You have to enter the Zingaro Nature Reserve to swim here.
Three euros (which will be worth about $1 on Sunday if the currency keeps declining at its current rate)?
No, the European Union has not forced Italy to charge tourists and locals to swim in the Mediterranean Sea to help save Greece. But that’s what you’ve got to pay to get to swimming holes, like this one called Cala Capreria, in the Zingaro Nature Reserve between Scopello and San Vito on Sicily’s northwestern coast.
That’s not all European walkers get for their three euros in Sicily’s first nature reserve. The charge enables you to hike at least seven kilometers along coastline/cliffside paths that provide dazzling views of the Gulf of Castellammare, stunning mountain peaks, some 16th century watchtowers, a few former tuna factories, scores of animals (tortoises love the place) and 700 (no, I didn’t count) types of vegetation.
More importantly, I sighted my first Cyclops (many academics/archeologists/anthropologists believe the Cyclops in Homer’s “Odyssey” lived in caves in Sicily, though there is an ongoing dispute about exactly where) in this hillside grotto. And I’m sure that every sheep I saw late this afternoon was a distant offspring of the ones Odysseus used to sneak his men out of this cave once he blinded the Cyclops called Polyphemus.
I spotted my first Cyclops in this cave in the Zingaro Nature Reserve.
Naturally I MedTrekked far beyond the borders of the reserve (www.riservazingaro.it) to the sexy little seaside resort of San Vito at the end of the cape. Then I climbed a very high mountain and ended my latest Mediterranean walking adventure by descending the precarious hillside to the beach below.
It’s a rough downhill trek to that distant beach for even a seasoned global trekker.
Want to join me? Here’s where The Idiot was when he took the last photograph.
Message: This is where I am right now on my May MedTrek stomp around Sicily and Malta.
Text and Photos: Joel Stratte-McClure
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