The Sausages of Sicily
I was on the island of Sicily for something like 5-6 weeks in total and in those 5-6 weeks I don't think there past more than 48hrs sans an encounter with sea water. This is of course a very good thing - it was a proper Mediterranean (and a little Ionian) summer!
After being a tourist in and around Palermo which I talked about in the previous post I settled into a crazy little farm in the south. The environment at this place was without a doubt different than other farms I've been on here in Italy. There was always someone coming or going, always some drama of sorts and always someone around to convince to skive off to the beach. The work was definitely towards the relaxed end of the scale with little importance placed on doing things "today" and more emphasis placed on not getting too hot in the sun and preparing food. Sometimes the lunches would drag on (in a generally good way) until the normal Kiwi dinner time.
One good example of how this wasn't your traditional organic wwoofing farm was that one of my jobs was to help organise a Reggae gig with Burro Banton - an old famous reggae god. While I'm not that much into reggae, I didn't think he was that great as a performer. Basically a lot of "yeah man" in his heavy Jamacan accent along with some other noises and grunts. Maybe a bit too much weed before the show methinks...he was smoking in the green room for at least an hour before he was on. Luckily I skipped the clean up after the 600 odd italians that came to that because...
I ran away from this farm with some friends that I made there over a few days leading up to the gig. "Ran away" isn't the right phrase, it's just that I decided to leave rather quickly when hardly anyone was there - everything just fell into place and it was the right moment to go. However it was displeasing to me to have to leave like that and I smoothed things over with notes and later emails.
The four of us went camping in this awesome (up to NZ standards) national reserve in a valley with a river flowing through. Although being a natural reserve camping is entirely prohibited so we had some adventures on the first night when we had to quickly put out our fire and shutup after hearing a ranger's car driving along this ridge road a long way in the distance. It was a really beautiful spot however and in the climate here there are no problems sleeping on a mat under the stars.
After a few nights of roughing it we returned to stay at one of their houses in the biggest city in Sicily, Catania. While my italian friends from the north really liked it, I thought it was just a bigger and crappier version of the cool and gritty Palermo. We walked and ate around the city and did some touristy things. We also took a trip up to Taormina, which although touristy as hell, is really quite a cool little city on the hills overlooking amazing beaches.
I took an overnight boat from Catania to Napoli which, although coming into the port of Napoli with the sun rising was cool, was not the best nights sleep. Here I stayed with a friend of a friend for a few days and didn't do too much really...a few touristy things and he showed me some cool spots more out of the way where the touristy don't go.
And that brings us to the present day where I am sitting in an office overlooking the mountains of the Campania region. I'm at a farm about an hour out of Napoli and everything is going swimingly. This place is one of the better that I have stayed in. Of course there are issues but it generally has a good mix of work, fun, environment etc.