Thursday 22 April
Cefalu, Sicily

I’m kicking off my counterclockwise navigation of Sicily tomorrow in Villafranca Tirrena (http://www.comuni-italiani.it/083/105/mappa.html).

I walked 41-kilometers here from Messina last September 8 before catching a cruise ship to Chios, the Greek island where Homer was reputedly born. During the five-night cruise aboard the luxurious Corinthian II I spoke about “The Idiot and the Odyssey” with alumni groups from Stanford and Columbia. Then I MedTrekked around a number of Greek islands – Chios, Lesbos, Limnos, Ithaca and Corfu – and climbed Mount Olympus.

Now I’m back, after flying above the E15 volcanic ash from San Francisco to Palermo via Amsterdam and Rome, to tenaciously tackle the largest island in the Med and a key spot for action in “The Odyssey.” Why did I decide to go counterclockwise around Sicily? Because that’s the way the Romans went in 263 when they launched the Punic War against the Carthaginians and the Greeks. And I want to save Mount Etna and Taormina, where the Greeks founded a colony in 403 BC and where my daughter Sonia was conceived in 1981, until the finale.

The stroll here from Messina took me along the Riviera of Peace (Littorale de Pace) and around the Peloro Cape where, at Torre Faro with its monumental 232-meter high tower, I spent an hour meditatively gazing onto the Strait of Messina at the scene of Scylla and Charybdis. I’d recently spent a week in the Italian town where the monster Scylla ate six members of Odysseus’s crew and during my first steps in Sicily I was fixated on Charybdis, the whirlpoolish monster that almost sunk Odysseus’s raft.

My day soft-adventuring- hike out here was a piece of panettone, though actually I lunched on fresh grapes and peaches. I walked barefoot a good deal of the way, investigated some World War II pillboxes and took a refreshing dip at the pebbled beach in Rodia before I arrived in Villafranca Tirrena where I immediately ordered a melon/pistachio gelato and five glasses of cold local water.

“Why are you so thirsty?” asked the mini-skirted server as she scooped the ice cream.

“I’ve walked 41-K here on the beach from Messina!” I said.

“You’re not just thirsty, you’re stupid!” she replied.

What a perceptive comment to kick off my hike around Sicily.

My next major decision, besides the flavor of ice cream, will occur when I arrive in Milazzo tomorrow. Should I catch a boat out to the Aeolian Islands, where Aeolus gave Odysseus that famous bag of wind (leading to the expression “windbag”), or save that excursion until I’ve trekked around the entire island?

Yet another tough choice for a soft adventurer on the Med.

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About Joel

Joel Stratte-McClure has been a global trekker since the 1970s. He lived in France for over 30 years, working as a journalist, before he turned his attention to a unique life-time-project of walking the shores of the Mediterranean. The first 4,401 kilometers are explored in his inspirational and entertaining first book "The Idiot and the Odyssey: Walking the Mediterranean." The next 4,401 kilometers are covered in the gods-filled sequel, "The Idiot and the Odyssey II: Myth, Madness and Magic on the Mediterranean,” published on Valentine's Day 2013. The last 4,401 kilometers will be discussed in the last book of the trilogy currently entitled "The Idiot and the Odyssey III: Alexander the Great Walks the Mediterranean."