Zingaro nature reserve

Our goal for today was to hike the Zingaro nature reserve, which was founded in 1980 as Sicily's first such park. The reserve stretches a little over 7 km between Scopello and San Vito lo Capo, plus well over 600 m vertically. We'd originally thought to take the steep middle road outbound and the gentler coastal road returning, but my knees were bothering me and we chose to follow the coast both ways instead. (My justification for taking the same path in both directions is that you can linger on the way out, enjoying the details, and then return faster if you need to save time. Plus, you'll always see different things when you're facing the opposite direction on your way home.)

That turned out to be a good choice, both for the sake of my knees and because the day turned out to be unexpectedly windy (winds strong enough that a couple times, a waterspout started to form offshore towards the end of our outward leg) and rainy (heavy black clouds scraped across the peaks we would have been hiking across, though the rain never made it down to our level along the coastal trail). Plus, the "gentle" patch turned out to be not particularly gentle, with many significant ascents and descents and a total length of around 14 km, not accounting for a few detours along side trails and into a few small museums along the way.

The most interesting detours were into two museums: one that showed the weaving that is done with local grasses and reeds (including a life-size model of a woven horse) and another that discussed “manna”, a sugary substance made by cutting notches in a couple species of local ash and collecting the sap. The manna has various medicinal properties, including as a laxative.

Although you can nominally do the trip betweeen the two ends of the reserve in about 2 hours if you walk straight through, you would miss all the fine details. On the outbound leg, we took close to 4 hours, stopping often to admire the views and closely inspect the vegetation; we seem to have arrived at the peak of the flowering season, with dozens of species of flowering plant showing off their wares. The flowers range from tiny things smaller than a lentil to something much like a bush rose, about 5 cm across, and they're available in all colors: white, yellow, orange, red, lavender, and purple, and all shades in between. The flowers grow in cracks in the rock, epiphytically on other plants, in patches of soil, and just about anywhere you can imagine; even the cacti (mostly prickly pear types) were putting out flower shoots, some of which were only a day or two from becoming blossoms. Bees are making the most of it; I saw honeybees and at least two species of bumblebee buzzing around, and the air was positively throbbing with the humming of the bees in a few places. There was an overall perfume of flowers and green growing things, fresh sea breezes, and for most of our hike, brilliant sunshine. Lovely, and with a breeze strong enough to keep me cool, it became a perfect day for a hike.

We ran into our Scottish friends from the previous day about midway along the way out, while we were perched on rocks beside the trail having a light lunch, just below one of the "refuges" that are scattered along the way. Both women were kitted out with a pair of hiking poles, and were powerwalking. I hope we'll be as vigorous in 15 years. I was disappointed that we didn't meet them again at the same spot on the return leg; it would have been an amusing inversion.

Though there were many fine views along the coast and along the towering cliffs, the highlight for me was the Grotto dell’Uzzo (Uzzo cave), a hollow in a towering cliff that was created through collapse and erosion of the overlying rock. It looks to be about 40 metres tall and about half that deep. There's evidence it was inhabited more or less continuously from neolithic times until humans learned to build more convenient shelters, and contains the oldest dated stone wall in Sicily. The overhang would provide decent, if imperfect, protection against the rain and wind -- certainly better than any alternatives that would have been available before humans learned to make water- and windproof shelters. It's very atmospheric, particularly when the wind blows at just the right angle, causing a moaning noise like the millennia of lost souls who once inhabited the cave. No bats that I could see, but a few swallows were hanging about in their place.

We completed most of the walk to the other end of the reserve, but gave up just before the final ascent to the San Vito lo Capo entry point, because it was getting late and there didn't seem to be much reason to continue (nothing much that was new to see). The walk back was demanding, since we'd been on our feet for most of our stay in Sicily thus far, and there were a few long ascents, but nothing too difficult. Still, we arrived back at the car tired and (in my case) ready for a nice hot shower. Which I had back at the B&B before we drove back down the hill for dinner. We chose Trattoria Scopello, which was excellent. We started out sharing the plate of mixed appetizers, which was huge (almost a whole meal in itself): roasted zucchini and eggplant, caponata, eggplant parmesan, what seems to have been a baked broccoli/cheese (or egg) square, olives, sundried tomatoes, and anchovies for Shoshanna. I had a local type of pasta called busiate, which is similar to rotini, but made from thicker noodles, so it has a more satisfying mouth feel. I chose the version with a tomato/ beef sauce, and it was both tasty and filling. Shoshanna had the same pasta with shrimp and pistachios.

Once again, we were lucky on the way uphill to our bed, since we didn't meet any other vehicles.

Erice

Our next trip was to Erice, which is yet another town perched atop a huge rock outcrop, several hundred metres above the surrounding plains. When we saw that it was surrounded by beautiful rolling plains, I joked with Shoshanna that this was apparently where they'd put all of Sicily's flat land, as if this part of the island had had a facelift and the surplus flesh was piled up elsewhere to form the mountains. To get to Erice, you ascend another long series of switchbacks, some of which are quite hairy. Shoshanna volunteered to drive to Erice, which was a fortunate choice; I could have done most of the driving with little trouble, but there were a few spots where her many additional years of experience with a manual transmission made a big difference.

I found Erice mostly disappointing. There were too many other tourists, the prices were inflated to extract the maximum cash from the tourists (in some cases, 50% higher than we'd come to expect), several of the places we would have liked to see were closed for renovation, and I found the place more rundown and poorly maintained than old and charming. (Which is odd, given that I find outright ruins to be quite evocative. I suppose Erice was neither modern enough nor ruined enough to work for me.) We got to see a couple very nice churches, although I always have qualms about spending that much money on bling and ornamentation rather than on charitable efforts; I guess that makes me a Franciscan by philosophy, and I have fond memories of the movie "Brother Sun, Sister Moon", which is about his life. The views of the surrounding countryside were spectacular -- more than enough to justify the trip -- and we got to try a great many samples of local pestoes and liqueurs in one shop (where we eventually purchased two bottles of almond wine). But on the whole, I didn't find the visit to be a remarkable experience.

On the way home, we decided to descend the opposite side of Erice, since it looked less traumatic on the GPS display than the ascent had been. Sadly, we neglected to account for the problem of scale: what looked reasonably easy on the GPS proved to be quite hairy on the ground: many of the hairpin turns were so sharp and so closely spaced that they appeared on the GPS display to be a single line (rather than two or more lines), and a couple times I had to stop, reverse back uphill, and then continue the turn. For extra pleasure, the road was poorly maintained, with many rocks and clumps of downed vegetation that had to be avoided. Fortunately, although we met a surprising number of cars coming uphill, we never met any of them on a curve, so there were no difficult bits where we would have had to try passing each other on roads better suited for goat carts than two cars abreast. In the end, it wasn't a problem or particularly nerve-wracking, just a matter of taking one’s time and watching for problems; I just kept the car in first gear, and didn’t hurry any of the curves. The only real hassle was that the sun was setting, and the windshield turned out to be dirtier than we'd noticed; unfortunately, the windshield wipers were basically useless. That made the solar glare problem really nasty each time we turned west into the setting sun. At the first opportunity, we pulled over and wiped the windshield with some toilet paper we always carry in case of emergency. It took two tries to get the glass reasonably clean.

In one of those serendipitous complementarities, it turns out that Shoshanna and I have different dislikes and fears related to driving: I hate having to stop and restart the car on a steep uphill slope, which is often necessary when the road isn't wide enough for two cars and one of you has to edge over into a hedge or reverse until you can find a wide spot such as a driveway where you stop to let the other car pass. In contrast, she gets anxious about the descending switchbacks, particularly when there's an easily visible dropoff. So we complement each other well behind the wheel: she takes the uphill legs of the journey, and I do the downhill.

We decided that on the way home, it would be wise to do a reconnaissance drive to Palermo airport, both to ensure that we knew how long it would take (about an hour, as it happens) and to be sure that we knew where we were going. Our rationale was that we'd be doing the drive at least partially in the dark 2 days later, at 5 AM, after a full day touring the previous day and not many hours of sleep. Given the many unpleasant navigational surprises we'd had along the way, we also figured it would be better to ensure that we made those mistakes in broad daylight, when we would have plenty of time to correct the problem. In addition, we didn't trust what the kind (but inefficient) folks at Hertz’s Catania rental office had told us about the returns procedure. We wanted to be sure that we understood everything, that our understanding agreed with that of the Palermo staff, and that the many dings and scratches and other damage to the car were properly reported so that Hertz wouldn't try to charge us for the damage. We spoke to a very helpful Hertz employee who reassured us. I'm still worried that we'll be charged for the damage, but there wasn't much we could do other than ask for a photocopy of the rental form that contained a long list of the damage. We’ve kept that safe as our proof that we weren’t the ones who messed up the car.

(A note to future Sicily visitors: there are no airport hotels and seem to be no B&Bs anywhere near the airport. Go figure! Although it would have made more sense to spend our final night closer to the airport, we didn’t find any options between Palermo and the aiport. Palermo itself would have been an option, but we didn't want to have to navigate the famously twisty and congested streets of this ancient city early in the morning. If we're able to return to Sicily in the future, we'll plan to arrive via Palermo and leave via Catania, which does have convenient options. Choosing to leave from Palermo airport would have been less of a problem had we chosen to leave later in the day, when the Hertz rental office would be open and we would have been fortified by coffee and breakfast, but we'd gotten by far the best airfare based on an early-morning departure, and the total travel time was significantly shorter. The latter was the deciding factor for me.)

Dinner that night was intended to be the Trattoria again, but we hadn't thought to make a reservation, and they had no tables available before 9, which was much later than we wanted to be eating. Instead, we decided to try the restaurant (La Tavernetta) of a three-star hotel that looked promising. It turned out to be a disappointment. The food was OK, if unremarkable, but the portions were small and the service poor. Possibly it was early in the season, and the staff were still coming up to speed. The best thing about the meal was the beer, a Moretti Baffo d'Oro, which is a slightly more complex and interesting version of the standard Moretti that is my go-to beer. We resolved to try the Trattoria again the next night, for our final meal in Sicily.

On the way back up the hill to the B&B after dinner, we met a descending car for the first time. Unusually, Shoshanna had chosen to drive us back uphill, since I'm usually the designated driver after dinner so she can enjoy a glass or two of wine. It was dark enough that we saw their headlights in plenty of time, and fortunately she was able to back downhill only a short distance into a wider stretch that would let them pass.