Licata and Southern Sicily

Position:    37:03:44N     13:56:21E

Overwinter in Licata anyone?

Licata will be a super marina. The staff are great and the infrastructure is really modern. It’s just that the whole project isn’t quite completed yet. It’s as if the financial crisis embracing Italy has had the effect of delaying the finalization of this terrific project. It’s a shame but I am sure it is only temporary.
Licata is a super place to winter ones boat. The marina is safe, the facilities great, marina staff professional and the climate mild throughout the winter period.
Actually, it seemed strange to us that there were so many skippers securing their boat for the winter season or getting things ready to live here over the winter. Whilst we were just getting started again for a new chapter of our adventure!
The town itself is a little run down but does have that ‘real’ atmosphere that we like and in the evenings the main plazas get filled with families and kids playing, eating, drinking, talking and generally having a good time as in virtually all towns throughout Spain and Italy – so much better for society than being cooped up in individual homes every evening.

We go exploring.
We rented a car for a few days to explore this part of Sicily.
Well actually, we rented two cars. The first had to be push started again 30 miles from our base. We had to replace it with another one. The rental agent wasn’t best pleased for some reason. As far we could tell he had decided that it was our fault that the car battery was useless and the day was ruined. He wanted to charge us for that day and for the petrol used!
Yeh! Right!
We ended up with the rental clock restarting and it was just plain tough for him if we had used up any petrol from the tank. Both cars were pretty grotty anyway.
Yet again, Bob was excellent. He drove everywhere!

We attacked the coastline as per a military Roman operation.
First day conquer the western coast from here.
Second day conquer the eastern coast from here.

Cathy had read about an amazing cliff formations, temples and hilltop cities just along the coast. An hour along the coast and we passed several well preserved temples lying below Agrigento. In Agrigento itself we fought with the one-way road systems and the tiniest streets and had a terrific lunch overlooking all round for over 20km is every direction south. After having spend many many months looking for suitable small cups for ‘Limoncello’ without success, here, in a little boutique were the prefect ceramic cups. So, stocked up with these cups and supplies of more Limoncello, olive oils and herbs we set back for the boat stopping at cute little stopovers along the way.

The next day we headed east.
We had read about incredibly well preserved Roman general’s hunting lodge lodge that had been uncovered following a landslide at the turn of the century. The authorities had  done a super job of creating a museum to display the lodge for us today. The mosaics in EVERY room were stunning. The size of the ‘hunting lodge’ would have had the local peasants and dignitaries in awe. I think the lodge would have to go down as one of the best historic sites in Sicily. The magnitude of the ‘hunting lodge’ was not diminished one jot by the overly pretentious modern sculptures that had unfortunately been placed in the gardens.
We had to get back to the boat to try out our new cups – just to make sure that they did actually enhance the Limoncello. Tough job but it should be done.

Where to next?
We had been keeping an eye and reading all about Tunisia over the past year. Would the country be safe enough to visit after their mini-revolution? After several months of quiet, the country, and Tunis in particular, was back in the news again with more demonstrations and discontent. We were however keen to see the country first hand if possible.
Originally our plan was to head for ‘Tunis’, the capital of Tunisia but again reading Noonsite and speaking with neighboring skippers we were changing our thoughts on this. Tunis has become known for it’s ‘Backshish’. These are so-called courtesy payments given to local officials and businesses ‘to ease the process’. In the west we would call them bribes. This was rife in ‘Tunis’. The idea of has always been anathema to us in the west and so I was very unsure how well we would cope if this became an apparent need for us.
We also heard that the marina in Tunis was just plain dirty and old. For us, getting used to the terminology of visiting yachtsmen, that means REALLY dirty and old!

We had heard that ‘Hammamet’, a popular seaside tourist spot for western holiday makers and government officials alike just 50 miles along the coast had a clean modern marina and reasonable provisioning.

We chose to sail to Hammamet instead of Tunis. Then, visit Tunis by road, somehow and stay overnight in a hotel. Hammamet was about 170 miles to the SW.