The Last of Sicily

After Mt Etna we spent a few days in 'recovery mode', well I did, but Chris spent many hours bobbling about in the sea in a wee kayak. We attempted to sell the bikes in Catania, but had hilarious episodes trying to mime out 'sell bikes' to the shop owners who didn't get it at all. Eventually we got one shop to understand, only to be offered a miserable sum. So we biked back to the campground dejected, only to discover the campground owner was super keen for two new bikes and bought them for a bit more.

Below: Chris enters the choppy waters in Catania...

Below: Chris's bike looking all shiny and clean before it was sold (note his beloved red tyre).


The following day it was raining as we ran (running very late) to the station, missed the train and had to wait 3 hours for another through the centre of Sicily out to Cefalu on the Northern Coast. We found a nice hotel and splashed out on our last Italian pizza. In the morning we swam on the pretty beach and wandered around the town of Cefalu with its large rock. In the afternoon we headed to Oliveri to camp.

We woke early with the intention of catching the train to Milazzo hoping to maybe get out to the Volcano Islands. But, at the station the grumpy little Mr Bean conductor said 'No, no trano till 12 oclock', great. Miserably we wandered around pukey little Oliveri with our large yellow sack. At midday we returned to be told 'No, no trano.....ever...its schobero,...schobero...no trano! No!' And with that he went and hid in his office! Panicked we asked others only to be told sadly 'schobero, yes, schobero'. And no trains came at all. So we went back to the campground to uncover the mistery of this schobero thingee, and discovered that in fact it was a national strike and there were no trains, no planes, no buses and no boats running all day!

So in Oliveri we remained and in the evening discovered a very nice bit of beach just along from our camp spot. In the morning we caught the 7 oclock train to Messina, and then the ferry, and then the 7 hour train up and finally back into bustling Rome. We bused way out to a campsite (were ironically it turned out there was no camping, only cabins?). On Dec 2 we trained to the airport and flew away from a place where we had had some great (if a tad crazy and frustrating) adventures over the past few months!