Lørdag 06. juli 1996
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05. Juli 1996 |
07. Juli 1996  |
| Sted: | Gozo |
Marius:Waking up in the morning, by the heat and intense light from the sun. Obviously, it is not a good idea trying to work out the path of the sun while drunk. I got up and shangled over to the shadow, and sat down. I wasn't actually in too bad a shape, considering the drinking yesterday. But I needed some time to be fully awake, so I just sat there, scratching my mosquito bites (probably from the broken bottle of aftershave), noticing all the dead flies around (same cause?), and watching the sunlight slowly advance towards Marietta, and eventually waking her up, as she was the next one in the path of the sun. We got up, and together with some more people who had been woken up, partly by the sun and partly by the noise, we went down to the local supermarket in Xlendi to find some food.We could not find a "Quickbank", so it had to be a cheap breakfast, as we also had to pay for the boat-trip that day. They had some rolls from yesterday, and with a box of soft-cheese (like Philadelphia cheese), it was not too bad. We also bought some water for later. When we had finished the breakfast, there was still an hour till the boat was due to go, so Marietta and I told Veronica to watch our bags and we climbed up a mysterious staircase that went up the rocky hillside. We saw several lizards, as we climbed up, and we had a very nice view over Xlendi and the valley. Then, the stairs went down again on the other side, and through a hole in the rock, and down to a grotto by the sea. This was very beautiful. There were hundreds of small animals "in the crustae family" (krepsdyr, whatever they are called in English). Crawling around on the rocks, and the morning sunlight spreading over and colouring the water and the rocks and algae. We stayed for a while, and when we went up again, we saw the nice view over the valley all the way up to the "la Grotto" disco, but the sun was in a difficult position to photograph, so we planned to go back in the afternoon, to get a really good picture, but unfortunately, we never got the opportunity. Upon returning, we discovered that the others were gone, taking our bags with them. We found them at a bar, drinking coffee, and just waiting for the boat to get ready. We paid the rest of the fare, and boarded the ship. The guy last night had told us that there would be only 5-6 other people there, which proved to be a lie. There were more like 20 people there, so we decided to occupy the roof, then we could enjoy the sun as well as the best view and the diving capabilities. This seemed to suit the others well, as they preferred to sit in the shade, and without us. The boat trip started off out Xlendi bay, and anti-clockwise around the island, we first encountered the Ta'Cenc cliffs, which according to the skipper were about 140 meters tall, and going straight into the water, and down to about 30 meters depth. There were also some grottoes, going into the cliffs, obviously created by the sea, and a couple of them were even big enough to take the boat deep into the cliff-side. Another interesting observation was that the rock was made from layers of different strength and fertility. The hard layers were usually the ceiling of the caves, where the soft rock underneath had been eroded away. You could also see that the there were more plants growing on some layers, probably because they either provided minerals, or a better grip. We also had a very brief encounter with the "Free Wine" that had been advertized. It turned out to be a terrible homebrewed wine, mixed with 50% tap water. The tap water in Malta is produced by reverse osmosis, which leaves a distinct taste of salt, which definitly doesn't suit the wine taste. We concluded that the reason for this was that they didn't want people to drink, so they advertize with free wine, and people don't bring any wine of their own, and when the boat-wine is undrinkable, people will just drink non-alcoholic. The coastline of Gozo is mostly just these steep cliffs, with only a few fjord like harbours like Xlendi and Mgarr Ix-Xini. This must be the perfect island for defending, just place your forces in these natural harbours, and the rest will defend itself. In Mgarr (at the ferry port), we picked up some more people, before continuing on to Comino! Here, the first stop was the famous Blue lagoon. This is a channel between Comino and the much smaller island of Cominotto (probably means little Comino in Maltese), where the bottom is light yellow limestone sand (the entire archipelago is just limestone). Along with the very clear Mediterranean water, this is a very beautiful bathing spot, with a clear light blue colour on the water, and a yellowish colour on the rocks. As we approached Comino through the blue lagoon, we thought we were really eager to go for a swim, so Matjaz (Slovene), me, Lidija (Croatia) and Ulrich (Denmark) Jumped off from the roof of the boat, to swim the few meters to the shore, but...the boat just went on and on and around a corner, so we actually had quite a bit of a swim to where the boat had landed. And, just as we were approaching it, it started off again, and after a desperate struggle, I only just didn't manage to grab hold of the rear platform of the boat. Bad luck, I thought, and we just swam to the quay instead. There was only Espen (Norway), who had left the boat with Marietta's bag, and about 50 Norwegian and Swedish 14 year olds from a local language school. Then we discovered that we had actually lost Ulrich and Lijia somewhere on the way, or else, they had actually got hold of the boat. Well, we had a little walk on the island, but it was quite painful without shoes. We swam a bit around, to the boat and back, and it was just so nice water, really hot and really clear, I was only sorry I hadn't brought a pair of swim-glasses, it would have been perfect here. There was mosty a rocky beach, but a few meters were sandy, and really nice. And, our first visit to Comino, we had swam there :-). After a while, Ulrich and Lidija actually appeared, they had been swiming a bit around on their own, to Cominotto. On Comino, there was an icecream boat, which went around selling icecream to all the people on the beach and on the yachts in the lagoon. It had written "VHF cn 77" on the side :-). And, since Marietta's bag was on the island, we could buy icecream there... Very nice. Then the ride went on to San Niklaws bay and Santa Marija Bay where we were going to have lunch. The lunch was slow, and some of us started rocking the boat, and all engineers know that when you find the right eigen frequency of the boat, you can actually make it rock quite a bit, only from three people. The skipper was really angry, and proceded to threaten us with no lunch, and uttering al the english swerawords he could think off. We pretended we didn't understand, and in a while, our lunches came as well. A short swim after the lunch was also in order although we took it very easy, after the lunch, a reasonably large and well tasting salad, mine with tuna fish, which seems to be a speciallity of Malta. During our lunch, we watched a tourist on the first attempt at controlling a surfboard, quite amusing, actually. Then, it was time to leave, and as we rounded out of the bay, we discovered that Lidija and Ulrich were missing (again?), and we had to tell the captain to turn the boat around and search for them, after 15 minutes, they appeared from around a corner, and we could go on back to Gozo. Along the coast here, we saw even more caves, which started becomming a normal sight, and not really special anymore. Onwards around the island, we stopped for a swim in Marsalforn bay, and Ulrich and Lidija (and all the others) got a firm warning that this was 25:00 minutes, and that there were busses to Victoria from here. This time, it was some of the girls who had to do ashore, and comming back after 27 minutes (but we waited for them). Further around the coast, we got to another fjord like bay, Ghar Il Qamh, and to a place where the local fishermen had had to make caves in the rock with sturdy doors, to protect their vessels from the rough winter storms, just like the familiar Norwegian "naust". After this, I (and most of the others) had become quite tired, and sunburned, and feeling the party last night, so we went to sleep under the shading. And dozed for some time, till the next big sight, the Azure window, which obviusly has a very nice colour if you come there in the morning. We also saw the "inland sea" which is a place where the sea has eroded a cave into the rocky cliffs, and all the way through to the lowlands on the insida, and there is ntural harbour there, which must have been a real gift to the fishermen, a very safe place to have their smal fishingboats, rotected by this smal opening from the rough sea and various pireates and enemies. the cave was even to small for our ship. Then, as the trip went on, we saw another of the watchtowers which the Knights of St. John have put up all over the three islands. This one was called Qawra tower, and Sue's (Sioux) thoughts instantly told her that this would be perfect for scrabble, although nobody would believe that there was a place called something like that... We knew that we would soon be comming to a famous rock called Fungus Rock, where there used to grow a fungus like plant which the Knights used for healing various sicknesses. And it was so popular that they had to forbid the citizens to go there, and guard it well. The rock was not easy to spot, it looked just like another of those fjords, when and when we got out on the other sied, we realised we had just gone around the Fungus Rock. Then, the journey was approaching the end, just around the Wardija point, and to Xlendi. Lidija and Ulrich sam in here as well, I was a bit too late to decide, and suddely we we ashore, and could stagger along to the Moby Dick for a long awaited pint of Cisk. Looking at each other, we realised how sunburned we really were. Matjaz was just as read as his bathing trunks, and most of the others weren't any better. In the flat, there was one shower, and 16 people who wanted to shower, so obviously, this was a problem. I was one of the first to get back, and occupy the shower for a short amount of time. I discovered that I hadn't brought any other trousers than the ones I'd just been bathing in. So I washed them and had to wear them for the rest of the weekend. Matjaz was one of the last people to arrive back, and he made a big show of banging the bathroom door everytime he walked past it yelling "Hurry up" in an unmistakable Slovenian accent. After I was finished showering (but not everybody else) I went down to the Moby Dick again, for dinner. There I spotted Sue, Kevin and Adrian, who had just ordered pizza, so I joined them. Pizza is cheap and good on Malta. Unfortunatly, I ordered the "Pizza napolitana" which showed to be made with anchovies, I ate it because I was hungry, but it's the first time I haven't finished more than half a pizza here. Sue had "pizza maritana" with seafood, and it wasn't much better. But I got a piece of Adrians, which was good (ham/egg). After this, we (the first bunch) went back to the flat and went stright to bed. Attwo o'clock in the night, I was woken up by Heli, who wanted my bed. It turned out that she hadn't brought a sleeping bag, and us people who were so unfortunate to have one, had to sleep on the balcony. I managed instead to steal Tibors space on the floor in the kitchen. for the rest of the (relatively short) last Gozian night... |