Barcelonna, Sicily, After A 34-Kilometre Hiking Day

Here’s where I wound up at the end of my first day back on my counterclockwise MedTrek around Sicily, the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea.

http://maps.google.com/mapsf=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=38.17302,15.19787&ll=38.17302,15.19787&ie=UTF8&z=12&om=1

I was going to spin a riveting soft adventure travelogue about how I upset one god and two goddesses (one of them was my chiropractor who told me not to walk more than ten kilometers on the first day out due to hammering hamstrings), and how I battled the wind while trudging around Cape Milazzo (and decided not to take the boat out to the Aeolian islands — including Lipari, Vulcano and Stromboli — until the weather calms down). Then I was going to mention how I managed to get completely wet crossing a creek the size of my bathtub before meeting an English woman who’s been married to a Sicilian for fifteen years admitting to the only English speaker she’s seen in a while that she’s ready to go home.

Trudi Pratt, my sensible chiropractor

But, something even more remarkable occurred. When I got back to my cozy squat tonight at 10 (it was a long day) the street-side door (the studio is on a tilted cobblestone street just behind the massive cathedral) was wide open. Either I’d failed to lock it correctly and the wind whipped it open, or the Mafia capo has a key and wanted to let me know it. In any event, whether it blew open at 7:30 am when I left or was opened by the don at dusk, I was pretty sure the place, and I, would have been cleaned out.

But no. Not a thing had been touched. And from the looks of it, nobody bothered to enter.

Perhaps, as the owner said when he gave me the keys last night (*), “this is a very secure neighborhood.” Or…..

(*) I’m keeping the street address and name of the town a secret until I move down the road.

After all, this is Sicily!

Text and Photos: Joel Stratte-McClure

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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."