The nearby hillsides became, if not less precipitous, more grassy, with little brown huts sprinkled liberally around. We wound our way down a couple of switchbacks in the road and through a beautiful pass lined with pine trees, nearby rocky peaks wreathed in cloud. The road wound along the hillside above a deep valley, a bright blue river snaking through it. We stopped briefly at a supermarket we came across to stock up on supplies.

The road continued to wind through the mountains, affording us some rather spectacular views of misty/snowy peaks. At one point, the road passed by a shallow and crystal-clear lake of brilliant blue. The mountains gradually decreased in size, and very suddenly we were on a motorway, and Noia the navigator was displaying the welcome screen for Germany!

Motorway driving is rarely anything but tedium, and today was no different; we drove until we’d had enough, and on a hunch I pointed Noia towards a green patch on the map that displayed a parking symbol within. Sure enough, we’d found a very pretty forest, interspersed with green fields, and a little parking area for walkers. We pulled up, and took the opportunity to take a walk in the intensely green woods — the stuff of fairy-tales.

For the next day, we’d identified part of a driving tour of the Mosel Valey that sounded promising, to the west and very near to our route. We headed that way, towards the Rhone-side town of Bingen am Rhein, arriving relatively late in the day.

After the success of the last night’s camp, I targeted Noia at a road in a large green patch beside the town, little realising at the time that the road in question was barely a footpath through the woods. So, we turned down this little road that got smaller and smaller, to our consternation, and had a slightly worrisome yet relatively pleasant drive through the woods, feeling a little sheepish as we drove past walkers on the track above. (Katherine: Mike handled this with remarkable poise)

We came out beside a little pub, and decided to pull up in the nearby car-park (also the car park for walkers) for the night. With Katherine’s high hopes for a schnitzel, we visited the pub, but found the restaurant closed. Still, we found a seat in the dimly-lit lounge, various animal heads hanging grotesquely from the walls — all seemed very “German pub”-esque — and had a few beers (Veltins, which the barman recommended and which we enjoyed immensely).

Rather desperate to fill up with water, the next morning we set out along the Rhone hoping to spot a caravan park or similar that we could drop into. Sure enough, Katherine spotted one a little distance down the road, and we negotiated our way under the railway line that ran alongside the river, along the narrow little lane, bordered by bright green rows of vines beside the river, and pulled in. The woman in charge was very friendly and happy for us to use the facilities; she was bustling about on various errands as we filled up, and kept making rather endearing “I’m run off my feet” huffy sighs with lots of exclamations in German, to which I grinned and nodded sympathetically.

While Katherine was filling the tank, she heard a hissing, and realised that the front left tyre was leaking air from the valve — just like what happened to us in Arezzo! Uh-oh. I poked at the valve until the hissing stopped, and we deemed it drivable, for now, as the pressure seemed to be relatively normal still. Hoping to find a tyre service facility like last time, we drove for a little while keeping our eyes open, but the one possibility was shut, whereupon we realised it was Sunday. I checked and topped-up the tire pressure at a petrol station, and we hit the motorway, hoping that it would last us until we could get it fixed.

When we decided to pick a town randomly to visit for lunch, the steering felt suddenly very odd, and sure enough, the tyre was down again. We pulled into a petrol station and decided it was time to put the spare tyre on. It’d been a while and my memory was fuzzy (I work with computers, not cars!), but Nettle’s manual, albeit in German, seemed to have all I needed. Out came the jack, and I wrestled the slipping handle until the wheel was sufficiently off the ground, and started on the wheel nuts (probably should’ve done that the other way around, but oh, well). I remembered something about European threads being the opposite to ours — probably the same phenomenon that makes water swirl the opposite way down drains, I guess — and the manual confirmed that clockwise was the way to undo them, so I laboured away, trying everything I could think of to loosen them. No luck, and I was scratching my head wondering what to do next, when a friendly German voice behind us announced the arrival of our saviours for the day. He was a mechanic, amazingly, and his wife spoke English, so we were in excellent hands — apparently, as she told Katherine, he rescues people like this quite frequently. Our benefactors took command, and I held my foot on the brake while he undid the nuts — anti-clockwise, of course — by jumping on the spanner’s handle. Within a couple of minutes, the new wheel was on, and we were good to go. We thanked them profusely. How lucky we are. (Katherine: We had a giggle at Mike’s masculinity taking a bit of a hit, especially given the super buffness of the mechanic in question. He still gets man points for getting the wheel off the ground though. I had an “I’ve watched too much Dexter moment” when I quietly wondered to myself if this guy has a “dark passenger” which he satiates by going around playing the good samaritan but actually sabotaging vehicles and sending their startled drivers to an untimely – and untraceable – death). We went and had a couple of schnitzels at a nearby pub. We were amused in the pub to see a race on the TV, and then realised that it was happening just around the corner, at the Nürburgring. Cool! We felt unreasonably chuffed at having had beer and chicken schnitzel in Germany. Our German experience is complete – at least this time around. (Katherine again: obviously our tire didn’t fall off sending us to an untimely startled death. Sorry for my uncharitable thoughts good Samaritan German guy).

So, with a fair bit of time lost, we decided to just hit the autobahn again, and skip the driving tour this time — how exciting, the prospect of having a “next time”! We crossed over the border into the Netherlands, to our surprise, as we don’t tend to do much map-gazing lately — navigation is more Noia’s realm now, as she’s been so great, we trust her to get us where we want to go. Within a few hours, we passed into Belgium. Belgium!

We headed into the city of Hasselt, where a friend, Kris, lives, who I’d met a year or so before through a WordPress theme I wrote. We’d arranged to pay a visit, so we found a park at a spot Kris had recommended, in the car park of a sports oval already populated with a few campers, reassuringly, and set out on foot to find him.

About twenty minutes later, we set out on foot the right way, as I sheepishly realised I’d directed us in precisely the wrong direction… twice. We walked along a busy, noisy road (Ah yes… This is why we’re not big city fans!), then towards the quieter town’s centre. We made our way under the train station and found Kris’s street on the other side, with lots of imposing brick houses lining the road. We greeted Kris (I experimented on him with some Dutch — “goede middag”), and he invited us in for a moment before we all ventured out into the evening. Kris took us on a walk around the inner streets of the town, and showed us a few of the sights (greeted a few very punk-band-esque friends of his that we encountered along the way), then we dropped in on the local Irish pub briefly — quite funny hearing Irish accents here. We asked for a recommendation from the bartender for a Belgium beer to try and ended up with an interesting beverage that tasted a bit like honey… and beer. We wandered through Hasselt (via the best veggie burger I think I’ve ever had), through the city’s impressive park, while we talked companionably. I was amazed with the depth of Kris’s knowledge of his town, and the amount of awareness and involvement he has in its community and local politics — a local council member in the making, there.

We decided to spend the night in Hasselt, and spent the next morning with a couple of errands — laundry, a little shopping; Katherine was excited to find a well-stocked art supplies shop and basically moved in for a while.

Then we hit the road again, and headed onwards; we left Belgium and entered France, finally ending up in Dunkerque. We stayed the night at the huge and rather fancy municipal caravan park, in preparation for our departure on the ferry the next day, to Dover. Quite fun to be speaking French again.

So with some wistful thoughts, and looking forward to coming back to spend some time getting to know Andrea, Silvia and their friends better, we set off northward. As, it turned out, into something resembling the apocalypse. Dark, intimidating clouds loomed in front of us as we approached, with some excitement, the first foothills of the Dolomites (the Italian Alps). The sky reminded us of the skyscape one sees in tornado movies, writhing menacingly as they curled off the mountains.

It added a fantastic ambiance to the scene as we followed the road into a narrow river valley between two steep-sided mountains, and dusk closed in around us. Then, the rain started, and it meant business: We slowed to a crawl as the downpour reduced visibility to almost zero – “I… guess the road’s out there somewhere”. The hail threatened to crack the windscreen, it came down so hard. Wow!

It eventually abated and we sped up again, heading out into a suddenly lighter day, like winding back the clock a few hours. We got an SMS from Andrea – “What the…Are you ok?”; “I’ve just seen the end of the world from my bike, that was exciting and wet”. We just hope he only saw it, rather than actually experienced it on a bike — that sounds not so dissimilar to drowning!

We drove on through the mountains, following the autostrada, while Katherine read out a heartwarming email we’d just received from Andrea, which mirrored our own excitement and gratefulness at having met. Warm fuzzies well established, we grinned out at the beautiful world around us and marvelled at our blessings.

We drove past vast fields of vines, and found a convenient lay-by off a relatively quiet road to park for the night, beside a wide, slow river and overlooked by a high rocky cliff topped with dense green forest, a little steam hurling itself into the air above us.

The next day we set out on foot to explore this exciting new world, and followed the river while we admired the rocky mountains surrounding us, every remotely-horizontal surface festooned with rich green plant life. It was sunny and warm and we were feeling good!

We drove onward and upwards as the scenery changed further. Lots of bright green fields of vines and increasingly amazing mountains, topped with snow (I’ll never get tired of snow-capped mountains. That’s the stuff, right there.). Very quickly, we noticed that the road signs all had Germanic names, and soon after we were amazed to notice the marked difference in architecture. Suddenly the roofs of houses and other buildings were sharply angled, and the village churches had pointy, colourful steeples. Roofs were no longer orange-coloured, but a deep brown, and much more deep wooden hues were apparent.

We were in another country! But, a glance at the map showed us we were wrong — it was going to be two more days of driving before we were out of Italy. We mused to ourselves that whoever had been tasked to draw the country boundaries had probably been bumped or slipped, and the border skewed south accidentally. They probably just hoped no-one would notice. We noticed, imaginary map guy! I was baffled further when Nettle’s lunchtime came (she’s a thirsty girl sometimes!) and I filled up at a petrol station, and the attendant spoke German! Okay, that’s fine — I threw in a “Danke!” for good measure.

A long but enjoyable drive led us eventually into a little town climbing the side of a hill — not entirely deliberately, but one of Noia’s more quirky routes – she likes it scenic. (Noia is our anthropomorphised Navigon GPS navigator app, short for “paranoia” and named for her inordinately cautious disposition; “beware” every time I go a fraction over the speed limit, or when she thinks the limit is less than it really is; “In 500 metres, take the second exit from the roundabout; beware”, “beware: traffic control”). It got a tad narrow, but we made it through with no drama, and discovered to our delight a car park on the other side that seemed a reasonable place to stop for the day — we were certainly ready for it. There was even a great view of the surrounding hillside.

We wandered back on foot the way we’d come, with the hopes of visiting a little supermarket we’d passed. It turned out to be closed, but we walked around the town anyway, intrigued by its…Austrian-ness!

Back at Nettle, we were investigating the most level and out-of-the-way place to stop for the night, when we discovered a sign prohibiting overnight parking! Oh, how we wished we could’ve un-seen that sign, but the cat was out of the bag, and our hopes of settling in for the evening were temporarily dashed. Lesson learned: Don’t look around too much!

So, dusk rapidly approaching, we set off again, following the road that zig-zagged up a long, gentle sloping mountainside dotted with wind turbines and delightful little brooks lined with flowers. Before long, Katherine spotted a park labelled “Camper”, to our delight, and I executed a speedy across-road 6 point turn, and we pulled in — it was a roadside café car park, kind enough to offer a place for campers to stop for the night. We made sure the café folks were happy with us being there (and scored a couple of pairs of warm woolen slippers, which totally look like bear feet), and happily stopped for the night, with a view out over the long grassy downhill slope we’d climbed, and surrounding snowy and misty mountains.

The reality of it has been quite different though: Somehow we seem to have made more connections with people than when we were back in Australia! A combination of being more outdoorsey, and having more time to devote to social networking has introduced us to lots of fantastic new people, and some very strong new friendships.

I met Andrea through my iPhone app Loopy — he got in touch after giving it a go, and we got talking. He lives in Padua with his partner Silvia, and next on our itinerary was to go and visit them.

So, we left Poggibonsi and headed north up through Tuscany. This was one of our most beautiful drives so far, through stunning emerald-coloured countryside, all vines and olive trees, cute little terracotta-roofed villas and startlingly blue lakes. We passed straight through Florence (to our surprise — I hadn’t inspected our route in advance), passing right by the place we stayed last time we were in Tuscany. Of course, as is our way, we passed through right on peak-hour, so it was a slow plod through the city. We pushed on the other side, and wound our way up into the mountains.

We discovered the most beautiful wildcamp location (last photo above), but we hadn’t really fulfilled our 3 hour driving quota for the day, and pressed on; we started keeping an eye out for a place to stop about half an hour later, and utterly failed for the following several hours. We felt a little despair when we turned onto an autostrada that reminded us both of the concrete forest that was Seoul, and eventually pulled over by the road and very successfully found ourselves a decent spot off the road 10 minutes away using Google Earth. What a great tool for wildcamping!

The next day we made it to Padova and moved into our new site for the week, in Monselice by the canal. The town was very pretty, and we were pleasantly surprised by our new surroundings, expecting a bit of a “suburban wasteland”, as we two snooty hills-dwellers put it.

After talking to various people, I’d formed an image in my head of Northern Italy as something of an endless suburb, but it was much greener and more relaxed than I’d pictured, to my relief. What’s more, we were thrilled to get our first glimpses of scarlet fields full of poppies!

We got in touch with Andrea and Silvia, and they came to pick us up and take us out to a restaurant with their friends. If it wasn’t clear already, when we met them it became clear pretty quickly that we were going to get along with them very well — these were definitely ‘our people’.

Having not worn or owned any makeup since the beginning of our travels, Katherine took the opportunity to get her girl on. Although not usually big on the hair and make-up thing, she rather enjoyed not looking like the un-groomed, polar-fleece wearing vagabond that she usually does – her words, not mine (I would, in fact, say she’s a damn fine looking vagabond, but she wouldn’t believe me).

The restaurant we headed to was one that had been recommended to Andrea and Silvia, and we were to be introduced to ‘bigoli’, one of the local specialties, a thick egg-based pasta. It’s called ‘bigui’ in the Venetian dialect, which had become a bit of an in-joke after Andrea and some friends had mentioned on Twitter that they were going to introduce us to it, and I misinterpreted it as a software development tool of some kind (‘ui’ as in User Interface).

We filed in and were soon joined by the others, two other couples and a third couple with their adorable little daughter. I was struck by how many of us were musicians and programmers! Always a good sign; there’s something about people who’ve been involved in music. We greatly enjoyed their company, and they were kind enough to do lots of translating for us when the bulk of the conversation turned Italian (we still regretted not putting more effort into learning more, though! We shall for next time).

There was much laughter and good company, and some great pasta with quite spectacular sauce, that we’re forever going to be trying to replicate (we think it was the best pasta we’ve ever tasted).

We got back on the road for another very fine day of country driving, stopping briefly for lunch just down a little dirt road in the mountains. A little further on Katherine spotted a lake (a body of water — always promising) and we did a U-turn and found a great spot to stay the night beside the wetlands. We took a walk around and were struck by how English the countryside looked — lush and green and pastoral. We watched the swallows flitting around above the reeds until the cool of evening set in and we hiked back to Nettle for a cup of tea.

We awoke, fussed with the boiler that refused to light in the miniscule breeze and washed in buckets of water instead, then set off to visit Assisi.

The motorhome parking I’d researched earlier turned out to be specifically forbidden to motorhomes, which appears to be the rule in Assisi: They’re not fans of campers, here. We drove around for a little while, trying to find a place to stop, and were taken on a bit of a wild goose chase following camper parking signs that just kept pointing to the next intersection ad infinitum. Seeing another camper parked on a gravel patch by the side of the road, we decided to stuff the system and park behind them. Take that, the man!

We ambled up the pleasant little road by fields of grass and olive trees, saw our first poppy up close (now, to find fields of them!), and found ourselves in Assisi proper, along with lots of tour buses. We avoided the touristy spots and just took a leisurely walk through the town’s steep streets lined with walls of pink and white bricks.

We found a path that ran though the trees above the town, and followed it until it came out on the road to the fortress that sat on top of the hill. There was a fence beside the intersection that had every inch covered with wads of chewing gum — now there’s an achievement!

Bellies rumbling, we continued wandering though Assisi, and eventually found the only place we could get pizza, in slices reheated as we waited, which were actually surprisingly good. We walked back to Nettle, passing a wall along our way dotted with holes, each one with a pigeon inside (pigeon holes, you see).

We drove onwards down the freeway, and stopped for the night nestled in amongst a bunch of other campers at a sosta in Perugia.

The drive there was delightful — kinda like driving through a painting, along roads lined with bright green grass, new flowers and trees, amongst rolling emerald hills, beautiful little hill towns perched on the slopes. It felt very spring-like and warm.

When we arrived at the agriturismo, we were very pleased: It was beautiful, and we were perched right amongst that beautiful scenery. The owners were quite friendly (although our meagre Italian had only the basics of communication covered), and we had 3G. Perfect.

We were originally planning to stay for four days. That turned into five, then into a week, and then about ten days. I worked heaps on Cartographer, my upcoming iPhone app which is coming along very nicely. Katherine started an online drawing course. Oh, and she cut my hair, an exercise that ended up taking all afternoon (we were both a bit sunburnt by the end, by sitting outside!). It’s a big improvement, although there’s a bit more to do — hopefully it’ll get faster! So, another creative skill acquired!

We’ve both been interested in HDR photography, and made the plunge, buying a $100 piece of software for HDR processing called Photomatix. I spent a day or two playing, coming up with some very fun results (some of which were included in the last entry on Chieti). I was reminded of the “bevel” effect of old, applying it to everything until it became extremely tacky. The “painterly”, surrealistic look of the resulting photos appeal greatly to both our aesthetics, but I suspect it probably will go out of fashion sooner or later. Until then though, we’ll enjoy the grunge look, and afterwards will benefit from the more realistic processing that is pure HDR (without the “detail enhancement” that gives it that cool look).

Katherine totally impressed me by drawing up some sketches for Cartographer’s icon which are absolutely brilliant. I don’t get much enjoyment from that process, given that I’m hopeless at drawing and graphic design in general, and just find myself getting frustrated. What Katherine came up with was easily as good or better than a result I would’ve expected from hiring a pro designer, so I was thrilled. What a team!

Our ventures outside Nettle were made interesting by the rambunctious presence of two enormous German shepherds who weren’t aware they were no longer puppies. It really is a little intimidating hearing the galloping of two monsters closing rapidly behind you, then teeth closing ‘playfully’ around your hand!

The night before our planned departure, we dined at the restaurant, where they served home-cooked meals made of entirely organic local produce. We went at the same time as a friendly Swiss-German couple who had arrived for the night in their motorhome. Dinner was delicious, lots of little successive courses — antipasti to start (I even tried the salami — it’s a bit of a big thing around here), then a simple tomato pasta. Our host demonstrated the pasta making process, bringing out a device that looked a bit like one of those many-stringed Indian instruments, that the pasta dough is pressed through with a rolling pin. Then, tasty little pastry-covered tart things with mushroom, followed by stuffed zucchini, I think, with lots of cheese; salad on the side of little slices of beef, then finally a very tasty ice-cream desert with little bits of meringue.

We were all set to go after about ten days — to do the Cascate Della Volpara walk from Umito, then a driving tour around Monti Sibillini — until on the day of our departure, on a whim we checked the weather report and discovered a rather bleak outlook with rain and snow on its way. Oh, dear!

A little agonising later, and we decided to wait it out here. A little sheepishly, I explained to our hosts that we’d be staying a bit longer.

On the morning of our next departure, I happened to stumble across a webcam in a town near where we were headed for the walk, and found it in snow! I was expecting the snow level to be higher, but as it was, we couldn’t risk driving on a slippery road in Nettle! More agonising, and we decided there was nothing for it but to abort our plans and head onwards. The only thing was, we hadn’t done the necessary travel research, so — another night in Penne. I felt quite silly explaining again why we weren’t leaving, but they were very understanding and laughed along with me as I explained in memorised Italian spewed out of Google Translator.

Katherine near killed herself fighting against oddly slow internet and a sluggish laptop, researching our next moves, while I alternated with reading through our Lonely Planet guide and working on Cartographer. So, finally, we finished it all off today and finally made it up the driveway and onwards!

New territory!

Our drive took us along winding roads through spectacularly beautiful landscapes: More emerald hills dotted with villas and olive trees, along roads lined with birch trees (or were they beech? ash?), some of which seemed to think it was autumn and were a lovely golden colour (we hoped it’d catch on).

As evening crept towards us, we started looking out for a place to park for the night, and after not finding anything along our route, turned down a side road, and drove down it for ten or fifteen minutes — we found a few lousy options, but decided to press on in the hopes of finding something better. After another twenty minutes or so, Katherine spotted a sign pointing to a lake — always promising — and we followed it and found a spot by the road overlooking a rather impressive dam wall. We hung around on the couch for a while, resting after the long drive, then Katherine set about cooking dinner while I caught up on some blogging.

It’s good to be on the move again!

We were there to see the Good Friday procession, apparently the most ancient procession tradition in Italy. Every year, local men and children wear spooky-looking white hoods (Yes, I know what they look like…) and bearing torches, accompany floats carried by solemn-looking bearers through the town. The floats represented various stations of the cross — lances, rooster and a severed hand, Christ on the cross, the body of Christ, a mourning Mary — none of which I really understood with my lack of religious education, but Katherine filled in some blanks later on. Particularly promising-sounding was the orchestra and choir that accompanied the procession, who performed Miserere, apparently the work of a local composer, Selecchy (1708-1788).

We found the piazza at the front of the cathedral and milled around with a few hundred others — seemingly almost all locals, we didn’t see any other obvious foreigners there. Participants were all dressed up and chatting, adjusting hoods and shaking their glow-sticks to life (Glow sticks! How could they!).

As the sky began to darken and the cathedral’s bells rang, people shuffled around to face the cathedral’s entrance; those participating were lined up in parish groups. Down the steps came the first station of the cross, borne by men in gold and black — an angel, presumably, although neither of us knew the significance. This was met by the first group who marched onwards, as the next float came down, four or five pikes sticking up.

The procession continued, winding around the piazza and leading down a small side street as we gathered and watched them go. Almost everyone in the crowd around us crossed themselves as the float carrying the body of Christ went past! Finally, the musicians followed, violins, flutes and a variety of brass instruments, and the choir.

There was a sermon in Italian, broadcast through speakers being borne along with the procession, and the orchestra and choir started — quite moving, and impressive with the acoustics of the square.

We followed the crowd down a different street to meet the procession there, and heard another run through of the speech, and another Miserere. We waited at the side of the torch-lined street, noticing others doing the same, for the procession to come back around so we could get a better look. Half an hour or more passed, watching kids race around each other making gzzzsh gun noises at each other, then an amusing scene with a little girl standing and pointing at another girl holding an ice-cream, getting increasingly upset in her envy as the ice-cream bearer returned her gaze nonchalantly. This is where we learn about not always getting what we want!

Police motorcycles cleared the road, and the first of the procession arrived, two rows passing beside us, with the floats in the middle. Kinda creepy, with those masks!

The trailing orchestra reached us, and started up as they walked past.

Those voices belting out right beside us was quite a thing to behold — quite powerful and moving! We shared an impressed glance as they came to an end, then as the crowd dispersed, set off on the walk back home.

That was absolutely awesome! The whole thing felt authentic and genuine, no touristy stuff here, just a fine tradition that we were fortunate enough to get to witness.

So, the immense to-do list remains outstanding, except a couple of items we managed to find. Our community of mould gets to live another day!

We had a quick snack, parked by the noisy road, then hopped back on the autostrada and headed east, bound for Chieti near Italy’s east coast.

Our TomTom navigator — we dubbed her “Nigella” for now — took us off the motorway, and onto some fairly small crowded roads in an outer suburb. We were directed to make a turn onto another motorway, which looked oddly familiar, and turned out to be the same motorway we were directed off — we even passed by the exit we’d previously taken! Oh, Nigella.

We’d decided to avoid the tollway, preferring to take the surface roads and avoid the hefty €14 toll charge, so we’d disabled tolls in the navigation app. This plan was thwarted by Nigella, who apparently knew better: We found ourselves taken straight onto a toll road and, with no other options, paid the toll and continued onwards. Last straw!

We found our way to the exit, and then the navigator’s directions took us straight onto a different tollway! We spluttered furiously for a little while, pulled over at the next opportunity and brought out Google Maps to try to figure our own way out of this mess. We decided the TomTom app was “the little GPS navigator that couldn’t, then shat itself. Then ate it.”, and dissolved into childish giggling for a little while (that eating bit was Katherine’s suggestion; I’m not that filthy).

Armed with a new plan to continue on the toll road for a way, not really having any other options, and then exit when we could, we proceeded. We found the exit, took it, then pulled over to set up the TomTom app one more time.

After leaving the tollway the drive became quite pleasant, a winding road through little villages and bare-branched woods. We passed by several quite spectacular hill-top villages, the sight made even more impressive by the gleaming snow-capped mountains in the distance.

We stopped in the little town of Tagliacozzo to visit its supermarket, then drove on for a way in search of a suitable place to park up for the night.

The surroundings had become suburban plains, so we continued on a bit longer, climbing upwards again. Katherine remarked on the difficulty of finding suitable wildcamps here, and compared it to the near-impossibility of doing so in the UK — as opposed to Ireland, where we found it absolutely effortless. I guess it’s a population density thing.

Eventually, though, we found a very quiet side road in the mountains, amongst whirring wind turbines.

The following morning, we set off again along the winding mountain roads. The region had a very alpine look to it, and the surrounding snow-capped hills looked quite close.

We wound through the wooded hills to the east, dotted with startlingly purple blossoming trees, and eventually made our way through the pass and out of the mountains, and across the hilly plains to the town of Chieti.

Along the way, and for our drive afterwards, we were amazed by our treatment as we drove through little towns — everywhere, people waved or gave us the thumbs up. In one town in particular, everyone was in on it, jumping around and waving as we drove by!

We found a park at the tourist centre, and were immediately set upon independently by two men who apparently worked in souvenir shops within the centre. The first wanted to show us some trinkets to buy; we sent him off. The second was after the same, but first asked us for — you guessed it — whiskey. As always, they persisted for way beyond the time that would be considered polite and acceptable, and we felt quite furious by the time I saw the second man off. We swallowed our irritation (Katherine: “I didn’t swallow my irritation. I let it rage, baby.“) and reminded ourselves that we’ll be back in Italy in just a few days.

We had a quick snack, toasted cheese and tomato sandwiches again — so good to have cheese again! — and walked through the tourist centre (doing our best to ignore one of the irritating vendors), to get tickets to visit the site.

Katherine remarked on the unfortunate fact that she felt like she wanted to race through the ruins as quickly as possible so we could get back to Nettle, our comfort zone (and keep Nettle safe from any store vendors that thought they might have a go at break-and-entry, as unlikely as that would be).

Italy definitely can’t come soon enough, for us! We puzzled over what would lead so many men to ask foreigners for whiskey — it’s happened to us about eight times, representing a good proportion of the places we’ve stopped. I was kinda hoping it’d become a bit of an in-joke and be funny, but it’s just irritating. I wondered whether it might be a cultural thing — an artefact of the still-present Berber culture’s hospitality that makes it appropriate here for strangers to ask for such things; but it’s alcohol — there’s nothing acceptable about that! Particularly so in Tunisian culture, where it’s forbidden (therein lying part of the answer, I suspect). I suppose every society has its problematic individuals. We just seem to be meeting all of them, one by one.

Anyway, talking about the issue made it more intellectual than emotional and irritating, and we soon forgot it in the splendour of the ancient Roman town.

We were amazed at the preserved details, particularly the intricate mosaics in the bathhouses, including one large room with a completely intact mosaic floor. The temples, for which Sufetula is most well-known, are very impressive, towering above the surrounding rubble.

We pretended to each other that we were shocked and offended at the affectionate antics of a young local couple who were flirting with each other around the temple — a shameful display of public affection! We, on the other hand, as usual, would keep an eye out for onlookers and steal a hug or kiss before someone noticed (shows of public affection being considered rude here). It’ll be nice to hold hands in public again in Italy! Always feels weird just walking side by side.

We returned to Nettle and pondered our next move — we’d heard tell of a hotel nearby that lets motorhomers stay in the car park for a whopping 18 dinars (about $16 AUD or something like €9 EUR, off the top of my head). We thought we’d have a look, and laughed when the guy at reception told us 25 dinars! For a car park! We scoffed and drove onwards, keeping an eye out for a wild-camp suitably away from any towns and whiskey-seekers.

We drove for a long way and didn’t find any places that looked particularly appealing. We ended up settling for pulling over by the edge of a smaller quiet side road. We had waved to a girl leading a donkey in the nearby village as we did a U-turn, and after we pulled over, a louage (minibus taxi-like thing) pulled up and she hopped out — Just to say hello! At least, we thought it was her — kinda difficult to tell, given that she was all wrapped up in a shawl earlier. She was very sweet — as Katherine remarked, outgoing enough to come out to say hi, but too shy to actually say anything when she got here! I attempted a little conversation in French, but her French was worse than mine (hooray! I’m better at French than someone!), and she ended up saying a shy good-bye and leaving again in the louage!

So we settled in, at a rather large slant which, strangely, always makes it hard for me to walk around in Nettle, and Katherine made dinner while I post-processed photos.

A less pleasant interchange happened next, when there was a tap at the door — What the crap? Even out here? — I opened the window and peered out. There was a 14 or 15 year old boy, very timid with presumably very little French, who was asking for…something. Katherine picked up “l’eau” (water), and I repeated it as a question — you want water? He nodded, then said something about medicine. Medicine? For what? What kind of medicine? (In French, where we could). Blank look. Katherine wondered if he had a headache or something and was after Panadol — I prompted in broken French, medicine for the head? Yes, he nodded, medicine for the head. Um.

About five or ten minutes of prompting later, with me carefully repeating details and asking for confirmation, doing hand gestures, going around in circles, and suffering many long uncomfortable silences, he managed to change his story and communicate a very confusing and contradictory tale about needing 10 dinars to go home. No, not in a taxi or a louage, in a car. His friends’ car. Why was his friend asking for 10 dinars? Why didn’t he have the money already? Oh, it was a louage? Your friend is the louage driver? Why not pay him when you arrive at home? It went on and on, with me getting more frustrated and almost shouting at the guy in my appalling French. I suggested getting the driver to come here so we could pay him, I suggested hitch-hiking; he wanted 10 dinars so he could go home. 10 dinars. To go home. Who knows what that thing at the start had been, about water/medicine…

About twenty minutes had gone by, and Katherine had dinner ready and going cold on the table. We had only a 20 dinar note. Our choices were to close the window and have an audience for the rest of the night (or have a break-in attempt like at La Goulette!), to just drive off to escape with dinner sliding around the table, or to just give him the 20 dinar note and hope that we were doing a good deed and not just getting conned. Another item for our “Rascals” expense category!

Oh well. I guess we saved 5 dinars by wild-camping instead of staying at the hotel. It’s funny how the money never matters — $17 means very little to us, really — but there’s something about the experience of being separated from money when we feel like we’re being had that’s very uncomfortable. Hopefully he was legit, just a little slow and bad at communicating. Katherine remarked on how similar his manner was to the strange guy we met outside of Douz — the same long silences, just standing there staring at me, the same timid manner.

Just a few more days till Italy and being left alone!

For a silly end to a silly day, just as we were falling off to sleep around 11:30, a car pulled up outside and there was yet another knock at the door (we’re going to have to install one of those deli ticket serving systems out there , I think). We swore, jumped out of bed, threw our clothes on, put the bed up, put some stray dishes onto the floor where they wouldn’t cause trouble if we had to leave quickly, then I grabbed the keys, put them in the ignition and gingerly opened the window. This time, it was better than we’d expected — it was the friendly National Guard.

They kindly told us they didn’t think our last-ditch-effort wildcamp was safe (then the other guy disagreed and said no, there was no danger!), checked our passports, and then suggested we stay in the town. I explained the difficulty we had finding somewhere else to stop, and our aversion to staying in towns (whiskey, whiskey, whiskey), and they laughed and said we should tell any whiskey-seekers that we have friends in the National Guard (or something to that effect); pas du whiskey!. They suggested they lead us back into the closest town and drop us off outside the police station to stay there for the night. We agreed, they apologetically bid us good night, and we drove on into town to be deposited at our worst wildcamp ever: Right beside the busy main road amidst a louage stop! Loud trucks, motorbikes, passing right by our ears, yet we managed to fall off to sleep fairly quickly and slept well.

Our new German friends Birgit and Deiter had poetically described the amazing view of the stars from out in the desert, and we were keen to see for ourselves. Actually going out into the desert, far enough to get away town lights, was a bit of an expensive exercise, though, so we decided we’d go for the ‘lite’ version, following Birgit and Deiter’s suggestion to stay overnight near the edge of the huge salt lake Chott el-Jérid, away from towns. This way, we also get to stay in our own bed! (I suspect we’re more than a little wimpy)

So, making sure the sky was a perfectly clear blue, we set off in the afternoon — actually a little later than we’d intended, but we don’t seem to be able to do anything in a timely fashion these days! We drove about 60 ks through very pleasant golden late-afternoon light, through towns both grotty and littered, and towns almost pretty, with dense thickets of palm trees.

The road straightened out, in anticipation of the run over the lake, and we took a side road we thought was likely the one Birgit and Deiter had pointed out to us on the map. Sure enough, it led us to a collection of sandy-coloured rocks protruding from the sand, and a hard patch off the road for us to park on for the night.

It was quiet and well off the main road — well, quiet until Arabic pop music started wafting over to us from a village nearby. Still, it was far enough from any big towns that the stars were great — a bit like standing in a real-life planetarium, I thought, then couldn’t decide whether I felt silly thinking it.

It was our first ‘voluntary’ wild-camp since that awful La Goulette incident, and it felt fine. It was kinda nice to have the whole place to ourselves. Still, I couldn’t help imagining scenarios as I waited for sleep; being woken early to a knock outside and escaping the clutching hands of mad whiskey-seeking locals!

No such drama, we awoke and had breakfast; while I was washing the dishes, a guy came up and indicated that he wanted a word. Katherine muttered something to the effect of “here we go again”, and I took my reluctant time to engage and open the window. Then we felt bad — he was a friendly local who worked at a café buried in the rocks nearby and merely wanted to make its presence known to us. We thanked him and bid him a good day, feeling sheepish.

So, we set off in good spirits, excited about seeing the salt lake.

The road started out surrounded by plains dotted with salt bush, then become fairly unbroken sand. Patches of white appeared on the sand, becoming more common until the road was surrounded by salt as far as the eye could see. We passed many other motorhomers; we all flashed our lights and waved to each other, a familiar custom. Many were pulled over by the road for a better look, and we followed suit. There were lots of ramshackle “cafés”/souvenir stalls by the road, each with an accompanying collection of odd bits and pieces assembled on the salt on the opposite side of the road: Coloured salt piles, makeshift camels made of bits of wood, old boats.

The lake itself was cool — a very alien landscape, enhanced by quite cool-looking clouds overhead, and an interestingly striated mountain range in the distance.

We drove a little further and pulled over again when we saw that the salt was even denser and whiter here — awesome. We scrambled down the edge of the road and crunched our way out into the sparkling white.

So, with shoes filled with a combination of Saharan sand and Chott el-Jérid salt, we pressed onwards, north towards Gafsa, a town with a conveniently located and promising-sounding caravan park. As always, we nodded, waved and smiled at everyone we passed, all of whom stared at us as we drove by, and most of whom smiled warmly and waved too.

We had a distressing experience when we were passing through one town close to Gafsa; I saw a puppy running across the road a fair way in front of us, running past a bag or something left on the road. As we got closer, driving cautiously, aware of foolish puppies, my stomach lurched when I realised the thing on the road wasn’t a bag, but an injured puppy, clearly only just hit. The pup’s mother was rushing around and barking angrily — we were impressed by her bravery when she took on Nettle, racing at her as we passed; there was a thump when she butted against the side. As we got closer, the injured puppy turned its head towards us and yelped — there was no blood, but clearly he/she had a broken leg.

We came to a stop and fretted about what to do. We couldn’t get out safely — the puppy’s mother was in full battle mode, and there was no way we would’ve been able to get close, even if we had known what to do. If we’d been in Australia I would’ve googled the nearest vet and called, but google doesn’t work like that here. I noticed some locals looking over and, desperately hoping they or someone else would have the resources to help the pup, we regretfully inched carefully past the distressed family and drove on, feeling terrible. We drove past another dog family, puppies running around just beside the road and shook our heads. We see so many dead dogs and cats beside the road here (in Sicily, too), and wondered if it was a pet control issue, or a driver education issue.

Another 20 minutes and we arrived at the caravan park, tacked onto an odd tourist park place, with a restaurant/café, an enclosure with chickens inside, and old cars placed artfully in various places.

We hit the motorway and drove south, stopping to fill our LPG tank at one of the few-and-far-between petrol stations that actually sell LPG; then off the freeway and into the town of El Jem, home of a World Heritage-listed colosseum, little brother to the one in Rome.

El Jem itself was a bit confronting — dirty, busy. Everywhere in Tunisia, everyone looks at us; we do kinda draw attention to ourselves, what with being inside a freaking awesome motorhome. I can’t speak for Katherine, but with my new-found paranoia and agoraphobia, everyone looked like they were scowling! We found a busy car park just a short walk from the colosseum and settled down for a quick snack; almost instantly an odd twitchy guy came up and peered in the window. Katherine opened it and said hi; he said something unintelligible (to us, anyway). He went away after Katherine said we speak only English. We saw him later, when we returned briefly to Nettle for extra cash, peering in through the windows. Freaked. Me. Out.

So, it felt like a real struggle to leave Nettle there as we walked to the thing. We both kept looking back to see if she was still there.

The colosseum itself was pretty impressive — it was pretty much all-access; we wandered around in the dark tunnels underneath, up the different levels. As we walked in, the call to prayer started, making it all feel very atmospheric. There were parts that looked a little too un-eroded, and we realised there were builders rebuilding/augmenting it. I’m not sure whether I approve or disapprove! Good view over the town from the upper levels — a sightly different view to that from the one in Rome! A tour group of Chinese tourists were wandering through; we said hello to one couple and they ‘Ni-how‘-d back, which was kinda funny to hear in Tunisia. There was graffiti scratched into the stone from 1894. That is freaking brilliant!

We walked back to Nettle, having a hooray-she’s-still-there moment (we kinda get that every time we come back to her), followed by a little oh-dear moment when we thought that our satellite dish had come un-stowed and was flapping around in the breeze — I’d joked about us forgetting to put away the sail earlier when we were driving into the hardcore headwind. Nah, it was just a satellite dish on a cabin thing behind Nettle. Besides, who’d build a satellite dish attachment that faced into the wind when you were driving?

Also: Yay, not broken into, so we drove off happily unscathed. Somehow I kinda missed the freeway we’d come in on, which wasn’t on our paper map, or on Google Maps on my iPhone, so we ended up on the plain old secondary road ambling through each town. Man, these little towns are pretty gross — no offence to their residents. Garbage strewn all over the countryside — it’s quite a thing to behold.

Our initial Plan A was to wild-camp somewhere out of town and out of the way. We chickened out, though. We’d both spent the day so far feeling very tense and nervous — desperately in need of some positive experiences to get our confidence back — so we decided we’d drive the 100-120km or so to Bir Ali Bin Halifah, a little town about 60km west of Sfax. It was a seriously long drive, and I was exhausted by the time we arrived, to find…well…nothing. There was no camp-site, and the petrol station guys knew of nothing of the sort nearby. I guess I mis-interpreted that campsite listing.

So, with evening rapidly approaching, we had no choice but to wild-camp. We drove wearily back the way we came, keeping a keen eye out for somewhere, anywhere to stop. Then I spotted a repeater tower (one of those big towers with satellite dishes on it) with some compacted dirt around it, and pulled in. A security dude came out of the hut and we waved, and I jumped out and told him we desperately needed a place to spend the night and was it cool if we stayed. I don’t think he spoke much French (he kept saying bonjour, though), but I did some miming and he was fine with it. We brought him tea and biscuits as thanks.

So, we had our very own security guard! Awesome. Plus the radiation coming from the high-tension power lines running into the tower station thing would probably fry anyone that came close. That and two guard dogs, who were probably mutated by the radiation and probably shot lasers out of their eyes. Sorted. We settled in as evening turned to night, surrounded by a billion miles of red dirt/sand and olive trees.

We walked down the nearby main street — it was very foreign! Lots of white-washed buildings, garbage everywhere, being picked through by cats; people ushering sheep and goats across the road, old beat-up cars, garish advertising, and about a billion posters of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, Tunisia’s president, several in every shop. Woah.

I know from my research that Tunisiana was the telco we needed to hook up with, as they offered a several-GB plan, and that there was supposed to be an outlet in La Goulette somewhere. Turns out, the outlet was closed, but we found another, and when asked if he sold Tunisiana SIM cards, he said yes. So, we went through the paperwork, until I realised he’d misunderstood (or something), and given me a ‘Tunisia Telecom’ SIM card instead. When I realised and told him I had been after Tunisiana and didn’t want the Telecom SIM, he umm’d and aah’d and made a fuss; He went out and fetched a girl from a neighbouring shop who spoke a bit of English. She told us confidently that Telecom were the only provider with the Internet, so I grudgingly agreed to proceed, and bought a 5DT SIM card but no credit, planning on getting the official word on it at the nearby Telecom outlet when they opened the next day.

Defeated, we decided to stay another day and try again tomorrow when more shops were open.

The next day, faced by blank looks at the Telecom shop when I mentioned the Internet (I knew it!), I decided to stick with Plan A, found a Tunisiana outlet, got two SIM cards and 45 DT of credit, and successfully set us up with mobile Internet, after a couple of calls to their support line (where, thankfully, there was someone who could speak English, so I didn’t have to try to get by in my mangled French).

Phew.

We had a very tasty lunch of local fish and chips at a cafe on the main street, attended to by a hyperactive waiter/cook I am quite sure was either insane, or extremely high. He was quite friendly though, and the insanity was the entertaining kind. A cat miowed at me a lot from under the table.

On the walk back to Nettle, some youngsters hanging around on the foreshore called out “Welcome to Tunisia!” to us in English. Thanks guys! We met a slightly unkempt-looking Tunisian guy in the car park who greeted us and told us he was a fellow motorhomer, pointing out a plain-looking blue truck nearby. He asked us where we were headed, and I answered vaguely, making conversation. Oh, he knew the owners of the caravan park there, and would make sure they knew we were coming and would give us a discount. Cool! He had some immigration slips and “helped” us fill them out for when we left. That was a bit weird. Then he asked us for a tip of 10 DT, please (about $8 AUD, or something like €5) — Um. No. Actually, I was less assertive and for some bizarre reason went into bargaining mode, rather than just saying no outright. What is wrong with me? Katherine saved the day, and was much more firm — I still somehow managed to “tip” him with a dinar or two: I panicked, okay! Then he asked us if we had any whiskey. Disgusted, we got back into Nettle and bid him goodbye.

A more positive interaction was had a little later, when a familiar language caught my attention, and I came across a flock of Brits and Irish who were on a cruise stopover. They had a slightly shell-shocked look about them (they told us that La Goulette had been described to them as a “fishing village” onboard, which is a little amusing). We got talking with a couple of them, and showed them Nettle after they expressed an interest.

Anyway, happily, soon enough we left dirty La Goulette and headed north out of Tunis, stopping at a Carrefour supermarket on the way for supplies. Our vague plan was to do some sight-seeing in the north first, before winter set in and it got a bit chilly, then find a pleasant place to stop for a good while, so we could work on some projects.

So, with a vague clockwise route in mind, we headed first for Sidi Ali el-Mekki, a beach that our Lonely Planet guide waxed lyrical about, with a pleasant-sounding walking trail and promising-sounding wildcamp opportunities. It took way, way longer to get there than the relatively short distance had suggested to us, and night had fallen while we were still driving. We bounced off a stealth speed-bump that was hidden in the darkness, then slowed way down as we drove through the town of Ghar el-Melh — thinking that wow, these folks have very different aesthetics and cleanliness standards to us.

We found the road to the beach, and followed it along the edge of the lagoon to a big unpaved parking area. I swung Nettle around, aiming for the side of the parking area, then realised we were no longer moving — it wasn’t a parking area. It was the beach, and the sand was fine and deep, and we were stuck in it. In the middle of nowhere.

What idiot drives around an unfamiliar, developing country in the dark, having just arrived?! Me, I suppose. Hooray for me.

Swallowing rising panic, our eyes met with holy-freaking-shit-we’re-screwed expressions and we jumped out onto the sand with a torch to see how bad it was. It was bad, the sand was at least six inches deep and the wheels sunk down into it. Not one to give up so soon, I had had an idea, and jumped back into the drivers seat. I nudged Nettle forward, then quickly switched to reverse to add some extra momentum to the backwards-rocking, then switched to first gear again and rocked forward again, Nettle’s loose exhaust manifold making some godawful noises as it swung around. I don’t know how I did it, and it was probably just a total fluke, but I managed to rock Nettle out of the several-meter-long segment of deep sand; the feeling when her tyres gripped hard sand and pulled her forward was indescribable — we just hugged for a while in silence. Then, we carefully drove to the side of the road we’d come in on, pulled over, and called it a night. We were shaken but also euphoric with that unique feeling of averted disaster — whole horrific episodes had played out in our minds while we were in the sand, and we revelled in the fact that none of them would come to pass. Whew.

We awoke very early the next morning to banging and shouting outside. Blearily, I called out “un instant, s’il vous plait!“, and cautiously opened a window. Two young men stood outside staring in, and one of them said something in too-fast-French that included l’argent (money), and manger (to eat). I had a pretty good idea what they were getting at, but feigned ignorance, asking them in French to repeat themselves. You want us to give you a ride into town?…You want to sell us food?…Encore un fois?. They gave up and went away. Me: 1; aggressive beggars: 0, baby.

It was time to move on. We halfheartedly visited the beach, then headed back to the main road and took the promising-sounding drive towards Raf Raf, another vaguely interesting sounding town. The drive was reasonably pretty, lots of rolling green hills.

Raf-Raf itself was all closed up, and rather underwhelming; we drove through until we reached back-roads, and felt a little intrusive, driving around the residential area.

We fairly quickly came to the realisation that we were touristed out — and didn’t really have any remaining intrepid-ness stores to do any more challenging touring. We sought out a caravan park we’d read about near the town of Bizerte on Tunisia’s north-eastern coast, but found it closed-looking, mildly unpleasant and we couldn’t see any of the electricity hookup points we needed. So, a little discouraged, we found a beach-access car park (a real one, this time) at the end of the road, and decided to stay there for the rest of the day and night. We took a brief walk on the beach, watching the wild waves, until the cold wind chased us back indoors; a few kilometers down the beach, we could see the massing rusting form of a shipwreck — a big ship — which was quite interesting.

So, we stayed the night, and thankfully awoke in our own time to that happy sound of being left alone. There were several caravan parks on Cap Bon, the cape just to the south of Tunis, and we made a beeline straight there, slightly sheepishly.

Our first attempt was the town of Nabeul; the caravan park there looked okay. There were to to investigate, but we were buggered. So, we wild-camped on the foreshore and checked the options out the next day — neither particularly appealing, but we were desperate, and so we checked into Les Jasmins with its little patch of dirt and olive trees.

We stayed a couple of nights, but things weren’t looking too good — there was no drain to empty our grey water into, the water kept going off, one of the cooks tried to hit on Katherine, and the main street was kinda gross. Even the supermarket, when we stocked up on supplies, was playing the most intense, loud and harsh-sounding wailing music – argh! That day was the first of a Muslim holiday where families sacrifice a goat, and there were piles of goat-hides on street corners. Whoa – too much strangeness for now!

We took off again and found another caravan park — Camping Samaris — near Hammamet, about half an hour away. It was located on a fairly unpleasant, busy and dirty road, right on a roundabout beside a petrol station, but the grounds were spacious, liberally olive-treed and comparatively pleasant. The staff are quite friendly (but not too much so), and one of the grounds-keepers has even brought us a bunch of freshly-cut flowers from time to time!

One last little saga of note; I’ll write about the more positive day-to-day stuff in another entry. When we arrived in Tunisia, we were told that we could only get a visa for one month, not three like our research had led us to believe. We were told by an official at the port that we had to find a police station and get another visa for the next month, and another for the third month that we were here. A pain in the ass, but not too unmanageable.

So, six days before our visas ran out, we walked into a police station (actually, two — staff at the first directed us to the second, which could actually help us), and explained what we needed. The official told us he needed us to provide photocopies of our passports, as well as some documentation from the caravan park to show we were staying there. He told us they’d be open the day after tomorrow, and to come back then.

So we did, bringing the appropriate documentation, only to find that he was wrong — they weren’t open at all. What the? We were half-way home on the taxi before we realised that by the time they were next open, our visas would have expired. Shit!

So, we drove the 20 minutes back to the police station again, in Nettle this time, to ask their advice. They dithered about for a good long while, then told us we’d need to go to the airport in Tunis to get it sorted! We did so: Did the hour-and-a-bit drive in, found the police station at the airport and presented our case (all in French, of course!). He called up the immigration desk in the terminal, spoke for a while, then told us that we were all good — we didn’t need a visa at all! We simply pay on departure, 10 DT for each week of our stay. Warily, we explained that this was not what we were told. He put me on the phone to a woman in immigration who spoke English, and explained the same thing. I explained again that we were told something entirely different, and asked that if she’s certain she’s correct, whether she could leave her contact details with us so we could give them to any officials we came across later who disagreed! She asked me to give the phone back to the officer, who spoke for a moment then hung up the phone, and asked us to go and find immigration in the terminal.

Off we went, first to ask at an information desk, then outside the security doors to customs — we were told to go into Tunis, which wasn’t at all what we were expecting, so we went back to the police station again to seek further help.

We love administration ping pong.

The officer walked us back to the terminal, past the security official who had turned us away (nyaa, nyaa), and to the immigration desk, which was buried deep within the maze of security checkpoints — we never would have found it on our own. The woman there — the same woman who was on the phone — told us the same thing she told us before. Again, we asked for her contact details as a safeguard, and she said we could seek out the Ministry of Immigration in Tunis if we liked. We decided to do just that, and asked if they were open today — yes, they were, and yes, they were easy to find, just on the main street in Tunis.

Off we went, parked, and walked down the main street. No sign of the Ministry of Immigration. The two other Ministry buildings we found we closed; the people we asked — a police officer and a hotel clerk — both didn’t know where it was, but assured us it would be closed. Awesome.

So, we decided to try again tomorrow, and to spend a night at the car park in La Goulette — at least we knew it — rather than give up entirely, or drive to Hammamet and back, then back again. We pulled up at the car park, closed up and settled in.

Then there was loud knocking on the outside of Nettle. What now? I opened the window and peered out — two drunken-looking young men leered back, saying something incomprehensible, probably something about asking for money, I bid them goodnight and closed the blinds. Then there was a ripping, tearing sound — they were trying to force the door open! “Time to move,” I said tensely and jumped up looking for the keys. All our blinds were closed, but there wasn’t time — I started the engine, pulled aside the curtain in front of me, and teared out. A guy was hanging onto the door, as we drove, still trying to get in – our eyes met as I glanced back; I didn’t read anything on his face. I tried to drive close to a lamp-pole to scare him off, then swerved to avoid a parked car. I’d like to say I was expecting Indiana Jones music to start playing, but actually I was just almost-crapping-myself. Katherine said “Drive to the police station”, which was just across the road, so I did. No sign of our assailants; I jumped out and checked the door, expecting massive damage. The step was down, and the safety lock a bit loose, but nothing too serious. We were going to report the incident straight away, but the police station looked dark and there was just no way we were going to leave Nettle exposed, just across the road.

So, we drove, all the way back to Hammamet, stopping for fuel on the way (and being both asked for whiskey by one of the attendants, as well as having the I-found-some-Euros-would-you-exchange-them-for-me scam tried on me. Fuck off.).

No luck later trying to report the incident, so we had a record for our insurance — the local police kept us waiting in a cold foyer for about half an hour, then told us first that we should’ve reported it in La Goulette, then that you can’t report damage to property, maybe in your country, but not here. What the crap?

So, we have very mixed feelings about our first Tunisia experience — although most of that which has befallen us has probably been our own fault! Wild-camping at the docks in a city, not sounding like such a good idea in retrospect. I guess that’s that lesson learned!

Well, that was cathartic. I promise the record of our Tunisia adventure will be more positive from here on out!

Rather than re-visit the unpleasant caravan park we’d stayed at the other day, we found a wild-camp by the beach just down the road from it, and stayed there for the night, running off the leisure battery.

The following day, we visited the picturesque town of Taormina, overlooking the sea between Sicily and the Italian mainland.

We walked up the winding road to the town, and made our way through the narrow cobbled streets — stopping to talk to a friendly English-speaking local for a moment, initially for directions, then speaking more generally — to the old Greek theatre that sits overlooking Mount Etna and the coast to the south. It was built to take advantage of the views, so that the players stood in front of the impressive vista; when the Romans appeared, they decided views weren’t for them, and bricked the theatre in to make it more suited to the gladiatorial entertainment of which they were so fond. Later, a Spanish family took over the site and turned part of it into a residence. Everyone’s had a go. Now, it crumbles gracefully, underneath the tacky scaffolding and makeshift chipboard stage and seats that are there for no reason we could see.

We wandered around the town a little more, stopped for gelato, said farewell to our new friend, and hiked back down the hill.

We met up with Nuccio and Carmelo back in Linguaglossa, and drove with them once again to Taormina (we were getting to know that stretch of road quite well!). Nuccio squeezed his car right up against the edge of the road and we hopped out and walked a little way up the road to the town, being passed by a few contestant cars, to Nuccio’s great glee. On the way, Nuccio stopped and spoke to an organiser briefly — he’d negotiated to get us a souvenir, one of the official rally stickers to go on the side of the cars!

He pointed out some guys sitting by a rubbish skip on the outside of a particularly tight corner, and recounted last year’s rally, when a car lost control around the corner and went careening into the skip, throwing the guys sitting atop it into the air. He shook his head and indicated all of the people standing in the worst possible places — “like foxes, on the road”.

We scrambled up a hillside overlooking the corner, and settled in as the safety car made its way up the road, signalling its closure and the imminent start of the rally. Nuccio nodded to and euro-air-kissed half the people up on the embankment with us — other regulars. Then, the first engine growl started and the rally had begun.

The first few cars zoomed by impressively, and we ooh’d and aah’d along with everyone else. The best parts were when the drivers drifted around the corners, tyres squealing, or better yet, when the drivers messed up the corner altogether and spun out.

There were much fewer cars that last year, Nuccio explained, as they postponed the rally a month, out of respect to those killed in Messina due to the huge storms causing flooding and landslides. So, many contestants had returned to their home countries.

Not being quite the rally buffs that one probably needs to be to get the most out of a rally like this, one car started looking much like the next, but we enjoyed the ambiance, watching the sun go down, and watching a small whale that appeared off shore for a while.

After the rally, we drove back to Linguaglossa, and with a hankering for pizza, we asked Nuccio whether he could recommend anywhere. Amazingly, he proceeded to drive us about ten minutes out of town to point out his favourite pizza restaurant to us and make sure it was open, then took us back to Nettle and told us to ask after someone he knew there, and to tell them we know Nuccio.

We co-ordinated with Nuccio to catch up again for the next rally — this time at a venue inland and to the north west — and took off in Nettle to visit the restaurant. It was called “Sharamanika”, about ten minutes down the road towards Randazzo from Linguaglossa and they had the best pizza we’ve ever had, by several orders of magnitude. The pizzas were at least a foot and a half in diameter; there was a pesto pizza, with parmesan and spinach, an eggplant and tomato/cheese pizza, and…My mouth is watering just thinking about it. We’ll definitely be back to Sicily, is all I’m saying.

So, we ate our fill, and quite a bit more, then made our way back to Linguaglossa. Earlier, Carmelo had extremely generously offered his driveway/front yard as a quiet place to stay the night in Nettle, and we took him up on the offer — when we awoke, the view was breathtaking:

We had had an issue with a leaking window seal, and while we were wandering through Linguaglossa with some time to spare, I popped my head into an auto supplies shop, pulled out my translator app, typed in a question asking to see if they could recommend anything, and showed the guy behind the counter the Italian version. He took us out to his car to do some pointing — a seal like this? Like this? — but in vain, as I wasn’t able to see any similarities with the motorhome window. So, amazingly, he drove us to Nettle, took a look at the window, wrote down his prescription and drove us to a completely different shop with instructions to buy black silicon. He waved and drove off, leaving us dumbfounded at his kindness. Man, Sicilians are the greatest people ever!

So, we bought silicon and a silicon gun from the friendly shop assistant in the other shop, then made our way back to our beach-side wildcamp spot in San Marco for the night. Later in the evening, Nuccio called and reported that there were some explosions happening on Etna — we wandered around to try to get a vantage point, but didn’t have any luck — we were in the wrong place for it. Next time?

Armed with our inscrutable German map, we made a vague plan to spend the next week or so driving around Etna’s flanks, doing some walks along the way. We left the car park at Rifugio Sapienza, and headed onwards. A few minutes later found us weaving our way through more of the rough grey landscape of broken lava, and through patches of birch forest in absolutely stunning orange and golden hues — great, fuzzy swathes of it that left us breathless.

We came across a wide gravel side road that appeared to be the site of the first walk we had in mind, and we turned in and pulled over. It was beautiful — a small silvery wood of bare birch and chestnut trees beside us, and ahead of us, past where the road thinned and turned out of sight and towards Etna’s peak, was a ridge in amazing autumn colours with mist sweeping over it. When the clouds parted, we could get a glimpse of the black and white of Etna’s upper reaches.

Considering ourselves pretty fortunate to be able to spend a night in a place like this, we settled in, admiring the view out the window.

The next day we had some online errands to run. The mobile coverage wasn’t good enough where we were, so we ended up backtracking a little down the mountain towards a spot we had noticed full 3G coverage the day before (one tends to notice these things when living like we do!).

On the way, we had some moments of gut-wrenching terror when, as we descended the switchbacked road, the smell of smoke started to be apparent, and the brakes started to fail. Luckily, there was a convenient place to pull off the road while I jumped out and peered under Nettle’s front left wheel. There was quite a lot of smoke. Fortunately, there happened to be mobile coverage where we were, so we jumped online and I did some googling, visions of expensive tow-trucks, difficult language barriers, and remoteness from mechanics spinning round our heads. It should’ve been obvious really — just brake fade. I read up on guidelines for driving large vehicles down slopes, and followed them religiously from then on. Phew. Queue the exhilaration of having avoided a tragedy!

Our errands ended up taking way longer than expected, so by the time we returned to our beautiful wild-camp, it was too late to start the walk. We did a mini-walk instead, a preview of the larger walk to come, and started down the gravel road.

This took us past some abandoned-looking huts, overgrown fields and moss-covered rock walls with deep drifts of autumn leaves blown up against them, past beautiful birch wood with bare silvery trunks above a thick orange carpet of leaf-litter, and eventually, to the edge of the world, or so it seemed: The huge expanse of lava that is the Valle de Bove, glimpsed through a wood of silver-and-orange.

It took our breath away. As Katherine put it, just when we think we’ve seen the most beautiful place ever, something even more amazing comes along. We were on the ridge we’d spotted from Etna’s upper reaches the day before, feathery reds, golds and oranges meeting the dull grey-brown of the lava flow.

We wandered around through the trees on the top of the ridge, awestruck and delighted, until advancing evening forced us to start back to Nettle with a hearty appetite to explore further the next day.

A short and picturesque drive inland through pretty, rocky mountains, through a rather sad-looking town amusingly called ‘Purgatoria’, and through another deserted seaside tourist town. We followed GPS co-ordinates to a promising-sounding wildcamp that I had found mentioned on a forum: We ended up on the shore of a rocky, sweeping bay surrounded by mountains lightly dusted with dry grassy scrub: A strangely lunar-esque landscape, but a very beautiful one.

We stopped for lunch and a quick walk, but plagued by a low battery and plaintively beeping inverter, and wishing to have operational laptops, we moved on into the town of San Vito Lo Capo, in search of a caravan park.

Unfortunately, all of the caravan parks in the town were prohibitively expensive, unpleasant or closed, so we retreated for the night back to the wildcamp on the beach. We never cease to be astonished by the cost of occupying a few square metres for the night while occasionally using a few tens of watts of electricity! Went to sleep by the sound of waves — very restful — and our stowed satellite dish creaking in the wind — not so restful!

The following day we thought we’d take a quick peek around San Vito Lo Capo, then move on to greener pastures. In the process we spotted a ‘camper service’ sign and followed it to a quite delightful unofficial-looking camper stop — a little area right on the rocky shoreline to the north of the town, walled in with a fence of palm fronds and dotted with ground cover with little purple flowers. We called a phone number on the locked fence, crossing our fingers, and got through to a fellow who told me ‘diche minute!’.

Sure enough, he appeared ten minutes later and let us in and agreed on €10 per night to stay seven days — much more reasonable! I asked about water and he told us the water there wasn’t actually drinkable. Given that we were completely empty, we ummed and ahhed in our separate languages until he decided upon something, and directed us forward to what turned out to be his house! He ran a hose from a tap somewhere out the back and filled us up with drinking water, much to our astonishment and gratefulness.

So, all set up, we settled into our temporary new home, mere metres from the very blue water of the sea and with a grand view of the bay.

We spent the week there, continuing with our separate projects. The days were sunny and warm, although we spent them indoors! The nights were incredibly wild and stormy. The town’s power flickered on and off all night; quite a thing to see the entire town, visible from our bed facing the sea, completely lose power and disappear into the darkness. Lightning blinded us, rain pounded us and wind almost threatened to roll us over! It felt very cosy to lie in bed and watch it all happen outside.

One evening, keen to get a taste of the local cuisine, we wandered the town and found a delightful Arab-esque restaurant in which to try the particular mix of Arabic and Italian cuisine that is the Sicilian specialty. Katherine had a pistachio-encrusted hunk of her new favourite, pesci spada, and I had an interesting vegetable cous-cous, accompanied by an odd soup concoction that presumably was to be poured onto the cous-cous. The sweet mint tea we had after, topped with pine nuts, was particularly good.

For our final day in San Vito Lo Capo, we decided to venture out into the world, and drove the short, windy and spectacular road to the nearby Zingaro National Park. We strapped on our hiking gear and headed out into what turned out to be one of the most spectacular and beautiful places we’ve been on our journey so far. Neon green lizards sprang from the bright ochre pathway through striking dry coastal scrub, overlooking bright turquoise water met by white pebbled beaches. Quite a feast for the eye. At one point, we found a bush being visited by an indigo-coloured bumblebee! Our path ran along the coast, through a lush valley and up a rocky path that led high above the water and along over a number of hilly promontories. Beautiful.

We walked almost back to Scopello, then made our way back along the highland route, crossing comparatively barren hills with, at the latter part of the trek, amazing views over the coast, the soft form of clouds out to sea being reflected in the still ocean in the late afternoon light. Sunset happened around us as we were approaching the end of our trek, casting brilliant pinks and oranges around us, making the orange-coloured dirt path seem luminescent.

We certainly won’t be forgetting Zingaro any time soon!

With our seven days in San Vito Lo Capo behind us, we deemed it time to move on, and headed out towards the medieval mountain town of Erice, mentioned by our one-time French neighbours in Palermo. The drive there wound through the mountains, then met the suburbs by the coast, and finally switchbacked up the mountain upon which the little ancient town sat. With neither of us able to quite remember the directions our French friends gave us, we drove in and found free out-of-season parking, propped off the road into a very pretty wooded area. Opening the door after parking, the waft of crisp, clean wooded mountain air — leaf litter, grass, trees — caused fond memories of our hills home in Belgrave to spring to mind.

We went for a long walk around the town’s ancient cobbled streets and narrow alleyways; we craved pizza, found a pizzeria, and sat down only to find out pizza was off for the day — too bad; we had some quite tasty alternatives. Then more wandering: Derelict, empty houses, doors with colourful faded paint, bright red leaves of ivy climbing a few walls.

We climbed the tiny winding staircase of the bell tower, poking over the town’s roofs beside the church Chiesa Madre, and found our way back around the town by the amazing Castello di Vinere, a.k.a. the Castle of Venus, built over an ancient temple of a cult notorious for ‘sacred prostitution’ (Any excuse…), and now a hulking shape dotted with moss and hanging precipitously over the edge of the mountain. Behind Castello di Vinere squatted the smaller Pepoli Castle, neatly atop a rocky outcrop, a sheer drop beneath each wall. These builders sure liked to make things hard for themselves.

Back to our peaceful little wooded nook for the night, and after a final morning stroll around town we pressed on.

Regrettably, Nigel was up to his tricks again, and rather than take us around the city of Trapani like a good GPS navigator, he took us straight into its maze of narrow, traffic-clogged and confusing one-way streets before dropping out on us entirely due to poor satellite reception. Great. We ended up pointing the wrong way down a one-way street, no way forward, and the way behind us blocked by a stream of traffic. Much sweating, cursing and careful inching backwards later, we managed to reach the turn-off we had missed and continue onwards.

We drove south, turning east near Masala and driving through one of Sicily’s famous wine regions — unfortunately, it was mostly bare soil or dead vines, as it’s not really the right time of year. Having discovered no place to settle, we pulled over on a grotty road in Salemi, jumped online to do some research for our next move. An hour later, we had a decision, and headed south to Selinunte, home of some heartily impressive Greek ruins. Stopped at the caravan park we had identified, winced at the fee but stayed anyway; very tasty and cheap pizza in the attached restaurant.

A day wandering around the archaeological area (the picnic area could’ve been somewhere in Australia, buried among eucalyptus trees). We sat on a fallen chunk of temple column and read (from the Internet on my iPhone — an interesting contrast of old and new) about the Greek god Dionysus, god of wine, fertility and madness, whose ruined temple we sat upon.

We got quite lost heading towards the Acropolis, and took a long detour through some half-excavated plots. Interesting to see behind the scenes a little.

Thought we’d rest overnight in the empty car park, but got moved on by a grumpy official, and found ourselves a less-expensive, less-official but much prettier caravan stop for the night. The best ones are always the unofficial, cheap ones! Every time!

The following day, after doing some much-needed laundry, we headed out east, bound for Mount Etna national park which sounded quite promising. Very pretty rolling hills; raw earth and vines making a patchwork of colours. Evening crept up on us, and on a whim I took a little road off the highway. It led around a hill and we found a spot by the side of the road with sweeping views over the surrounding countryside, shades of purple in the evening light — beautiful, and very peaceful.

So, next stop: Etna.

It’s been a while since the last update: We’ve had many pleasant distractions, and every time there was the opportunity to do some blogging, something else enticed me away. But, as our time here in Italy draws to a close (already!), it’s time to record them before they fall out of my memory! Read on, and apologies for the silent spell!

Slow travel time! In the wake of Tim, Jen and Annie we spent several extra days in Sorrento, adjusting to being without our new-found family, and doing some software development. A little culture-shock, interestingly.

Having eventually judged it time to get on with things, we unplugged and headed out into the unknown to the south. Our culture shock intensified driving through the rubbish-strewn ghettos of the urban sprawl near Naples, and we were greatly relieved to find the open road later in the day.

Over the next couple of days, we drove south down the coast, stopping to pick up a second SIM card in Salerno to extend our Internet quota and getting into some tight squeezes in Nettle in the process — not helped by some rampant double- and triple-parking.

We had some quite pleasant wild-camps in the area around the Cilento and Vallo di Diano National Park; parked above the seaside town of Marina di Casal Velino, high above the sea in a lay-by of a cliffside road near San Giorgio, and by the beach in eerily silent Lenzi, closed down for low season. Hoping to find somewhere to settle for a little while, we took a drive through the mountains of the National Park, quite pleasant and green, but not quite what we were looking for and devoid of any worthy caravan parks that we could find. Some beautiful towns perched atop hills, though.

Onwards we drove, down through increasingly decrepit towns, our moods and comfort levels declining accordingly! All changed for a moment when we drove through a delightful seaside town, Scilla, three- and four-storey houses with orange-tiled roofs clustered around a promontory with a castle perched atop it. Charmed, we tried to find a place to park for the evening and explore the town, but were met with no-camper signs everywhere, and reluctantly moved on.

Eventually we made it to Villa San Giovanni, with Sicily visible just a short hop over the channel. We took a evening stroll along the dirty foreshore, past many groups of men gathered around chatting, and spotted a diver coming out of the water, two or three octopus dangling from his belt! We spent a night parked by the sea, beautiful clear blue water with a white sandy beach completely littered with all kinds of rubbish.

In the morning, we took the ferry over, and arrived in Messina, Sicily, and drove our way along the picturesque winding inland road through forests of eucalyptus. What a familiar sight!

Some minor drama after an unwise turn suggested by Nigel, involving getting ourselves nearly wedged down a tiny little road in a tiny little town and having to reverse for a considerable distance with cars waiting on us. Tense, sweat-inducing stuff.

We made it out alive and unscathed, and drove through the cluttered yet not unattractive suburbs to Milazzo. Milazzo is a quite nice town which is one of the launching points to get to the Aolian Islands, one of which is Stromboli, a tiny island almost entirely occupied by a ‘continuously erupting’ volcano. We spent a few nights at a caravan park on the peninsula to the north-west of the town: We met a lovely Swiss family, Pascal, Vivienne and their children, and shared some swiss beer (and a little vegemite!); saw some amazing lightning and ate some incredible pesci spada (swordfish) from the caravan park’s restaurant, of all places.

With the Stromboli boat tour booked out, we decided to press on, postponing it for our return journey. A quite pleasant drive along the coast, cut short by a road closure, presumably because the road fell into the ocean. We backtracked and found a beautiful wildcamp in an area off the road near San Giorgio-Magaro, looking out over the Tyrrhenian Sea. A wild night of wind, rain and electrical shenanigans, which we somehow survived without being blown off the cliff — as we found out later, however, not everyone was as fortunate: The nearby city of Messina was victim to flooding and landslides that killed at least 20.

We pressed on — or rather, backwards, until we got on the motorway to continue our journey. Once on the motorway, the kilometers passed quickly, and we took the exit to Cefalu, a stunning ancient seaside town, wedged between a tall rocky outcrop and the ocean, with a maze of picturesque little cobbled streets weaving through. We found a park on the promontory, and went for a sunset-lit walk along the beach and through the town. The following day, my birthday, we walked through the town some more — the little alleys smelt pleasantly of the clean laundry hanging from every balcony, drying in the sun, while scooters scooted past us nimbly. We had an astonishingly expensive but pleasant meal of pesci spada and some local fish, in an outdoor restaurant in a piazza by the ancient church (in lieu of the cute little restaurant we saw the night before, with tables wedged into a tiny little alley: Which we were unable to find again), then went for a long swim in the warm waves beside Nettle.

The following day we hopped back on the motorway and headed towards the city of Palermo. The motorway became a highway and skirted the city. In the process, we got a taste of the somewhat chaotic traffic: Intersections where basically anything goes, and one just enters and hopes for the best; formula-one driver wannabes ducking and weaving, and general impatience and pushiness. It’s hard to imagine how it all makes for a sensible system: The resulting need for extreme caution and alertness for neighbouring drivers’ foolishness makes for slow going. Surely a couple of extra traffic lights and a general adherence to a semblance of road rules would lead to smoother progress! Still: It all works, somehow.

Slightly west of Palermo, we began another caravan park search, hoping to find somewhere to be a base while we explored the city. The first caravan park lay on the far side of a little town on the coast, and Nigel decided on a particular route that very nearly led to disaster: We found ourselves heading down the tiniest road we’d seen yet, lined on each side by parked cars, and with no possibility of reversing. We inched along, and found ourselves at a tight T-intersection with another tiny road, parked cars everywhere. We both leaned out the window to check the distance between the cars on either side: Katherine had one or two centimetres, while I had quite literally a millimetre or less. The car’s mirror was touching the side of Nettle as we crept by, not hard enough to scrape or cause any marks, but definitely making contact. Thankfully there were two pot-plants on the far side of the intersection where there were no cars, and a kind gentleman who noticed our plight aided us by directing me forward around the corner. If we’d had a millimetre’s less room, I don’t know what we would have done. Helicopter lift, perhaps?

With one more false start, requiring some cautious reversing out while cars behind hopped out of the way, I decided enough was enough, pulled over, and scouted ahead on foot, to try to find a way through. Once I found the caravan park on foot, I realised it was horrendous and it was all for naught; we continued onwards! One or two unpleasant and expensive caravan parks later, we stopped on a road by the beach instead. Two friendly French motorhomers drove by and parked in a field beside the road, and invited us up. We talked for a while; He told us they were originally from Paris, but now lived in Brittany where they ran a B&B. They had travelled in Croatia, where we were planning to spend the winter, and he recounted the extreme motorhome-unfriendliness there: “No camper” signs everywhere, and insanely expensive caravan parks. At one place, he told us, it was actually cheaper to stay an a nearby B&B, parking their camper outside, rather than stay in the caravan park. Damn! He also told us they’d come from Erice, a town he pointed out on my iPhone’s map, and described a wild-camp there. So, we moved beside them and settled in for the night.

The following day we moved into Palermo proper, to a car park that also catered for campers, with electrical hook-up and a bathroom. Mercifully wide roads and a nice and uneventful journey in.

We got directions from a helpful woman at the car park who spoke a little English, and wandered around Palermo, a very interesting but very dirty town. We found ourselves at one point in what appeared to be the student quarter, with signs in Arabic and an even an Indian restaurant. There were street corners piled to shoulder-height with rotting garbage, and dirty water running across the street — colourful indeed.

We found a little antiques market, wandered some more, and visited the Capuchin Crypt, of the Capuchin Order who had the somewhat macabre tradition of embalming their dead, dressing them up and suspending them from hooks in these catacombs. Creepy stuff: Hundreds of bodies in varying states of decomposition leering down from the walls. It was cold, the air dry but unscented, and very quiet, tourists like us walking around the dusty passageways in silence. This was no sterile tourist display: The bodies were out in the air, hanging just an arms length away from the walkways. Some had skin still hanging off their grinning skulls; the less-decayed ones were the most creepy, as one could still make out a semblance of a lopsided face. Yeech.

Footsore, we started heading back in the direction of a main road where we might find a bus — then, in short order my iPhone’s battery ran out, then Nigel’s battery died, leaving us without any form of map or navigation. It was no good asking anyone else — we tried once, and got a long, entirely unintelligible answer; thanks anyway! By some good guesswork and a bit of luck, we found our way to the bus depot, a fairly safe bet, then found the right bus and made our way back to Nettle.

We spent a few extra days in Nettle at the caravan park while I recovered from a short spell under the weather (I have been quite the sickly one lately!), then anxious to leave the grotty city, we headed onwards.

We drove along the road high above the sea, past the insanely dense sprawl of Castellemare del Golfo, towards Scopello, a promising destination that Katherine had discovered.

We didn’t quite make it, instead finding a delightful ‘parcheggio’ (parking area), grassy and dotted with olive trees, overlooking the sweep of a bay, in a little town called Casa de Franchis on the map. Beautiful mountains made a picturesque backdrop behind our little olive grove, and — jackpot — there was strong 3G reception and electricity hookup points, just what we need to remain for a while. That, with an amazing €2 per night fee had us hopping up and down with excitement!

Unfortunately, our dreams of our new home fell apart a little when we realised the electricity was turned off for low-season, and there wasn’t a soul around who we could talk to about it, although I tried, carrying around a handwritten copy of a Google translation asking after the owner.

We stayed a couple of nights until the power shortage forced us to move on; all wasn’t lost, though, as we found a ‘sosta camper’ just outside of Scopello, with electricity, water, a dump point and a pleasant view, for €10 per day. Not quite our pretty olive grove, but it’d do: We stayed there for a week and I got some good software development done, while Katherine got stuck into some art. For both of us, it was one of the best weeks of our trip yet! The sheer joy of creativity certainly rivals our enjoyment of visiting exciting new places: Combining the two is just brilliant.

So, we spent our days focusing on our respective passions, enjoying the view out the window every now and then, of the startlingly multi-hued blue of the ocean, and the pretty coastline and mountains inland. The sea had amazing patterns of dark and light over it, which would change throughout the day — cloud shadows, we realised later in a ‘duh!’ moment — and patches of green/yellow caused by silt would creep in from the beach when it rained. Beautiful.

The ‘sosta’ owner was quite friendly, and kept popping around to make sure we were happy. The woman at the local grocery store was also very friendly, and we had a little conversation with a lot of hand-waving while a short rainstorm came and went, during which she insisted that we wait it out in her shop. On the walk back to Nettle, in the drizzling rain, another kind soul offered us a ride back!

Scopello itself was surprisingly empty and small — low season, probably! — and after a week we decided it was time for a change of scene — and time to find a place to buy groceries at less than the tourist prices we found in Scopello!

We spent one last wistful night in our ‘olive grove’ in Casa de Franchis, and headed onwards.