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.
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.
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.
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.......
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