10. Tunisia to Sicily - entering, or leaving civilisation?

Day 44, May 27th.  Annaba – Tunis, 24-38C, sunny

Crossing into Tunisia is straightforward. All within the confines of the same concrete building, we join a short, orderly queue to get our passports stamped, then a similar queue for customs (where we can buy car insurance too, handily), then we re-join our car for the most cursory of physical customs checks.

A young, short-haired friendly customs officer opens the boot and asks me to open Ralph’s rucksack (which happens to be the first thing to fall out).  I open it and produce Ralph’s three cuddly rabbits.  Our officer, sensing a long and fruitless search ahead of him with people who are evidently tourists, smiles and waves us through.  It’s amazing to think what you could smuggle through countries, using the veneer of children and tourism…

In Morocco and Algeria, we bought local SIM cards to save our roaming charges.  In Morocco this involved a quick visit to a tabac in Tangier, and 10 minutes with the shopkeeper while he set up the phone; in Algeria, it was a half-hour process at a mobile phone shop, involving passports, a contract, no few than six signatures, two contracts and six rubber stamps.  Here, immediately upon crossing the border, there are three stalls – for Orange and two local companies.  As we slow down to enquire, super-keen, young, smiling salespeople bounce up to the car window, offering their wares – identical data, identical coverage, identical price.  Two young men and a girl – we lump for the girl (selling Orange) – she’s got the best smile, is least pushy, and – based on our recent experiences in North Africa – is probably most deserving of the business.  The entire process takes less than five minutes, for both phones.

Driving on, we immediately notice differences.  The roads are smoother, there is hardly any litter, and the villages we drive through contain houses which have actually been finished – and painted.  The countryside is greener still, and the hills become mountains. 

Shortly, we find ourselves winding through Tunisia’s cork forests, the country’s largest wooded area and its most important wildlife habitat.  Tucked away in the far north-west of the country, they have a timeless beauty; mile after mile of magnificent, ancient oaks carpeting lush, green, rolling mountains.  But we see just one pile of cork bark: seemingly, there is a shortage of skilled labour to harvest the cork here; meaning it degrades and loses value.  Climate change and overgrazing, coupled with a lack of expertise in cork oak regeneration, are leading to drastic annual shrinkages of these forests.  We hope their beauty remains timeless.

We stop for lunch in the town of Beja.  Our brief experience of the country so far suggests this will be a breeze – a sea of civilised eateries competing for our custom, from which we we’ll have to make a difficult decision…

The reality is a little different.  Beja (population (110,0000) doesn’t appear to do lunch.  It does coffee, ice cream, plastic buns, but not lunch.  After much fruitless driving through a town the size of Basingstoke (but with traffic more like Birmingham), we find one solitary establishment which serves something resembling lunch: a grime-ridden but evidently popular take-away chicken rotisserie joint, with two solitary – and very grubby – sets of tables and chairs outside.  We order chicken, sauce and chips (no difficult decisions to make, there’s nothing else) and sit gingerly on the chairs outside.  Our food turns up shortly, with along with two forks and one knife – which represents their entire cutlery inventory.

After lunch we drop down into a huge agricultural plain to the west of Tunis; back at sea level, the temperature rises from a comfortable 26C to a sweltering 38C.  We head towards the capital on a beautifully smooth, three-lane motorway – complete with a French-style toll system – and reach the outskirts of Tunis in the late afternoon.  Cresting a hill, the city appears before us: a glistening sea of low-rise, white painted buildings, stretching towards the Mediterranean in the distance.  Not many cities of this size are this pretty, when viewed from on high. 

We’re staying in La Marsa for five days; a quiet, upmarket suburb on the northern side of Tunis, fronting the sea.  After a brief, frustrating and typically bureaucratic visit to the nearby Toyota garage (30 minutes spent registering us a new customer on their system, before we can even think about making an appointment for a service), we reach our apartment.

Our home for the next five days is an airy, first floor flat in a converted family house; it has pretty tiled floors, three bedrooms, a kitchen / sitting room, a bathroom with plumbing that works (notwithstanding the fact you need to sit down to have a shower) and a little terrace that overlooks a courtyard, shaded by a mulberry tree with a determined bougainvillea growing through it.  It’s simple, but by Algerian standards, the pinnacle of cleanliness.  The boys are overjoyed at the prospect of their own bedrooms for the next five days, and immediately unpack all their games and toys that haven’t seen the light of day for many weeks.

In the evening, we walk down to the beach – large, quiet and comparatively litter free – and stroll towards the main ‘strip’ in La Marsa, bustling with locals with their children and a handful of Westerners, all enjoying the balmy evening sun.  We eat in a traditional Tunisian restaurant – excellent grilled fish, ‘Brik’ (Tunisian fried pastries, the equivalent of the Algerian Burak) and a huge bowl of seafood pasta for Laurie.  Our five-day mini-break has begun.

Day 45, May 28th.  Tunis, 26-30C, sunny

Little to report.  A largely restful night’s sleep all round; Nina and Ralph hear the call to prayer from the mosque almost adjacent to our apartment at 4.30am, Laurie and I sleep through it.  Note: must add ‘proximity to mosque’ to our accommodation DD for future sojourns in Muslim countries.

I head out to do a weekly shop in the nearby Carrefour (which feels like the largest supermarket on earth) and spend 229 Tunisian dinars (about £55).  Along with freezers, lawnmowers and barbeque sets, it sells beer and even has a ‘naughty pork’ section – you can tell where it is by the ex-pat Westerners crowding round it.

 While I’m out, Nina does some home-schooling with the boys.  Whilst it’s technically half-term in the UK, this week represents a great opportunity for us to catch up with the boy’s schooling, and we repeat the same routine – despite it being met with some reluctance – for the next five days.

We eat lunch on our terrace then spend the afternoon on the beach – Nina and I reading and sunbathing; the boys digging holes and building sea defences with their hands.  All those years of never giving them a bucket and spades are really paying off…

Different restaurant this evening – more Westernised, excellent grilled ‘loup’ fish for us and spaghetti carbonara for Laurie; Ralph doubles down on the Brik and we double down on the beer.

Day 46, May 29th.  Tunis, 26-30C, sunny

See Day 45 above – substitute visit to Carrefour for visit to Toyota garage to drop car off for a much-needed service and oil change. 

Excellent Lebanese restaurant for supper.  So much food that we end up taking most of the grilled meat home, to re-heat for lunch the following day.

Day 47, May 30th.  Tunis, 26-30C, sunny

See Day 45 above.  I run to the Toyota garage first thing to get an update (phone updates seemingly not possible).  

Laurie has a poorly tooth; Nina takes him to the dentist nearby and he ends up having a tooth removed.  Very brave.  Nina does very well to communicate with the dentist in her finest French – important in the circumstances, to ensure Laurie doesn’t have any more teeth taken out than is necessary.

Return to same restaurant as Day 45.

Day 48, May 31st.  Tunis, 26-32C, sunny

See Day 45 above, coupled with a return to the Lebanese restaurant.  We collect the car from Toyota and pay another visit to the Carrefour.  We’re becoming rather fond of La Marsa.

Day 49, June 1st.  Tunis, 26-32C, sunny

Our final day in Tunis – it’s been a blissful break: five days in the same place, no driving, some proper civilisation and a full catch up on sleep, diaries, trip admin, and home schooling.  Tunis feels very live-able, and La Marsa, with its beach, its quiet, shaded streets and bougainvillea-clad houses, feels like somewhere one could happily live, with a foreign posting.

We pay a visit to Carthage, feeling we should see at least some of Tunisia’s culture before we depart for Sicily this evening.  Plus, it’s only a ten-minute drive from La Marsa and on the way to port – so we have no excuse.  It’s hot, and we drag our reluctant children round four of its main sites, with the promise that four sites equals ice-cream.  In fairness, it is neither as large, grand or impressive as any of the sites we saw in Algeria; plus here, there are many other tourists.  But we make it as far as the Baths of Antoninus, which at least provide some fantastically sized ruined arches and pillars for everyone to climb over.

Carthage duly visited, we eat at a restaurant enticingly named Vin au Vin in La Goulette, a busy suburb of Tunis near the port, then jump back in the car to find the ferry departure terminal. 

This is no easy exercise.  Little or no signposting from La Goulette, we know its somewhere at the near the entrance to the Lake of Tunis; our ferry booking indicates an address halfway down the La Goulette causeway but we know that’s wrong, Google Maps shows the ferry lines leaving a port on the south side of the lake entrance, and I’ve read something online suggesting this is correct…

It's not.  After a 15-minute drive over some very impressive bridges and infrastructure to reach the south side of this huge port, we cross a disused railway line, pass – randomly – a shepherd with a herd of goats, and end up at a barrier, at the end of a succession of roundabouts. A solitary guard asks us where we are going. 

“GNV departure” is our reply. 

“GNV? Non. Tournez a droite au deuxieme rond-point” he points us back down the road from which we’ve just come. 

A little concerned, we turn around, and follow his instructions.  They take us back over the same bridges and dual carriageways we’ve just driven over.  It’s about 7.50pm, ostensibly our “last check-in” time is 8pm (despite the midnight departure).  There are no signs, anywhere. 

Luckily, Nina uses her magical research abilities, keeps calm and tries alternative Google searches for the ferry terminal – and comes up trumps.  It is on the north side of the lake entrance – just 50 metres from where we’ve just driven to, but a full 20 minutes drive.

No drama.  We make it in time.  More than enough time, in fact.  The usual pre-Mediterranean ferry crossing faffage takes many hours:

1.        Ten minutes to check in – avoiding the touts trying to charge us money for helpfully informing us we need our passports and booking reference.

2.        An hour through customs – reasonably cursory; they’re keen to understand if we have large quantities of booze, fags or money, but beyond that, they’re unfussed.  Every other van around us is being made to empty its entire contents for inspection, we feel rather lucky here.

3.        Ten minutes at passport control.  Particularly interested in the fact we’ve come from Algeria – and curious to know why – but otherwise uneventful.

4.        Three and a half hours sat in the car, in a queue, doing precisely nothing.  The boys try to sleep, Nina and I catch up with diary writing and researching our Italy accommodation.

5.        Finally, at 1am, some action – we move forward 100 feet.  All the vehicles are then re-inspected by customs and police, looking for stowaways.  This is, we understand, one of the hottest people-smuggling routes across the Mediterranean.  It’s only 200 miles to Sicily, so it stands to reason.

6.        At 1.30am, we finally board our (massive) ferry – but not before a final police search on the ramp, again checking for stowaways.

By 2am, we’re tucked up in our relatively new, small but comfortable cabin.  This time, thankfully, the Mediterranean is like a millpond and we sleep, largely undisturbed, until gone nine in the morning.

In conclusion, we saw very little of Tunisia, and very few of its attractions.  We met relatively few of its people, but those we did were friendly and hospitable.  We weren’t hassled; in La Marsa we were invisible to the locals.  We certainly don’t feel qualified to form any meaningful opinions about the country. 

But we had a really lovely time in Tunis – and in many respects we felt like we’d arrived back in Europe already.  The city felt wealthy, liberal and cosmopolitan – with girls happily going to work wearing shorts and T-shirts, or wearing bikinis or short swimming dresses on the beach.  The atmosphere was relaxed – even in the busier parts around La Goulette – although the impatient drivers seemed more Italian.  From the little we saw, the country has great infrastructure and (for once in North Africa) an effective rubbish clearing system, plus a more developed culture around generally looking after the place.  Very live-able.

Day 50, June 2nd.  Palermo, Sicily 24-30C, sunny

Waking around 9.30am, we’re excited to realise we’re already starting to round the Sicilian coast, making good headway towards Palermo.  The calm seas have evidently enabled us to make up time: we don’t know what time we left Tunis, but we certainly hadn’t departed at 2am when we got to sleep.

Rather basic food offering on the ferry: well-travelled croissants, of various sorts.  But good coffee and fresh orange juice help, plus we’d had the foresight to bring our own food. 

We eventually arrive in Palermo just before 1pm – heaven knows how it takes so long to get these things into a port.  It takes another 45 minutes to get off the boat: the Tunisian drivers of the cars around us are still on the boat, evidently asleep, and need to be found – and woken – before we can reverse through a tangle of abandoned vehicles, and make our escape. 

Italian customs are a relative breeze and within half an hour we’re free – with a certain level of excitement about being ‘back in Europe’ after our African adventures. 

But back in civilisation?  Perhaps not. 

Palermo is a beguiling, confusing city – a hotch-potch of classic Baroque, Arab-Norman and Byzantine architecture, intermingled with truly shocking 1950’s and 60’s mafia-backed developments – woven together by sometimes charming, often rubbish-strewn and always potholed streets.  

Traffic travels rapidly on the main avenues (with little regard for regulations – luckily we’ve just arrived from North Africa), whilst the narrow backstreets are the preserve of the scooter or the Cinquecento.  Numerous times, Google Maps tries to direct us down alleys where we simply won’t fit; it’s a great system usually – but it has simply no concept of width.  Or steps, for that matter.

We find a backstreet wide enough to park up and feast ourselves on delicious Sicilian streetfood – Arancini, fried aubergines, grilled Calamaretti (baby squid), herby fishballs and other delicious treats.  It costs 70 euros – a reminder we’re back in Europe!  Sated after our very late lunch, we navigate our way to the western suburbs of Palermo to find our first accommodation.  Now we’re back in Europe for an extended period of time, staying in B&B’s or hotels – or even campsites – will get ruinously expensive.  We’ve found a great website called gardensharing.it which is just that – locals letting out their gardens, or orchards, or just fields – for campers. 

Tonight we’re staying with Samuele – who lives up a hill, on the outskirts of Palermo.  Whilst his house is tiny, simple and immaculate – just one bedroom, a sitting room and a bathroom, he has a couple of acres of gentle, terraced orchards, full of lovingly cared for lemon, olive and almond trees, cacti and swathes of sage and rosemary.

He greets us warmly and shows us where we can park.  He speaks no English at all and we rapidly realise that our Italian – sufficient for ordering drinks and being courteous in tourist hotspots – is absolutely miles off being any good for proper conversations, despite a rapid crash course on the audio books in Tunisia.  But we make do, and get the gist that we can use his bathroom (good), don’t drink the water (noted), and help ourselves to his produce (thank you).  He is very kindly, and wanders back a little later with armfuls of fresh lemons, rosemary and sage.

Contented, relaxed, we enjoy a beer and prepare our first home cooked meal since Essaouria in Morocco – pasta, using lovely local Sicilian ingredients.

What we hoped would be a restorative night’s sleep turned out to be less so, thanks to a continuous cacophony of barking dogs, owls, dance music from a club somewhere on a beach nearby, fireworks and scooters.

Day 51, June 3rd.  Palermo – nr. Ciotta, Sicily, 24-30C, sunny

Somewhat refreshed, we enjoy a super-relaxing breakfast chez Samuele, before bidding our host goodbye and heading back into Palermo, for a little culture before heading south.

Once again Google Maps does its best to take the side wings off our car; once again we foil it.  We park within spitting distance of Palermo Cathedral, and go and inspect.  It’s certainly ‘A’-list enough for Laurie and you can climb up to its roof – so a double win in that regard. 

Like much of the rest of the city, it’s an architectural mishmash of styles, started in the 1100’s and added to by numerous architects on a regular basis up until the 18th century.  Huge, Moorish arches hold up the frescoed portico on the southern side; the roof is adorned by a variety of different crenelations and cupolas, whilst at either end, with no particular symmetry, sit a huge dome, and a bell-tower.  Ralph gets his architecture fix (and again wows us with us knowledge of construction methods), Laurie gets his climbing fix, everyone’s happy. 

We find a quiet square nearby for coffees and fresh orange juice and then head back to the car, and after a couple of quick stops at little markets in the suburbs for provisions for our next night’s camping, we head south, towards Agricento.

Driving out through the suburbs, again we can’t get over the sheer quantities of rubbish – some bagged, some loose – that is piled up in every street.  This, coupled with the potholes, the crumbling buildings and the very sketchy wiring everywhere start to get us thinking – did we enter, or leave civilisation when we left Tunis? 

We drive south, on bumpy roads, stopping for lunch at an excellent, museum-like restaurant in Marineo, adorned with ancient tools and farming equipment from a seemingly quite recent past.  Being a Monday, it’s the only restaurant that’s open in this half of Sicily, and whilst the boys are almost heartbroken with disappointment to hear that the pizza oven only gets going at 8pm (the first of many times we hear this…) they’re soon sated by excellent bowls of fresh pasta.

We’re staying in another garden-stay tonight, this time outside Agricento, so we can visit the Valley of the Temples tomorrow.  As it turns out, we’re actually staying in a little olive grove, at the very end of a long, rutted track, 50 metres from the sea, a few km outside Ciotta – and some 30km beyond Agricento.

After some confusion (involving sending us to completely the wrong town), our friendly hosts meet us at their house, and lead us in their car for some ten minutes to where we’re staying. Within the olive grove is a half-built, concrete shell of a house, with a habitable ground floor. The very kindly grandfather of our host explains (again, no English – much use of Google translate) that he’s building the house for him and his wife to retire in; they hope to finish it next year.  It’s an ambitious, optimistic statement – the rest of the building site looks long abandoned – but he’s cheerfully insistent.

Once again, we’re laden with gifts – this time handfuls of fresh apricots from their trees and a melon from the market.  The boys gobble most of the apricots before we can get our hands on them.  Few things in the world beat humble generosity. 

We walk down to the sea, following the ‘path’ pointed out by our host, a youthful Sicilian with wild hair and (helpfully) basic English.  He says the path isn’t so good.  He’s right.  Half an hour later we arrive at the sea, bruised, cut and scratched.  No beach – just a rather rough Mediterranean crashing against the rocks.  So we content ourselves with crab-spotting, before repeating the experience, back to our car.

After another excellent supper (fresh tomato, basil and mozzarella salad, local prosciutto and melon), we go to bed, contentedly listening to the crashing of the waves and the wind whistling through the pine trees above us.

Day 52, June 4th.  nr. Ciotta – somewhere on Mount Etna, Sicily, 16-28C, sunny, rain showers

Reasonable sleep.  Just the one barking dog last night, but some big gusts of wind which – when heard from inside the tent – always sound worse than they actually are.

Melon, yoghurt and granola for breakfast this morning – fairly workaday stuff, but Laurie decides to get his climbing fix in early today, and eats his breakfast perched in a pine tree above us, whilst gazing meditatively across the sea.

It’s a half-hour drive back in the wrong direction to Agricento, on truly terrible, potholed, concrete-strewn, fly-tipped roads.  The surrounding farmland is pretty enough, albeit largely poly-tunnelled; Sicily isn’t yet turning out to be the gem we hoped it would be.

Arriving at the Valley of the Temples, we find all the tourists.  Car parked and entry tickets purchased, we follow the crowds up to the huge, Greek-built 2,400 year old structures – one of which, Concordia – is largely intact.  Marvellous and photogenic as they are, we’re still a little spoilt from our Algerian experiences where we had places like this to ourselves, and after an hour or so, interrupted by a (much welcome for the locals) rain shower, we’re back in the car, heading for Mount Etna, and a lunch stop en-route.

Today is Tuesday.  More things should be open.  We stop in Pietraperzia, a typically Sicilian town, perched precariously on top of a steep hill, and go in search of lunch.  Not a single place serves food. 

A local in a bar which is busily selling beer and ice cream (often to the same people) explains with a shrug that we won’t find anywhere that serves lunch nearby.  Are we missing something here?  Instead, we find the town’s bakery, buy two loaves of delicious fresh bread and make our way to the very top of the town, through increasingly tiny streets, avoiding the steps.  We park up and make a picnic with the rest of yesterday’s prosciutto and melon, and admire the beautiful, bucolic view.  It’s a very simple panorama – green and yellow patchwork mountains, a shepherd with a couple of collies and a flock of sheep, a combine precariously harvesting a steep hill in the foreground.

It strikes us that we’re seeing the interior of Sicily as it really is – agricultural, poor, hardworking, desperately in need of rain.  Nowhere serves lunch since there’s no demand for it.  In the touristy areas, restaurants abound.  But outside those areas, we must go with the flow.  It’s a timely reminder that this is actually what we’re after, even if it is a little frustrating when we’re hungry.

Driving on to Catania, suddenly the vast silhouette of Mount Etna emerges into view, in the haze ahead of us.  We’ve arranged to do an e-biking tour round this most active of volcanoes tomorrow, and to camp on the mountain for a couple of nights.  But until we see it, now, rearing up and utterly dwarfing the other (hitherto impressive) Sicilian mountains, we’d given absolutely no thought to what this would entail.  Now, it’s become a very real adventure. 

We reach Catania, on the east coast and nestled in the shadow of Etna, at 4pm, in time to stock up on camping provisions at a Lidl and have an ice-cream in the city’s main square.  Catania is built largely from the dark grey volcanic basalt that has tumbled forth from Etna’s many craters over the centuries, and whilst the city’s main building are grand and impressive, the ubiquitous grey, coupled with grey, rain-filled skies above, gives the place an austere, sombre feel.

We don’t dally long – we must find our camping spot and set up in good time, before sunset.  We’re staying at a disused (or not yet open, we’re not quite sure which) campsite at around 1,300 metres, and our host has left a key out for us.  We drive out through Catania’s suburbs – through semi-derelict but very much lived-in high rise tenement blocks, some so badly cracked they’d be condemned elsewhere.  The rubbish here has piled up for so long the residents simply burn it in great heaps in the street.  It’s a proper picture of urban decay.

But before long, we’ve escaped it, and are climbing, rapidly, through hairpin bends, suddenly finding ourselves among vast, granulated rivers of black and grey rock – our first up close glimpse of some of the lava flows that Etna continues to emit, on a regular basis.

At 1,300 metres, we find the turning to our campsite.  Through one unlocked gate just off the road, we then find the imposing, locked metal gates 100 metres further on, and the key where it should be.  We drive in, and park on a beautifully flat, open piece of land, turn the engine off, and jump out to examine our surroundings.

The ground beneath us is black – tiny granules of ground up basalt and pumice-like rock.  All around us are huge piles of black rock – we’re in the middle of a 20 year-old lava flow that is so large that until we climb up to a higher vantage point, we don’t even realise we’re in it. 

There are a handful of buildings about, but all are derelict, or re-taken by nature.  Our host had promised us a loo and running water; eventually, after a video call with her, we find it, relievedly, tucked down a hill. 

We cook our supper – a hearty carbonara, loading up on carbs ahead of tomorrow’s exertions.  It’s totally silent – our most peaceful, and perhaps our most dramatic – camping spot of the trip so far. 

When we’re clearing up, a small, silvery fox appears out of the shadows and circles us, wary, but not scared, looking for scraps we might have dropped.  A quick internet search reveals he’s the largest mammal we’re likely to encounter up here, which is good news, since we are very much alone.

We’re in bed early – and here, there’s nothing to disturb us – barring the odd owl in the distance, and some peculiar creature that goes ‘g-doink g-doink’ in the middle of the night.  We still don’t know what it was.

Day 53, June 5th.  Mount Etna, Sicily, 14-22C, cloudy, rain

Fried eggs, yoghurt and granola this morning to fuel us.  Everyone slept well apart from me – almost too quiet, it seems. 

We’re collected by our biking guide, Raffaela, and her driver shortly before 9am, and are driven up to the Sapienza Rifuge point at 1,900 metres, to get kitted out with our bikes.  There’s a bit of faffing, briefing and testing (it’s the first time any of us have ridden e-bikes), then we’re on our way. 

Our intention is to circumnavigate the mountain – about six and a half hours, 50km.  We start off well enough, cycling through pretty pine forests which have regrown through ancient lava flows.  It takes 200 years for trees to recolonise the landscape after a lava flow, and just 20 years for the flowers and grasses to do the same.  We cycle on tracks through huge, recent flows – several hundred metres wide and still black as black – and admire the simply awesome power that Mother Nature can unleash.  These flows – whilst slow-flowing (very viscous due to a high silica content, for those interested…) are simply unstoppable.

Alas, the rain has other ideas today.  It is much needed on Sicily so we really can’t begrudge it, but after only eight kilometres, we’re all soaked to the skin, and make a team decision with Raffaela that we should abandon the tour, go back, and try again tomorrow.

Good decision.  On the way back, the rain continues – and we realise we’ve been cycling uphill most of the way – so effortless on electric bikes!  But eight kilometres of gentle freewheeling back, expending virtually no energy, makes us all very cold.  Back at the Sapienza Rifuge, we take refuge in one of the restaurants, seeking warmth, hot drinks and hot food – and wisely decide, with the weather coming in, that we’ll never be able to dry out properly going back to the car. 

So we check in to the adjacent Sapienza Rifuge Hotel; Nina puts the boys into hot showers while I get a lift down the mountain with Raffaela, swiftly pack the car up, and drive back up to get into the warmth.

Good decision all round.  Clean, warm, dry and after an hour’s quiet time, we can enjoy a late afternoon walk around some of the nearby craters, once the weather has lifted.  And – much to the boy’s delight – we are now finally staying in a hotel, so get to be in the right place at the right time (i.e. evening) for the pizza oven to be lit, and they get their first (and only) genuine Sicilian pizza.

Everyone enjoys a warm, comfortable and dry bed tonight.

Day 54, June 6th.  Mount Etna, Sicily – nr Palmi, Calabria, 16-32C, cloudy, sunny

At 150 euros, we make the most of the inclusive breakfast in the hotel, before meeting Raffaela again at 9am, after our 'acclimatisation' yesterday.  Today we’re going to try a shorter, steeper route – straight up the mountain, to about 2,700 metres.  Whilst the summit is around 3,357 metres (and growing regularly, due to the constant volcanic activity), our guides don’t have a licence to go higher than 2,700 metres – and in fairness, it’s high enough for us, with the boys.

We set off, on a steep track made of loose, finely ground volcanic rock.  It’s dusty and slippery – especially for Laurie, who’s on the smallest bike, with the narrowest tyres, which regularly loses grip, causing the bike to slide and him to fall off.  But he perseveres, determinedly, and we make steady progress up the mountain. 

Beyond the top cable car station (the bottom station being next to our hotel from last night), a regular stream of huge, Unimog buses with five-foot-high tyres ferry tourists up to 2,700 metres.  Whilst they drive slowly, they are a domineering, slightly scary presence on the road, especially for Laurie, who’s still struggling with his bike. 

But we make it to our highest point, and dismount, delightedly.  Raffaela takes us on foot down part of the sheer, black scree to inspect a ‘lava bomb’ – a rock about as tall as Laurie and the same width, one of many such rocks which, over the years, has been literally fired out of Etna, as a piece of rapidly solidifying lava.  She points out another one, a mile below in a valley, the size of a bus.  The strength of this volcano is extraordinary.

Raffaela explains the many craters that have formed on Etna in recent years – and the numerous lava flows – 1983, 1991, 2001, 2018, 2023.  The volcano has been in a near-constant state of activity for much of the last decade – so much so that the mountain has grown in height by 30 metres in the last 10 years. 

Still on foot, she shows us, peering over a cliff beneath us, the ‘Valley of the Ox’.  Up until 2001 this was a large, pretty, valley, with fields, woods, cows and houses – until a fresh eruption started a new lava flow, which over the proceeding one a half years, entirely devoured the valley, leaving nothing but the sea of blackness beneath us.  We can see here and there the wild chamomile flowers that have started to recolonise the valley, but it’ll be over 200 years before it’s habitable and truly fertile again.

On our way back down the mountain, the narrowness of Laurie’s tyres becomes an even bigger issue – as he struggles for grip, with the near constant braking required on the loose gravel, to get down safely.  After innumerable spillages, we finally decide that Laurie and I should walk back, with me taking the bikes, while Nina, Ralph and Raffaella push on.  She’ll send another guide up to help us.

As it transpires, Laurie and I can jog on quite happily down the mountain, with me just having to hold the bikes back against gravity.  We cycle on the flat, and in the end, reach the bottom only ten minutes after the others.

Both boys did phenomenally well.  It’s a tough undertaking, and these guides were the only ones who would take children under 14 years old.  With hindsight, we can see why – but they’re made of stern stuff.

We say heartfelt thankyous and goodbyes to Raffaela, pack the car up and make our way down to sea level. It’s early afternoon and we intend to cross to the mainland, via Messina, later this afternoon.

As it transpires it’s an easy final leg in Sicily.  We speed along the best road we’ve encountered, a dual carriageway that snakes its way between the mountains and the sea, all the way north past Taormina, to Messina. 

We find our ferry terminal with little hassle – this is a far simpler endeavour than any of our previous crossings.  The boat goes every 20 minutes and takes 20 minutes; no passports, security, or customs.  By 4pm, we’re sailing to the mainland. Why no-one has yet built a bridge across the 6km gap we can only imagine.

We reflect on our short jaunt in Sicily.  We’ve loved parts of it – but it’s so evident that the place has been appallingly governed, for so long – in large part because of the mafia (Cosa Nostra) self-interests on the island.  Raffaela had echoed our despair about the current rubbish situation – but explained that “Right now, Sicily is actually quite clean.  It used to be even worse than this!”.

Sicily is a beautiful island, with extraordinary food and local produce, blessed with spectacular scenery and beaches.  We have been made to feel incredibly welcome, by hospitable and generous people.  But in terms of civilisation, Tunisia wins hands down.