Valletta, Malta (Marsaxlokk)

Pyxis
Karen & Richard
Fri 29 May 2009 21:11

Friday 29th May – Valletta, Malta (Marsaxlokk)

35:53.799N 14:29.614E

 

This morning we headed out on the buses again (really getting the hang of these – having a bus stop at the end of the pontoon helps J).  Some cloud has helped reduce the temperature and make life a little more comfortable.

 

First of all we stopped off at Paola to check out the Hal Saflieni Hypogeum, a set of underground burial chambers from around 3600-3000BC; these vaults are open to the public but allow only 80 visitors per day to preserve this Unesco World Heritage site.  Unfortunately it is booked solid up to June 20th but we wandered in to see if there were any cancellations as some friends had done this earlier this year and had been lucky.  Unfortunately there were no cancellations available and preparations were underway for a VIP visit – so we walked on through the town to Tarxien and then caught another bus on to Marsaxlokk.

 

Marsaxlokk is Malta’s main fishing harbour; it lies in a large three-headed bay on the SE coast and is very picturesque with many small colourful fishing boats.  To the west of Marsaxlokk, below Birzebugga, is a large commercial port and on the north east side of the bay is the Delimara power station.  We enjoyed a couple of hours wandering round and had lunch there sitting looking out over the harbour. 

 

We stopped to talk to one of the large commercial fishing boats as we could see some interesting marker buoys on deck for their long lines; they are used to show the position of the line on radar.  They normally catch tuna or swordfish.  The chap said the boat just arriving was bringing in a load of tuna so we went out to check what had been caught – it was a fairly small fishing boat but it unloaded around 8 really large tuna from its hold plus a swordfish.  We don’t know how they had managed to fit them all in; these were dolphin friendly, line caught tuna as we checked out their lines and asked what bait they use – mackerel apparently.

 

On the way back we stopped off in Valletta for a while as we haven’t visited it since being in Malta

 

We then caught a bus back to Pyxis late afternoon.  Richard made a trip in the dinghy get a gaz refill – we were pleased to find it very cheap here.  This evening it was warm enough to have dinner in the cockpit again which was nice. 

 

Marsaxlokk, Malta

 

Msida marina:  Our pontoon;  Pyxis alongside

 

© Pyxis 2009