Saturday morning update

Cloudy daybreak from my $50 hotel room in Sliema, Malta, as I prepare to head to Gozo after breakfast.

Incidentally, there is a Calypso in Gozo. In fact, immediately upon my arrival she arranged for my $50 Expedia-booked room at the Grand Hotel overlooking the harbor to be upgraded to a suite with a terrace. No wonder Odysseus stayed seven years!

View from my room at 6 am on May 15 before ferrying to Gozo.

This photo was taken @

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=35.91452,14.497&ll=35.91452,14.497&ie=UTF8&z=12&om=1

Some days it’s better to get wet and stay wet.

Looks like an easy MedTrek day on Sicily's Mediterranean coast but……

…many of these rocks are actually clay and very slippery when wet — and crumbly when dry.

Then the terrain becomes a bit more challenging.

That’s what happened yesterday after I got soaked fording a deep river and then MedTrekked for a few hours on slippery, slidey clay rocks beneath seaside cliffs between Agrigento and Marina di Palma. I should have just worn a swimming suit.

But that’s not why I’m going to Pozzallo in southern Sicily today to catch a ferry to Malta.

I’m actually planning to spend some time with the sea goddess Calypso on the island of Gozo, though perhaps not the seven years that she forced Odysseus to stay.

But who knows?

Watch this space.

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."