Almost 2 years to the day from saying “let’s never travel further South in Italy than Rome again”, here we were, the same not-sointrepid travellers, in Southern Sicily…closer to Africa than to Rome. As we’ve come to expect, where there are ferry terminals, there are no rental cars, but to avoid another STEINART pickup incident, we decided to take the seemingly safer option of staying overnight in Pozzallo before “training” to Syracusa the following day.  

After a mostly uneventful night in Pozallo, with another surprise festival, we were lucky that our host had helped book a “taxi” to the train station the next day to help us through our next pain point.  Now, we don’t speak much Italian, and our driver certainly didn’t speak any English, so when locked in a strange car in Sicily supposedly heading to the train with someone yelling “Traino…NO!!” over and over, we started to pick up a few things and needlessly mumbled to each other, “Oh f***…I don’t think this guy is taking us to the train station”. After another few “Traino NO!! Capito?s” and some “Ah…no capito, sono Australianos” later while trying to show our train tickets, and at the same time as furiously googling wtf is happening with Trainos in Southern Sicily, we finally responded to the next “Traino NO!! Capito?” With, “Si, Traino….NO” After being dropped without instruction, not at a traino, but at a buuus stop in the middle of nowhere, still sceptical, we decided to walk ourselves to the traino station, only to find out the driver had anticipated such antics from crazy Australianos, waited around the corner and near ran us down with a final “TRAINO NOOOOOOO!!!”  Turns out he was right and trainos were indeed a no-no and we seamlessly boarded a buuuus, which, you wouldn’t believe it, departed 17 minutes early!!! (Again, again.) We had an extra long buuus ride to to ponder our original idea to walk the 30 minutes to wait at an empty traino station for a traino that was never to arrivo. 

We made it!! We sweated around Syracusa, picked up our car (after a suspiciously long wait for it to be cleaned…see later) and took 30 minutes to drive 1km to park in the same town, had an amazing lunch being served booze by children for the first time since B2P, drove to our first agrotourismo where we had a lovely night, fresh air, a dark room and comfiest bed of the trip…… but at the same time also had a small child being tortured in the room next door just past the paper thin ancient walls.

Also in Sicily we:

• (or I) was in awe of how Lea’s U-turn and hairpin simile game had developed: half a maccas sign coming up…the other half of a maccas sign coming up, a fishing hook, half a W-turn next, then the other half, oooh a couple of bobby pins on their way, top of an ‘S’, bottom of an ‘S’, half the side of a ‘B’…”which side?!” screams James, praying for the vertical side….
• Spent amazing nights in the very South to see the ancient Agrigento, and the very North to see the spectacular Cefalu
• Drove to our first town in the foothills of Etna only to hear an air raid siren blast as we exited the car…only later did we find out this was a normal occurrence multiple times a day.  This, along with the seemingly continuous church bells, random day time fireworks and regular thunderstorms were surely designed to keep everybody calm.  A strategy successful in Pompeii, based on the calm expressions one can witness on the casts of the dead bodies
• Discovered the locals left full, vertical water bottles on their door steps to stop cats from pissing on them…a truly superstitious people hey are, as everyone knows you’re supposed to lay them horizontally in the garden, or just don’t butter their feet if you don’t want them around
• Set out to hike Etna only to get tangled up in vines
• Savoured our view of the volcano with its lovely <insert opposite of phallic> silhouette.
  • Lea, unaware James would one day write the above line, commented that the clouds on each “cheek” looked like fluffers…to which James said they must be doing a good job, she’s blowing right now! And she really was! But no sirens?
• And found some of our best meals to be: our first autogrill panino, street arancini, a random stuffed bread with cheese and ham thing, and a roasted chicken with an accidental side of lasagne.

Sicily was really pretty calm…at least compared the semi-organised shit show that was trying to get off the f***ing island.  I’m not sure there is such a thing as “organised chaos”, but there are definitely arseholes trying to bully an Aussie with white knuckles while 3 lanes moved to 8, then back to 4, only for those 4 to be lined up in a race for one lane to get on a boat as workers yelled at you to drive faster!

Once finally on the mainland we:

• Started in the big toe, drove past the tinea, across the bunion, along the arch and and finally to the ankle blisters
• Had our first pasta in Pizzo and pizza in Pasto (only half that is true)
• Got shamed into ordering more pizza than we needed on an incredible night around about one of the plantar warts in the arch* (*Editors note – the second pizza was the best!)
• Drove like James Bond through Matera (if he’d panicked at the sight of the first car park and then walked 20 minutes in the sweltering heat to get to the town)
• Visited Alberobello with its unique houses of cylinders and cones that were literally trulli beautiful….google it.
• Learned that all the olive trees on the continent are dying off due to an introduced bacteria (note to self: invest in olives)
• Looked out over said olive trees, the Adriatic sea and towards our next destination of Albania from our rooftop in Ostuni, while eating take away pizza
• Discovered that although 200+km/h didn’t seem so fast to be driving at 30, and 160+ at 37 was fine, 130 feels pretty damn quick now at 43, having way less to lose, and,
• Speaking of driving:
  • No indicators are used here. I assume because everyone knows where they’re going and it’s none of your business
  • There is still no adherence to speed limits, which are also basically unknown to all
    • Safest method it to go as fast as the cheapest car you can see, as they probably can’t afford the fines
  • EVERYBODY drives with their hands out the window…after all the driving in Italy I’ve done, this is the first I’ve noticed it, perhaps as with experience it’s the first time I dared take my eyes of the bitumen…or gaps where bitumen should be
    • We don’t know why they do this. Is it to talk to other drivers? Is it for the inevitable high fives they’ll get as they drift into your lane? Either way, it’s a massive risk to put losing your hand at risk and ending up mute
      • Which really reminds you of why mobile phones never took off over here until facetime was invented
  • Oh…and parking: read the title
• Our final drive had several firsts:
  • Our first toll ticket that didn’t work, which was super fun, but everyone lined up behind us were super compassionate about our predicament,,,
  • Our first prepaid toll which we weren’t prepared for + <read second half of previous point>
  • After discovering on the first day of 8 days with our hire car that we did’t have a spare wheel and wondering how that could happen, then sweating every pothole in Sicily and South of Naples without either mobile reception or a spare wheel, the agency checked for a spare wheel upon return. The FIRST time in over 100 car rentals we’ve seen this.  Nothing was said other than “you have full cover….goodbye” #southofrome #sicily

After getting rid of the 4 wheeled car, we caught a shared taxi into Naples to have 4 more hours there.  3 more than last time and 3 more than needed.  In all seriousness, it was up there with the best 4 hours we had in Italy.

We loved everywhere, Corfu, Etna and Puglia the best. Don’t go to Italy in August ‘they’ say, and don’t go South of Rome ‘we’ say, but we were so lucky and blessed. To sum up August in Italy: there are people everywhere, nobody knows where they want to go, but they sure as shit don’t want you to get there first.

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