Magna Graeca

Our last morning in Scopello.......and well.....another beautiful sunrise and off to Selinunte.

Selinunte is another archaeological site, this one on the south coast and this one truly and totally Greek. A part of the Magna Graecia expansion of Greece along the south of Italy. We drove through truly wonderful Sicilian countryside full of vines and olive groves with a shallow descent from the mountains in the centre to the southern part of the island.

Selinunte is set by the sea on the hills between two rivers. It is quite an extensive site and I would have loved to have  my daughters, grandsons and Joel and Morgan chatting history and architecture with me. Instead I had Marjan just beaming at her surroundings saying "Wow!" a lot.

We started at the eastern temples, the main one of which, was controversially reconstructed from the materials on site in the late 1950's. Maybe controversial but so interesting to see and walk among.

We could walk, at least there were no signs forbidding it, right into the middle of the rubble, and we did.

It really was quite awesome. Anyway we walked to the western site, down hill and up hill, where there are more temples. These are surrounded by the city walls and the city stretches out behind it. Two major roads quartering the city and the others at regular intervals. we walked the street to the northern gate then along the inside of the eastern wall, checking out the small openings as we went.

The Selunites and the Segestans did not get on and got into various bits of bother, including at various stages Phoenicians, Athenians, Spartans, Carthaginians and any other thugs roaming the mid Mediterranean.

The walk back to the car was hot and sweaty.......have I mentioned the humidity?

SIDENOTE: The humidity.

It is really humid. So humid in fact that electronics seem to suffer. Marjan's phone just went all pale and pink. It has been recovering in a bag full of rice and seems to be getting better. My phone will not register touches on the screen half the time and then sometimes just goes and does what it wants for a while. My camera stops focusing at times and I have to take the battery out wipe it down and put it back in. It is really humid.

We have developed strategies: do not put phone in pocket; switch camera off after each shot; rest phone in sun to dry off; etc etc....but the google phone risotto is our favourite.

ENDSIDENOTE:

We were hungry and hot, and this is where some of Marjan's Sicily planning came in. We were not all that far from Da Vittorio in Porto Palo. It was mentioned as a great place to eat in a food/travel doco Marjan found. A mere half hour away. Let's go we said. So we put the coordinates into Jaime Lee and off we set..........now it was our navigation subsystem that was having humidity humpeties. First she suggested I drive into what looked like a gated driveway, when I refused she took me onto a main road off it and back to the gated driveway. This time it was Marjan who said "That's not a road", "See" said I. But Jaimie Lee insisted so in we went and yes it was a road and it even had a traffic light, the first we have seen outside the cities.

Anyway we drove in what appeared to be concentric loops over pot holed roads.....one pot hole would have eaten a smaller car.......surrounded by vines......until lo and behold we arrived at Porto Palo and found Da Vittorio by the water. Look it up. It was lunch time and we were ready . Our waiter took one look at us and said "Aqua con gas o naturale?" as he sat us by the window overlooking the Mediterranean surf. We were overwhelmed by the wine list, so just asked for a bottle of local dry white. "I'll take care of it!" he said.......which I immediately started regretting. We then spent a half hour eating bread and drinking water and sipping a wonderful local chardy....whilst arguing about how many courses we would have. I favoured 15 as there was so much yummy sounding stuff on the menu. In the end we settled for four - three and a salad. We shared some sardines.....divine.....we shared a tomato and seafood pasta.......equally divine....Marjan had a swordfish roulade and I had grilled tuna.......bloody wonderful. To top it off the waiter had not secured the only $400 bottle of chardy in Sicily. He had chosen a modest, by this place's wine list, bottle at $15 that suited the meal perfectly.

We were sated and happy and slightly tipsy with food and sun and stuff. So we jumped in the Mediterranean surf and paddled like great white Australian seals beaming and enjoying every bit of everything.

But we had to leave, we had a four PM appointment with a Sicilian in a black car at a petrol station in Monteallegro. His name apparently was Pino and he would find us. This is seriously how they do accommodation here. We thought that if we got kidnapped as part of this we had had a fine meal as our last.

Turned out Pino was fine and we followed his car as he drove using no indicators to a house on a hill overlooking the sea where Enza showed us through an immaculate little place with some local wine on the bench and some home grown veggies in the basket. Bliss.

A few postscripts:

1. Italian drivers are crazy......double lines, pass anyway...and then people make it three lanes to let them get away with it.
2. The lack of $ is palpable. We went into Monteallegro to buy some bits......bloody awful concrete housing, roads dug up and falling apart, light poles broken and hanging there.
3. The prices for a market shop item in Monteallegro are half Scopello. Less than half  for some items.
4. You cannot eat too much good seafood