Sept 10th- Everybody’s fine

The theme of the day was travel and trial. Nothing came easily this day, even the ferry ride back to the mainland from Stromboli. We learned at the last minute we had to switch ferries on Lipari. Then we had to wait at the ferry terminal in the hot sun for our Sicilian friends, who came to pick us up after 3 minutes turned into 30.

Charlotte waits for the ferry from Stromboli

After that, things went smoothly for only about 10 kilometers down the road… until the lead van missed the exit for lunch, and the next service station was not for more than 100 kilometers. Before we made it that far down the road, the autostrada became closed for repair and we were detoured through a couple small towns. We stopped in a little town called Finale where we completely drained the two open places in town of all food. The town was right on the ocean and everyone we met was very friendly, helpful, and extremely amused by 17 hungry-looking foreigners wandering around town. We left Finale approximately the time we thought we would be arriving in Sciacca, and we still had half of Sicily to traverse.

Dave and John at the "thumb-wrestling statue" in Finale

The autostrada in Sicily is pretty amazing. Most of our drive was either in a tunnel or on a bridge. Impressive engineering! We left the autostrada for the superstrada around 5 pm, and ran into a bunch more traffic and slow trucks. The superstrada was also under repair, and we were forced once again onto surface streets. Unfortunately, this time the results were less favorable for us. The little blue car got rear-ended by another car in a hurry at a stop sign. Everyone in the car was fine, but between the exchanging insurance, calling the rental company, dealing with carabinieri (one branch of the Italian police), and the obligatory ambulance check-up, we were all sitting on the side of the road for two hours. The blue car is still drivable, but the trunk has to be taped shut with duct-tape.

Hanging with the Carabinieri

One would hope that our day of misadventures was over, but to top it all off, we got completely lost trying to find Verdetecnico, our awesome agritursimo in Sciacca… even though we had a GPS with a great map and a GPS point for the place. One of the owners had to come and get us in his scooter and lead us here. We ended the day by breaking a bottle in the kitchen.

Tomorrow cannot help but be better!

John Pe., Rachel and Bre (Chore Group 1)