the Nile at night time. A boat, by the way, that could not cope with the currents. The engine conked out and we drifted backwards in currents that I have never witnessed so strong before. There were whirlpools forming!. We had to all move to the back of the boat. We made it in the end.

We walked though dusty streets and entered a Nubian restaurant. Clearly a tourist trap, but on a scale of one to ten in authenticity, it scored a good 8. I think stepping over goat dung added 2 points to that score.

We had a good “Nubian” feast, lots of people including K got Henna tattoos (Don’t worry they come off!), and then it was a boozy sail back with local music and dancing, though the Australians managed to turn it into a very long “She’ll be coming round the mountains when she comes..”. A great laugh.

We checked into our cruise ship. It’s actually great – we have a mini “suite” with living room, bedroom and bathroom, TV, fridge, Air con etc. The priced are steep of course – so when we were in the Nubian village I did a deal and bought 10 beers for 1 UKP each, instead of the 2.8 UKP on the boat. Our fridge is stocked! (we had to smuggle them on :- ) ).

The staff are hilarious. Everyone is on a con. In the restaurant the staff discount your drinks if you pay cash, instead of putting them on the bill, and our young barman explained in very hushed tones that he will run us a private tab and give us “very big discount” at the end of the trip…. We are keeping a diary of all our expenditure! Even the young bell boys blew Kirstin a kiss, and then dumped our bags when we gave them only 10 pence as a tip. So much fun.

I was shattered this morning so I slept in while K visited our first port of call – a temple of some sort, but here is a picture of it from our balcony…

After that, time for relaxing…

Onwards we go… more temples incoming….

… well well well. An interesting 24 hours… First the best bits – we sailed for 3 hours ….

(Take a good look – that’s the last you’ll see of the Nile.. more on that later)

At one stage we sailed past a large village at prayer time and the sound of loads of mosques all chanting their “call to prayer” was really haunting, and loud. I’ve recorded it but by the time I get to upload this blog update I don’t think I’ll have time for video.

Then we hit Edfu temple – really amazing – the best so far. Wall to wall carvings and all on such a great scale. We visited it at night time, which panned out well as all the artificial lighting really highlights the carvings.

Once the temple was done with we haggled some cheapo outfits for the “fancy dress party” on the boat – something my Mum warned me to avoid – but what can you do? Yep, it was crap! – we stayed for 10 minutes ! I accessorised my outfit with two bed covers – looked quite the part.

It really was crap so we all abandoned the party and went on the top deck , froze to death, but drank until 3am.

Part of our motivation to go up top was to see what we could see of the Nile – the reason?... a large Indian contingent on the boat had pre-arranged for us to sail to Luxor (our final destination on the boat) overnight – so they could have an extra day at Luxor. What’s the problem with that you ask? Well.. one big problem… our “Nile cruise” – we did it in the dark! – I’m typing this sitting on the deck, moored to three other ships, a stench of diesel in the air, and our bedroom faces another ship – so it’s pitch black. This was supposed to be our beautiful day on the deck viewing the passing scenery.

We have had in total, three hours cruising in daylight – we have basically totally missed the “Nile cruise” element! Cheeky feckers! The rest of our group is less than amused, and the guide has done a runner. You get what you pay for I guess, but it’s criminal, who is going to get another chance to cruise the Nile?

(That was our view for 99% of the cuise)

We are now officially at war. The next time our guide tries to rush us off a site to go to a parchment/gold/perfume shop we’ll be telling him to take a hike. Oh the fun :- )

Just a quick update. Been loving the quiet life in Pederroba. Had another BBQ in the mountains with the Bazzacos', plus had dinner in another mountain house with Pablo's friends - had a giant cheese fondeau!

As you might notice - Kirstin has had a drastic image change! - Blonde and short. Taking some getting used to!

Everyone has been fantastic here, we've met so many people and made new friends. Lovely place. Will definately be back! (who knows, maybe even to live!?!)

On Thursday this week we get the train to Milan, then fly to Cairo, Egypt. We've booked a 2 week Nile cruise that takes in all the main sites ending at the beach at Dahab. We may well stay at the beach for a further week and make our own way back to Cairo from where we....

...Fly to Cape Town, South Africa to pick up our 3 week overland tour of Africa! - we are going up into Namibia, then accross, though Namibia, Botswana, ending up at Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe. Should be lots of game viewing and lots of adventure (I'm particularly looking forward to Quad biking in the Namibian desert and white water rafting the Zambezi river which is graded "5" apparently. Oh, and flying in a microlight :-)

Then... after that... we fly to Johannesburg where we meet Kirstin's Sister and Brother in Law who are looking after us in Pretoria for all of December, including Xmas.

..Then!.. we fly to Bangkok on Dec 27th - going to spend new year on a beach in Thailand then continue our adventure in Asia where we left off, going North into Thailand this time, up into Laos, then accross into Vietnam. We are hoping if our timing is right, to fly to Hong Kong in Jan to catch the Chinese New Year fireworks... we'll see...

After all that, who knows, almost certainly China and India...

Oh! - regarding flights - well, when I was booking the Cairo to Cape Town flights, which is broken into 3 stages - two long ones and one tiny one, I got the best rate of about £320 each and proceded to book... when I noticed, the 1st 2 legs of the journey were marked "1st Class". The 3rd leg (only an hour) - "Economy/Coach". Hmm, A mistake I assumed. I've since got the email confirmation and the 1st two legs of the journey are 100% marked 1st Class. We'll see. I just can't believe it, but that's what it said at booking, and that's what our e-ticket says, so we'll be going to 1st class check-in and finding out! :-)

Speak soon! (Lets' see how much wifi I get in Egypt! - more likely than Africa I guess! - Might be one HUGE update in a few weeks :-)

Ciao!

The other day Pablo asked if we'd like to go along to a friend's farm and drink some of the "new" wine from the end of summer harvest. Sounded grand so off we trotted, well, I cycled and Kirstin went on the back of Pablo's scooter...

(Yep, she's off "C.H.I.P.S" - or maybe Cartman)

When we got to the farm, the truth behind the invitation became clear.... a LOT of grapes to be picked. We were handed a tub each and a pair of cutters and off we went! :-)

...For the impatient, I made a video montage!!...(Click on the image below to load the movie)

...it's actually quite theraputic. We picked for about an hour I guess, untill we had a tractor load full.

(Lovely Prosecco grapes, sprinkled with a touch of sugar)

After that it was a fun (downhill) cycle back to Gorgio's house where they put the grapes into a machine that basically smashes them up and separates the stems. Note: When people tell you about being careful not to bruise your wine by pouring it roughly, I'd take that with a pinch of salt! - Apart from the machine, I can't say I put the bunches of grapes into the tubs with much tenderness ;-)

(Chomp, chomp)

That machine then pumps the juice into a giant "bucket" in a garage room..

Next step was to put some of the juice into a beaker and then drop a weight into it with a scale that gives you a reading. This tells you how much alcohol the prosecco will eventually have - in this case we got a reading of 16 which equated to about 10.5% proof. Not too shabby, though they always hope for more!

(Eagerly looking up on the chart what the alcohol level well be)

Gorgio makes the best wine in teh village apparently, though he's had less luck with his carrots...

... still, you can't be great at everything!

We had a taste of the juice, and well, it tasted like Prosecco without any alcohol or fizz. Nice enough though.

Once the whole procedure was completed, the Italian tradition of eating and drinking could commence!

... lots of home made wine, prosecco and sopresso meat. Gorgio also grows a mean French Cab Sov amongst others.

It was during the feasting I noticed an incredible collection of home made Grappa in the "wine room". With great enthusiasm, Gorgio started uncorking one made with Basil leaved. Delicious! I think he could tell I liked it, as he then poured me one made with things that look very similar to asparagus. Even nicer!

He opened every bottle! - about 10 different ones as far as I can remember - some with liquorice root, some with , well, some unidentifiable red berries - I think from holly. There was one I tried that was 50% proof! I nearly fell over. By this stage I couldn't tell the difference between any of them - I was getting just a little knobbled.

Gorgio even opened a 30 year old bottle for me to try. A great guy who clearly loves his work ;-)

Thanks to Gorgio and all his friends and family. We had a fantastic day - a real treat.

On our day of departure from our lovely B&B in Sicily our host was reasonably horrified to find we'd not actually done anything or seen any sights, and we had a lot of time to kill - our ferry sailed from Palermo at midnight and Palermo was only about 3 hours away... so... we went to see the gorge near by at Alcantara....

... and pretty it was, with fascinating rock formations. The water is glacial - you can rent waders and wander up the gorge a little bit, we opted out of that and just had a good wander about and sat by the river.

Afterwards we, again on our hosts' recommendation, drove to Piazza Armerina, which was about half way on our route straight across Sicily. The drive was fun - we'd heard that the roads would be bad as the mafia tend to siphon off the funds. They were indeed bad! In fact someone told us that one stretch of motorway in South Italy has taken 10 years to complete, and it cost so much they could have built a bridge to South Africa with the same money!....

Anyhow - back to Piazza Armerina - very underwhelming when you arrive at the town. We think the signage is deliberately bad to "encourage" you to spend money in the town itself. It's hillarious - one minute you are following brown signs to "Mosaics", the next minute the signs are yellow and marked "Roman Castel", then they are white and marked "Castel Mosaics", then they disappear altogether - sending you round and round the town in circles.

We found it eventually - the site is a few K's out of town - it's a very old Roman Villa, dating back to around 300AD and it is amazingly well preserved - mainly because the town moved to where Piazza Armerina is now located, leaving the villa behind and abandoned.

The whole reason for the special interest are the mosaics on the floors, and wow! you are not disappointed!

(As you approach the site)

(You are not disappointed by the 1st mosaics you see)

(When you look closely the level of complexity and detail is amazing, the small size of the tiles and the colour shading)

The above picture is a zoom-in of ....

(Yep! - an arse - I'm so childish)

(These Romans invented bikini's long before we thought possible)

(When you start looking at the main square perimeter you start to get a grasp of the scale of the works - this path runs in the other direction too, and all the way round the whole main building)

(A Roman latrine - crafty sods!)

The pics are only a brief glimpse as what is to be seen there - there are more mosaics than you can shake a stick at. Must have taken an age to do - they got African specialists to come over and do them apparently.

Really amazing - so glad we went.

Catching the ferry was a laugh. We got there quite early so we had a quick rip-off dinner at the port then checked in for our sailing.

We picked the duff boat.

(That's the nice one, with casino, pool, hot tub etc etc - I think it was called the Supremo or something like that)

Our was...

(Great - a cargo boat - called.... the "Corragio" which I guess means cargo)

They had a large "sleeper" room with reclining chairs so we bagged a row of seats each as there were not many passengers on our crud boat, and after a few fortifying glasses of wine, bedded down for the night....

.....only to wake up at 4am to a guy snoring at volume levels that had to be experienced to be believed. Even worse, as he breathed out, someone else snored, to fill int he gaps, so to speak. I got up, Kirstin got up, loads of people got up.

Kirstin considered going over and hitting him with a rolled up magazine but figured he'd only roll over and start again - she knows the drill after putting up with me for years.

We moved into the lounge and used the sofas. I managed to put my head in a sweat top to blank out the lights.

It worked until about 7am when a nutty Italian walked around with music playing on his phone through the speaker. He did this for the while 20 odd hours of the crossing. Even more oddly, the same song, over and over. Weird.

When we arrived we caned it up to Sarzana to hook up with Stephano and Debborah who we'd met through friends in Pederroba - they cooked us a great local dinner on their fire - that's something that the Italians seem to like to do - they make their fire places so that they are big enough to BBQ on. Great idea.

After that we did a little sight seeing with them the next day and now we are back in Pederroba, chilling and planning our next leg of the journey... Africa!

6 Hours of driving later.... we hit Reggio Di Calabria and queued up for the ferry to Sicily. We had no idea what we were doing, which ferry to catch, or anything really. How hard could it be? it's only a 2 minute ferry. We just followed TomTom's instructions and it did the job perfectly.

We grabbed a ticket (29 Euros) and sat in the queue. A queue that never moved..... Didn't take long for everyone to start honking their horns. Bear in mind the sun is scorching, fire-fighting planes are flying over us and skimming the sea, refilling from the sea to put out mountain fires... it was that hot. That, and I'd been driving since 7am. I had to stop at 10.30 and have a 15 minute kip in a service station. I knew I had to stop - I'd started day-dreaming of warm comfy beds, duvets, fluffy pillows. It's amazing how 15 mins of shut eye (not sleeping mind you, just shut eye) can totally revive you. Coffee didn't work, but 15 mins with my feet on the door, eyes closed, and I was 100% ok. Amazing really. Never tried it before.

The queue didn't move for an hour and a half. The Italians amuse me. We are all stuck and they beep their horns, get out of their cars, wave their arms, have small meetings to discuss what could possibly be holding them up. All drama.

Then we started moving. It seems there were two queues. One, our one, where we'd bought tickets on the day, and another that we assumed had prebooked. They were getting priority, and there was a police car and a police man there controlling everything. Each time we inched forwards it was a mad race to see who could accelerate as hard as possible to move into the fastest lane of the three. We were winning! :-)

At one stage a lorry driver cut me up (well, I cut him up , and he won the fight.. almost) and I had two choices. Sit in a siding, stuck, OR - if I could zoom around the police car, which no one else was doing. I chose the latter. Bingo! miles ahead of the lorry! At which stage the copper blew his whistle and put his hand up to me to stop :-( - "what?" I gesticulated - and pointed at my ticket looking confused..., "not go round car!!" , "ahhh - so sorry - English", "ok, go on". YAY! zoomed off and just got ahead of the lorry. Looking back, we got the last spot hahaha.

The thing we've noticed about Italian driving (and much the same as they are on foot - i.e. queuing, or the lack of) - is that it's a clear case of "if there is a short cut, an opportunity to get ahead, a chance, anything, TAKE IT!". If you don't you can guarantee there will be 5 cars behind you honking their horns. None of this, "after you sir" malarky - you see an opportunity - you go, and you go fast. The funny thing is, no one seems to make much of a deal of it - it's like they all share the understanding - "if you don't, I will", and "if you do, fair play, respect, and Oh, I'm right behind you so MOVE IT BUDDY!"

I like it. It's a good laugh. Survival of the fittest. If your are a timid driver don't come here, you'll fill your pants.

Sooo. we finally got on the boat....

Another hour South in Sicily and we found our B&B we'd been recommended by someone on the Thorntree travel forum. What a find! - we were greeted by the owner who showed us round, told us to pick any apartment as it was empty, and he'd charge us "dorm" rates. He would rather we were happy and have an apartment - no point being in an empty dorm. We have a GREAT place, above the pool and overlooking the mountains. Breakfast is included, as is pretty much everything, all for 60 Euros a night. Plus I found Wi-Fi :-)

Very happy here.

They don't do any food so we drove into the local village to grab beers wine and pizza - at which stage the heavens opened! - not rain, but hail. Not normal hail. Hail stones were hitting the ground and splitting into three pieces, each piece the size of a gold ball!! I'm not kidding. I instantly realised that if one hit us on the head we'd be in serious trouble - i.e. dead. We ran under cover and cowered.

It made the papers the next day. They've never seen hail like it (neither have we). 6cm diameter hail stones! I'm not sure they've even seen hail before down here.

I watched a couple slam into the car with massive bangs. Sure enough. We have a few dents..... Here is one of a few...

The storm carried on that night...

And the next day.....

Great fun to watch - I got the shots using the video mode on my camera. I missed the real biggies - 3 or 4 forks hitting the mountain right in front of us.

The weather has mainly settled now and we went up to Mount Etna (Eric - your travel site doesn't know about Mount Etna in Italy! ). We's read lots of excited reports of laval flows, eruptions etc, but we were not so lucky. A thick cloud base was over the peak so most of our time was spent in near zero visibility. We paid the full 50 Euros each for the cable car up, then a 4x4 truck up further, then a walk with a guide.

- As a side note - I got to use the Italian word I 1st learnt - Nebbia!! - there are a million road signs "In Casa Di Nebbia - 50Km/h" - i.e. in case of fog, slow down. - I was so chuffed - "Nebbia! Nebbia! " I exclaimed to the guide!, "yes, fog" he said. YAY! - p..s. I've got my Italian numbers down to a tee now - I always count my money in Italian, and more often than not, the people in the shops then reply in English to check they have got their English right too. I have lost count of how many times I've heard, "you practice your Italian, I practice my English, ok?". I like that attitude. A lot. Besides which, Nebbia! - what a word. "Doctor, I've got a sore Nebbia", or "can you see my nebbia through these trousers?" Truly great word.

We saw craters steaming, and some great views, but not a whole lot of volcanic activity. Fun, but dissapointing to be honest. No probs - we have volcanoes to see in South America - Mark Hiley, a good friend, was there recently, and told me of his experience jumping over lava flows! Still, this was fun, albeit very expensive.

(I'd done my homework and we went with jeans, trainers and jackets. Many had not - it was bloody freezing up there - don't forget it's a skit resort too!)

(At last! a steaming crater!)

(A burried building from a few years ago)

(all I want to be is a Space Man, Space Man!)

We are back at the apartment now. We finally managed to grab some groceries. In mainland Italy the shops close from around 12.30 to 3pm, sometimes 3.30pm. Here, however, they close at 12, and open at 5pm. It's mighty tricky! Our local pizza place sells ice cream in large polystyrene boxes. You choose your flavours and they fill it up, and chuck in some cones and other bits.

It's funny, at home we treat ice cream like a kids thing. Here it's like buying wine. And so it should be!- Stracciatella!!! maybe spelt wrong - but my favourite, followed by Kinder Egg ice cream.

We had a chat this evening and agreed that we are seeing places for the sake of ticking boxes, and it's costing us an arm and a leg, so we are cutting short our Sicily trip. We had planned to go to Sardinia and then Corsica, but to be honest, they would be "beach" resorts, and we can do that better in places like Thailand, for a LOT less money, so we tonight booked a car ferry back to the North of Italy for the 19th. SO many sites quoted us anywhere from 400 Euros to 1000 Euros for the 20 hour car ferry. I went to the Italian site direct. 200 Euros. Sailing from Palermo so will check that out in a couple of days...

Got lots of food and booze in-house, a good pool, great views, time for some r&r (like we haven't had any yet lol)