Home again

We arrive back from Malta yesterday afternoon, and it was rather depressing to leave cloudless sunny skies and return to rain laden clouds of England. Who would have thought we were in a drought, eh? Indeed on the flight home you could see the change in conditions as we flew. The Mediterranean was cloudless and beaming sunshine; the south of France was sunny with a few scattered clouds; the north of France was a bit cloudier still, but generally looked nice down there. The channel was where it all changed, the clouds thickened, we hit some turbulence, and our descent was through thick layers of rain clouds.

The main square in Bugibba, where most of our cocktails were consumed

 

A side street where we used to dine at get our late night gelato from......

 

After gloating slightly about the lovely weather in the blog, it was some degree of karma that we were greeted by rain. Still, that is England for you and in a strange way it is nice to be back (I must be mad!!). Anyway, as is usual, here are the thing I have learned from my trip to Malta.

 

Cuisine

1. The salt cellars are always full of wet salt the rice they put in to absorb the moisture cannot compete in this humidity.

2. Cider options in the majority of restaurants consists of Woodpecker or Strongbow

3. Starter portion sizes are often as big as a main meal.

4. If you don't order bread and oil as a starter the restaurant will bring you out a basket anyway and not charge you for it.

A lizard takes a liking to my cocktail fruit.....

 

Travel

1. The fun bus is not any fun at all, it is an hours worth of embarrassment as you are paraded past pubs and eateries so all their patrons can see who was foolish enough to buy a ticket.

2. It may be a small island but it takes a while to get from A to B by the bus. That said, it is very reasonably priced, and the service is thorough.

3. The sightseeing tours are not really worth the money, as most of the places they take you are not worth seeing. Also for the ladies, it is advisable to buy a hat when sitting on the top deck.

4. When arranging for a private tour, ask for Ralph - you won't regret it. I am sure he will have some new death stories to impart as well.

 

Culture

1. When visiting Malta, pre-book a visit to the hypogeum, by the time you get in country, it will be too late as they are usually booked a month in advance.

2. Skorba temple is not really worth the entrance fee.

3. Temples are the most unvisited part of the island.

4. You can't get good catacombs pictures with an iPad camera.

One of my many pics of the catacombs - clear as mud.....

 

Well, that is about it for this year, I need to return to reality and start saving up for the next adventure....so this is Mouseburger signing off until the next time......

The last day in Malta

That title in itself is depressing, and judging by the lack of people emailing me to tell me our work syndicate has won the lottery, it is looking like I am going to have to come home and start paying those bills again. Every day we have had in Malta has been blessed with glorious sunshine, and it seems to be getting hotter with every passing day. Fortunately, today there has been a soft breeze which has made being out in the sun bearable. This is something of a random post, as I pick out a few things that have not naturally fitted into the blog, and share some of the observances of life in Malta.

For our penultimate meal, I thought I would take Sarah to Bognor....I am such a romantic

 

Cuisine

The cuisine here is a strange mix of Italian (which I am sure is the traditional cuisine) with some English dishes thrown in for good measure (i.e. burgers, fish and chips) to cater for the tourist market. It is a little embarrassing to see all the Brits making their way down to McDonalds with the kiddywinks instead of trying some of the lovely restaurants around the area. For the record I have not been into those golden arches once, Sarah can vouch for that!

I know it is a catholic country, but eating a Rabbi is a bit extreme

 

The pizzas here are lovely, as is the gelato (ice cream), and I have developed a taste for tequila sunrises, but rather strangely when you ask for a cider here, they will only have bottles of Woodpecker or Strongbow, unless of course you go to one of the many Brit pubs here, where you can buy (Irish) Magners. I have to confess that while being sniffy about frequenting British type pubs here, we have round one that is really nice and cheap. The hotel drinks prices are fairly extortionate, possibly to subsidise those on fully inclusive packages. A lot of Maltese dining takes place al fresco as it is so much nicer to enjoy the warm evening in the pavement outside the restaurant. Very European.

 

Transport

Transport around the island is generally pretty good although there is no train service here at all. Their used to be a train system, but it fell into disrepair before the war, and has since been replaced by the bus service. This is a little bit sad as the famous yellow buses have been replaced by green Arriva livery instead. There is a plus side to this though in that buses follow a timetable fairly reliably so independent travelling is actually rather easy.

Also, the bus drivers a incredibly helpful once they know what you are trying to do. It is always worth explaining to them where you are trying to get to,and they will often shout out down the bus when they arrive at the stop you need.

A special mention has to go out to the Bugibba fun bus, which is frankly anything but fun. It is like a childrens train ride, and it goes around the back streets of the town ringing its bell and beeping its horn and encouraging the people on board to wave at passers by. Now I accept that this would be slightly enjoyable for youngsters, but from what I have seen parents with kids are in the minority, and instead it is a fully of couples who have a look of something between embarrassment and horror on their faces. Very few wave and you can tell that most of the people on board are just desperate for the nightmare to end.....

Shopping

Shopping is an interesting sport in Malta, from what I can see, outside the main shopping area of Valetta, the breakdown of shops is thus; car showrooms/auto parts shops/tyre places make up about 50% of all shops, 25% are air conditioning shops, a surprisingly large 10% are aluminium shops and the remaining 15% can be anything else.

What I can deduce from this is that there are either a lot of breakdowns or accidents in Malta and they like to keep cool with their aluminium framed door frontages. Indeed there were a lot of aluminium gates, so if you ever wondered what happened to all those coke cans you recycle at work, it is a safe bet they end up on Malta (via China, naturally).

Fashion

There is not much call for wearing very much here at all, so fashion seems to consist of flip flops and a bikini/shorts (depending on your preference). What does seem to be a curiosity is that a large proportion of Maltese women appear to dye their hair some shade of red; the younger ones going for a more pronounced red, and as age progresses it gets toned down to a burgundy colour. I am at a loss to explain this.

One of the worst fashion faux pas imaginable; sandals and socks!

 

That sums up most of the things I have noticed in Malta, my next post will be from England with a summary of what I have learned from this adventure.

 

Funky Cold (well, very hot) M'Dina

We were making good time on our day out, having finished with the temple hopping by 11am, and so we moved on to the next part of the day; visiting M'dina. We are getting the hang of the bus system as the trip there was relatively easy, although we were made to wait a bit in Mosta for our bus. This was quite uncomfortable as there is no shade anywhere, even in the clear perspex bus shelter, to get out of the sun, so you have to sit there and boil until the bus comes, and you can cry with joy at the air conditioning inside...

M'dina is known as the silent city as it is an old citadel with narrow roads meaning traffic can't get in to it. As if to make up for this fact the traffic just outside it was extra busy and noisy as scores of tourists got out to visit. It was a sharp contrast from the temples. That said, it is a lovely place and well worth seeing.

A bit of history about the town, it was once the old capital of Malta, and has seen occupations by the Phoenicians, Fatimids and Normans before being handed over to the knights of St. John. For the geeky amongst you, this town was used in the filming of the HBO series Game of Thrones, as well as being referenced in the Antony Horowitz novels about Alex Rider.

The entrance to M'Dina - horse drawn carriages are for the lazy, it really isn't that big!

The town itself is quite small being a citadel, but it is bordered by the town of Rabat (which I am informed is the Arabic for suburb). We wandered around the perimeter of the town before venturing inside.

The perimeter walls of the citadel - impressive

The moniker 'the silent city' is something of a misnomer as the place is full of tourists jabbering in a multitude of languages, and despite the roads being narrow, there are some cars allowed to enter. Residents drive up and down these streets with reckless abandon - I kid you not, the width of some of these streets is barely 6 inches wider than a car meaning you probably have to get used to scraping your side panels quite often....on one occasion we had to seek shelter in a doorway to avoid being taken out by a van!

Narrow streets, I could stretch out and touch both sides

There is a lovely church in the centre of the town, but it was a) too hot and b) too expensive to enter for me to warrant buying a ticket to go inside. I guess I am old fashioned, but this whole trend in people paying to go into a place of worship is rather distasteful to me. Yes, they could ask for donations, but not force people to pay. I would say the same thing about Kings College chapel in Cambridge and Westminster Abbey too, so it is certainly not a Maltese thing. OK, mini rant over.

Once we had our fill of M'Dina, we crossed over the road to Rabat, as there are some really old catacombs there. Sarah is not a big fan of enclosed spaces underground, whereas i must be part hobbit as I love clambering around in dark holes. Therefore Sarah agreed to wait outside and sun herself while I toured the catacombs.

It was a welcome break from the sun for me, but there is a traditional dank and musty smell down there, which is never the nicest. That said, the catacombs were extensive and well worth the money, as just when you felt that you had visited every area (I am a completist, and so never like to think that I have missed an area) another side passage revealed a whole new section.

 

Alas, my iPad, which I have been using to take the photos on this tour, was just not up to the task of taking decent pictures in low light conditions (you can't have everything I guess), and the image above is the best of the batch, but at least it gives you an idea of what it was like. I left the catacombs, visited the gift shop and bought my obligatory fridge magnet, and went and found Sarah, who was sitting/basking on a bench just outside.

 

The final part of the day was to visit the remains of a Roman villa, which mercifully was not too far from where we needed to catch our bus from. We popped inside, but I have to say it was a trifle disappointing for me, as I have seen Fishbourne Roman palace and the mosaics there which are mightily impressive. This was just really a small house with a couple of small mosaics.

Off centre shot of the mosaic.....

This was our last bit of Maltese culture for the holiday, and I have to say my feet were starting to feel the pressure of pounding around historical sights in flip flops, so I will be glad of the rest. Tomorrow is a day at rest, before heading off back to Blighty. I would love to take the sunshine with me for you all, but the airline are sticklers for baggage allowances!

Skorba and Ta Hagrat Temples - take two

We were up bright eyed and busy tailed this morning as we were doing temple trekking on our own once again, trying to visit the temples at Skorba and Ta Hagrat which we failed with so spectacularly with the other day.

It meant that I dragged Sarah out on the road by 8am, meaning we were up and about by 7am. This is definitely not a natural time to get up at when you are on holiday*. We planned our route to perfection and the buses were nice and reliable too, so we managed to get to Mgarr (the town where the temples are) by 9am. We decided to head to Skorba temple first and then bumble along the road to Ta Hagrat.

Skorba temple is a complete contrast to the temples we saw yesterday as instead of a newly built visitor centre, there is just a tiny shed in one corner of the temple grounds with a guard sitting in it and the toilet facilities consisted of a rather nasty looking portaloo. It was reassuring though that the guard had his obligatory pet companion sitting in the shade keeping him company, so there were some similarities. I wonder if the pets come with the job much like we have company car schemes, maybe they have company pets. The senior execs getting a better range of pets, i.e. directors get to choose from an apex predator like a lion or tiger, whereas the minions only get a choice of cats and dogs.....

I digress. The guard came out and asked us if we had any tickets. We assumed you could buy them at the door, but apparently not, you had to get them from the council offices at the other end of town. I got the impression from the guard that he didn't get many visitors to his temple at all, and so us turning up at 9am sharp threw him out of his daily routine somewhat. He asked us if we had a car to go and get some tickets but we told him we just walked up here. He decided to just let us in without a ticket, which was very kind of him, and I have to say I am glad that we didn't pay, as there really wasn't that much to see here at all, it was a temple once, but there were very few things of note at the site, most of the more precious things being taken to the museum in Valletta.

There was too much to photo here, this site being the most ruined we have seen on our travels, but here are some token snaps for you to get a feel for the temple, and for completeness.

This temple was not as ab-skorba-ing as the others we have seen

This is the main apse in Skorba temple, it is a lot smaller than Hagar Qim and Mnajdra and is shaped in a trefoil structure, like a shamrock. It appears the site was used and reused for hundreds of years, dating from 3,600BC all the way through to 2,500BC. However, the outer wall of the site dates from as far back as 5,000BC, making this site ancient (or for the more cynical readers - the radiocarbon dating process cocked up).

Side view of the temple: compact and bijou

We decided to leave and head to the next temple, but as i was leaving I offered the guard a couple of Euros to buy himself a beer as a thank you for letting us in to the site. He refused, and the look on his face was one of horror, making me wonder if there is a strict code in Maltese law on bribes. In Egypt the money would have been deposited in the guards bank and earning interest, but the time it took this man to say "no".

Ta Hagrat is on the other side of the town, and conveniently is close to the local council administrative offices where you are supposed to buy the temple tickets so, feeling a bit bad that I had put the Skorba guard in a dilemma (the moment he knew were we're coming to this temple, he nervously asked us not to mention the fact he let us in without a ticket) I went and paid for our ticket into Ta Hagrat.

The official behind the desk was a young woman, who was clearly earmarked for high office in the world of officialdom as she was doing everything by the book, even down to scanning my five Euro notes to check to see if they were authentic. She couldn't get one to scan and then told me she couldn't accept it, and I was somewhat afeared that she might have pressed a silent alarm under her desk notifying Interpol of a major counterfeiting operation in the town. Luckily I had another fiver, and after some attempts at pushing it through the machine, it was accepted and she got us our tickets.

We wandered our way around the corner to the temple to be met by an equally amazed guard who took our tickets, went away with them and came back five minutes later with them again. As i said earlier, it genuinely felt like they have never had anyone visiting this temples before and so when someone does, they do not know what to do at all. This guard reinforced my view.

Entrance to Ta Hagrat: Speak friend and enter (as long as you have a ticket)

The temple itself was also quite small, but was much more of an impressive structure than at Skorba. As with several of these temples, it was only discovered when farmers kept noticing pottery being ploughed up when they ran over it. It makes you wonder how many more as yet undiscovered temples are out there.

This is the central apse of the temple leading to the portaloo at the back. It just shows what skill neolithic man possessed to design a temple with the forethought that 5,000 years or so later modern man would erect his own modern temple to improving the fertility of the soil! We were lucky indeed, as we had arrived at this temple just in time to watch the emptying the toilet into a van (which seemed to be leaking) ceremony. To paraphrase the words of Kilgore from Apocalypse Now, "I love the smell of a portaloo being emptied in the morning"......

If you look closely you can see the pipe coming out of the portaloo

This is a shot across the temple to give a sense of scale. While this temple was in better condition that Skorba, it was still a smallish temple site, not really worthy of the five euros entrance fee really, but I always like to support the heritage of these places, so don't really mind stumping up a few quid for it. In visiting both of the temples, we saw no other person interested in them whatsoever (which is sad), so most of my photos are relatively people free (which I love).

* unless of course you are European, in which case you are up at the crack of dawn to put your towel down on your preferred sun lounger before heading to breakfast. I always used to assume this was just a generalisation and was more associated with the Germans but in fact it is almost all nations, apart from the Brits, who are still in bed nursing off their jägerbomb hangovers.

Temples with Ralph part II

We left the caves and headed to the south of the island to see Hagar Qim (pronounced had-jar eem) temple complex and Mnajdra (pronounced Men-eye-drar) temples. These are possibly the most delicate of all the temples on Malta as they have been placed under a protective canvas sheeting system (thanks to a grant from the EU) which protects them from the elements and which Ralph disparagingly kept referring to as UFOs.

Ralph's UFO over Hagar Qim - stay off this Cisk Ralph!

 

Ironically, it turns out that this protective sheeting is having the opposite effect than it was designed for, as the stones are no longer getting any water at all onto them and so they are drier than a Jack Dee stand up show, which is contributing to weathering the limestone.

The first temple we visited was Hagar Qim and the moment you walk into this site you realise that this is going to be a much better looked after site than the others. That is not to say the other places are run down at all, they are not, but this site had a crowd control barrier to control the flows of people coming through. Classy. The temple is the best preserved of all the sites in Malta, and it is also the one you can have most interaction with (i.e. climbing on it).

The main entrance to the temple

 

I don't know whether it is because the public hadn't been made aware of this, but the temples were practically empty again today making the need for thewir crowd control system completely redundant. There was our party and maybe one other party visiting the whole site, a maximum of about 30 people. For me this is my idea of heaven as you don't get annoying tourists invading your pictures of the site, but a part of me couldn't help feel sad that people were not taking advantage of the lovely historical sites they had on their doorstep. Indeed even the locals seemed more interested in the beach than the delights these temples offered.

The heat again was something to behold and mixed with the humidity, it means walking around these places is actually very energy sapping. Even armed with bottles of water we were still struggling. It was a great relief to be under the shade for a time, but you still don't escape the film of sweat! In some ways it is more unbearable than the Valley of the Kings in Egypt.

A niche outside the temple complex

 

This is a niche on the exterior of the main temple building. I am at a loss to explain the purpose of this and indeed the layout of this temple seems to be a bit different to the others I have seen so far on my travels as at this temple there is evidence of a stone vaulted ceiling being used. Amazing to think in an age where man was struggling to invent the wheel, they had mastered such feats of engineering.

The above image is a close up of an altar in Hagar Qim. It is the most intricate and complete altar I have seen in my temple visits thus far, and it was sort of reminiscent to me of the lower Egypt motifs in, erm, Egypt. The holes, s far as I can tell area not from some limestone equivalent of woodworm or from the weathering over 5,000 years, but they are decorative and intentional.

This is one of the few decorative stones at the site with the traditional swirling pattern that seems to be prevalent in the neolithic Maltese society of the time.

After this temple, Sarah and I steeled ourself for the walk to Mnajdra, which was only a half kilometre walk down a hill, but in the heat it felt like we were undertaking an expedition across the Sahara. The journey was really worth it though, as at the bottom was the best temple we have seen in our tour, Mnajdra.

Once again the site was under a protective tarpaulin, and their was another guard at the entrance to check your ticket (the Maltese take officiousness to new levels, as in order to get into the site, we needed to have our ticket checked at the entrance to the museum, then have it checked again at the entrance to Hagar Qim, and finally have it checked again at Mnajdra. They must have full employment here!

Some of the portacabins that the guards sit themselves in are rather fascinating in their own right, as being a ticket inspector on these temples can be a lonely experience where you don't see a person from one day to the next, and so invariably *every* guard has his companion dog lounging out with him and keeping him company. I wonder if they are on the payroll too.

Ralph's UFO hovering over Mnajdra....

 

The Mnajdra temple complex is an interesting one as it appears that the southern temple is aligned so that on the equinoxes, the sun rise shines directly into the back of the temple on the altar, whereas at the solstices, the shafts of light coming into the temple was at its narrowest. Perhaps this is a sign of an early form of calendar.

The entrance to the south temple...no sunrise can get in these days with the protective dome

At the entrance to several of the temples, I have been noticing a two hole arrangement chiselled out of the stone, it looked to me like they might be a method of fixing a door to the temple to restrict access, and I was rather pleased with myself to find out this was correct.

A view from the inside looking out, note the holes in the trilithons which were used to tether a door to the stone

 

The whole place was built with harder limestone on the outside in order to protect the temple from weathering, whereas inside the temple they used a softer a limestone to enable them to create intricate carvings in the stone. Pretty clever geologists these neolithics!

 

Admittedly, a lot of their carving seemed to come in the form of punching hundreds of little holes into the stone, but that is me just being picky.

 

We were on a limited time, as Ralph was coming to pick us up and drop us back at the hotel, so we made our way slowly back up the hill to the car park. By then end of that walk we were both dripping with sweat, and in dire need of a nice cold shower. The journey back was uneventful, it was filled with Ralph sharing stories of the island with us. As we drove I took a few photos.

 

You might not be able to see this clearly in thumbnail mode, but the island in the distance is called Filfla, it is the smallest of the Maltese islands and now a nature reserve. During the war, it was used by the royal navy as target practice, and as a result there is a lot of unexplored shells over there, so there is a strict exclusion zone around the island. Ralph told us the story of a diver who thought it would be interesting to ignore this and go diving there.....I think you know how Ralph's story ends....

 

Temples with Ralph part I

OK, following on from yesterday's failure to visit temples, Sarah and I decided to book a private tour with a minibus. A half day's tour would take in Tarxien temples, the Halam Dar caves, and the temples at Mnejdra and Hagar Qim. It meant an early start, but on the plus side, it also meant that we would tick off a lot off temples in one hit. So much so that I am going to break this post into two parts in order to do them justice.

Unfortunately I discovered that there is little chance of seeing the Hypogeum as they only allow 80 people (all booked up at least a month in advance) in per day and even then, depending on the humidity won't let a group in at all. This is done in order to save the delicate temple from the stress of hundreds of tourists visiting, the damage of which can clearly be seen in Egypt, where a lack of such a policy has bleached all the hieroglyphs, so the wonderful array of colours on the temple no longer exist.

We were outside nice and early and were greeted by a bohemian German ex-pat named Ralph. He had lived in Malta for over 20 years and clearly loved the place, judging by all the stories he was telling us as we made our way around the island. There was a general theme to every one of his stories though, and that was that either through neglect or stupidity, someone died.

They have festas on Malta, which are like small village festivals, and each village let's off fireworks to celebrate it. The result is there is an industry of firework manufacturers on the island, who seem to have little regard for health and safety judging by the number of stories Ralph was telling us about the buildings blowing up (and people dying).

I have to say I liked Ralph though. He made the journey thoroughly entertaining for me with his stories, as well as helping me with my pronunciation of the names of the temples. Maltese is a strange language that the English struggle with (I know you could argue that about every language that was non-English) having its roots in ancient Spanish slang with a mix of Phoenician thrown in for good measure.

The minibus picked up another three people before we started our tour. The first temple was Tarxien (pronounced Tar-shan (thanks Ralph!)) and this was actually in one of the suburbs of Valletta. Ralph being a local knew all the back streets so we got a lovely glimpse of the city where the buses just cannot go, due to the width of the streets.

The temple is pretty impressive, if you like your organised piles of rocks. To some I am sure they would baulk at it and think it looks like a derelict building site, but it is wonderful to see stones that have been around for almost 5,000 years, some of them with intricate carvings on them. The craftsmanship is simply amazing considering the limited amounts of tools they had at their disposal. The temple shape follows the design of the one in Ggantia apart from it being built in phases over hundreds of years. It was a temple as well as a cemetery. I had expanded my theory to think that the arrangement of the apses in the temples were in the shape of a buxom, wide hipped woman; a symbol of fertility in many cultures around the world. However Tarxien temple flies in the face of this theory with a six apse arrangement that resembles more of a Christmas tree.

Fat bottomed girl?

 

This is a part of a carving of a figure at the temple, the guidebook seems to suggest that it is the figure of a man, but you don't often get men with cankles like that!! As you can clearly see from the photo, s/he is topless. In truth no one knows exactly what this temple was used for. Some speculate it was a religious building judging by all the animal bones found there whereas some scholars think it was a social gathering place for neolithic man to hang out.

Made of stone?

 

The image above is the Tarxien money shot, a temple door that leads nowhere.....it is not very high, meaning our forbears were midgets or people were made to bow as they passed through it.

Circles in the sand?

 

The image above is the entrance to the temple. You have to climb over the stone to get in, and the motif on the stone you climb over is thought to be a protective ward to banish evil spirits from entering - a Neolithic version of the door access card system we use at work only more reliable.

Altar of sacrifice??

 

This is the altar at Tarxien. The hole was initially sealed up and when archaeologists opened it up they discovered animal remains, broken pottery and a stone knife, indicating it was an area of significance within the temple.

Stairway to heaven??

 

It may not look it but this is an intriguing photograph as those are some stairs leading up. Is it possible there was a second tier to this temple, or are they simply going nowhere. The stone at the top looks like a stone seat to me, but what do I know...

I saw three ships?

 

Scratches in the rock? Not a bit of it - this is ancient graffiti and those scratches are actually in the shape of boats. Alas I zoomed in too close so it is nigh on mpossible to tell that from this image, so you will have to take my word for it. They don't know when this graffiti was done, so it could date to a later period but it is one of the earliest depictions of life at sea in the world.

After seeing Tarxien temple we were met outside by Ralph who then ferried us via his temperamental ford minibus (which as far as I could tell, the handbrake didn't work) to Ghar Dalam (pronounced Jar Dar Lamb) an ancient cave complex, museum and garden. Basically this was a Maltese version of Cheddar Gorge, with a tiny botanical garden and museum bolted on to justify the entrance fee.

There was not much of interest to see to be fair, but I will share a couple of pictures so you can get a feel for the place. The thinking is that the cave housed early human settlements around the time of the ice age and it was used as a cattle pen for the inhabitants too, judging by the bones they found there. They found hippopotamus bones and skulls too, I am guessing Neolithic man was not farming these though...

An animal version of the Killing Fields....creepy but thorough

A long, dark, wet cave.....nuff said

 

That just about covers the first part of touring with Ralph, part 2 sees us take in two more temples in the south of the island......

Ta Hagrat and Skorba Temples

First of all a weather update. We have been seeing on Sky News that the rain is really lashing down over in Blighty, so I am hoping that you are all safe and sound and there is not too much sewage running through your houses.....if it makes you feel any better, the weather over here is pretty terrible too. It is forecast to be 35 degrees sunshine without a cloud in the sky, quite unbearable at times. We all have our cross to bear I guess. Anyway back to business, today we were up and ready to assault the temples proper. The aim was to get a bus from Bugibba, where we are based, down to Golden Bay (a resort renowned for its sandy beach), and from there change buses which would take us to Mgarr, the town where the temples are.

Golden Bay seemed very popular, even with the locals

It got off to a bad start when we bought our day ticket, and the driver in the first bus didn't give us the validation ticket (you need a validation ticket to travel on the buses for the rest of the day) so when we came to change buses, the other driver refused to let us on unless we bought another day ticket. Admittedly this was only another six euros, but. It was annoying nonetheless.

Then, when on the bus from Golden bay to Mgarr the driver, in order to save time I am guessing, took a shortcut which missed most of the town. I beeped the buzzer for him to let us off near the temple, but he ignored that and stopped at the next available stop, which was in the middle of nowhere and a good mile from the nearest town. Therefore we decided to stay on the bus and visit the town of Mosta instead, which has a lovely church in the middle of it. The idea was we take some photos of that while waiting for a bus to take us back to Mgarr so we could visit the temples.

I made the Mosta this opportunity to take a photo

The church in Mosta was lovely I have to admit, but I was actually more impressed with the place below. I guess that tell you a lot about me....

I only know one person from Kent, so I didn't appreciate they used a unique blend of herbs and spices in their cooking. You learn something new everyday....

We finally made it back to Mgarr, and we got off at a stop near to Ta Hagrat temple. It was a very quiet day, and I am amazed at how few people actually bother to go and see temples in this country. Indeed I was talking to the bus driver, and while he knew the ins and outs of most of the towns and roads on Malta, he admitted he didn't know where the temples were at all. Quite astonishing really. Still, we turned the corner and walked eagerly towards the temple and this is what confronted us.

None shall pass (except on Tuesday and Thursday between 9am and 12pm)

This is a classic case of doing your research before going to see the temple! It only opens on specific days and only for three hours in the morning, with all our bus changes we didn't get there until gone midday anyway. This is something worth noting when in Malta and looking to travel around using the public transport. Make sure you give yourself plenty of time, as while only a small island, it can take ages to get a very small distance.

So, after all that, there was not much else to do apart from heading back to base and writing today off as an epic fail. Tomorrow we have booked a proper official temples tour, so their shouldn't be any more of this faffing around. However Malta is a seriously relaxed sort of place, so who knows what is going to happen....tune in and find out.

Ggantija Temple, Arabs and the rest of Gozo

Today we decided to take a day trip out to Gozo island (Malta is made up of three main islands; Malta, Comino (which is the Med's equivalent to Craggy Island) and Gozo. We booked ourselves in on a sightseeing tour which allowed us to hop on and off of the bus at leisure while seeing all that the island has to offer.

Comino aka Craggy Island - the building is a church, but there are no houses!

The view of Gozo from the ferry

This trip was a sensible idea, but it appeared that Sarah and I were being stalked by the most annoying couple the Arab peninsula has ever produced. It was not enough for these two to block our exit from the ferry, the woman waft her fan right in my face, sit next to us jabbering loudly when we were having an ice cream or get in the way of my camera shots. They were a strange couple who, despite being married, chose to sit at opposite ends of the bus to each other and then communicate to each other in Arabic rather loudly, drowning out the voice of the automated tour guide who was telling me about the things to see on the island.

The woman had an incredibly irritating voice that was reminiscent of the sound of nails being scraped over a blackboard. Her husband had clearly had enough of her and so relegated her to the back of the bus so he could get some peace, but all that meant was that none of us got any peace as she would speak loudly to him from across the bus every 10 seconds while moving to different seats on the bus. After 30 minutes of her, I was suitably annoyed that had her husband offered me a couple of camels to throttle her I would have done it willingly.

Still that didn't deter me from fulfilling my quest, which was to see Ggantija (pronounced Ga-jan-tee-ya) temple. Actually it is two temples built side by side, and it was rather impressive considering these things were built almost 1000 years before the pyramids and Stonehenge (the automated tour guide voice loved telling us this factoid). The name derives from the Maltese meaning "giant", as the local legend is about a giant moving the massive stones needed to build the temple.

Indeed, looking at the size of some of those stones, you have to marvel at how they moved them into place. Bear in mind that these were built 1000 years before Stonehenge and the pyramids (god, I am starting to sound like that automated tour guide), they didn't have the benefit of 1000 extra years of stone moving knowledge to rely on, they were pioneers. The current thinking is that they used tiny little round pebbles to roll the larger slabs into place.

Big stones, weighing over 10 tonnes each

The temple is built in a series of connecting circular rooms, much like a clover, or perhaps it looks like a basic man shape, I dont know, I am speculating. Archaeologists believe that the temples were shrines for fertility rituals, judging by the artefacts they found in the site.

This is the newer temple entrance dated from around c. 3000 BC.

It seemed a shame they put the walkways in as it made it very difficult to get any pictures without a rail in, but you can understand their need to protect the temples, otherwise they would have people clambering all over them (me included!). The older temple had scaffolding all around it to preserve it for future generations, like a megalithic Zimmer frame. It appears unlike other cultures and temples I have visited, the Maltese are keen to preserve their historic sites.

This is the entrance to the older temple, dated c. 3,500 BC

OK, this is where I go a bit geeky, but one of my main reasons for coming to this temple in particular is for the photograph below. Anyone who has played Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, will surely recognise this....

A screenshot from the game Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis

Sarah and I at Ggantija temple.......

 

Admittedly they are not identical, but ever since I first saw the pictures of these temples they always reminded me of this game. The doorways in real life though are not that big, so either Indiana Jones was a midget or the drawings are not to scale. Oh and in case you are wondering they are not doorways at all, they are an altar.

The rest of the sightseeing tour of Gozo was thorough, but if I am being completely honest, a bit of a waste of time for us. It should be noted that getting around in Malta is a very slow process,and the sightseeing tour took over three hours to get us around a tiny island. It left us with very little time to get off and explore anything as we were terrified of missing the last ferry.

That said, there were a couple of interesting facts about the place (and a hell of a lot of churches). Gozo is reputedly the place where the Greek hero Odysseus washed up and was held hostage by the nymph Calypso. We stopped off at her "cave" and I took a token snap of it, with my Arabic friend doing his best to get in the way, but other than that we didn't venture off the bus again. The weather was scorching, and with the lack of shade, the sun beating down on our heads for a couple of hours was too much so we retreated to the sanctuary of the downstairs part of the bus.

It proved to be a long day, just visiting the temple and touring in the bus meant we made the 3rd to last ferry off of the island for the day. It makes you wonder how you could have got a decent day's sightseeing out of it really!

Anyway, tomorrow we are off to see some more temples. Keep an eye out for me on the news, for if we meet our Arabic friends from yesterday things could get ugly.......

 

A sign of things to come....

One thing that is worth mentioning about Malta is their signs are wonderfully malapropriate. I puzzled at the bus time table which had bus times from fri-sat and then the Sunday times. Either they meant mon-sat or bus drivers have the cushiest job on the island!

That pales into insignificance when you visit one car mechanic though and his sign reassuringly offers you "free punctures" with every set of tyres bought. That is a business model which you have to applaud really. I wonder if the customers buy the second set of tyres off of him.....

When you add that to the church which seems to branched out and now offers manicures and pedicures - nuns like nice nails too i am guessing or, slightly more worrying, maybe the monks do! Anyway, there is a wonderful array of signs to enjoy here and any that I see and get a chance to snap will be posted up here.

By the lack of action thus far into the blog post you might have guessed that today has been a rather sedate day really, and you would be right. All we have done is a bit of sitting by the pool and drinking cocktails. Engrossed in a book, I forgot about the suns evil rays, and now have lobster legs. This wouldn't be so bad apart from the fact that I must have sat on the lounger in a rather silly way, as only half my leg got exposed, so I have one side, from thigh to ankle, lobster red, and the other side paler that a goth girl's complexion ......

Also, it seemed a rather good idea to look at the temple on our doorstep in order to whet our appetites for the temples to come. Our hotel was actually built around a small megalithic temple, and it seems rather a shame to admit it, but in fact this is the quietest and least visited part of the hotel. If you go to the sun loungers you find them filled with Germans and east European tourists cooking themselves slowly by the pool, but the only person other than us who drank from the cultural cup was a small child (nationality: unknown) who I think was actually lost and was looking for a way back to the pool.

The temple ruins are small, but rather lovely in their own right. The cynic in me suspected that they might actually be a modern reconstruct by the hoteliers in order to get some extra business, but they are in fact pukka 5000 year old stones. Anyway, here are some snaps of Bugibba Temple.

 

 

 

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