Wednesday in Sicily

 [20 April 2005]

Our first objective was to see the ruined village of Gibillina (“ruderi gibilina”). In the horrible 1968 earthquake, which destroyed many of Sicily’s tiny villages and caused further ruin and havoc, one of the few villages not rebuilt on its original location was Gibillina. In fact the new village was constructed out of whole cloth as it were near the present autostrada, about 18 kms from the old site, and was the result of a collaboration of artists, engineers, architects, etc.; a most curious thing to see today. Anyway, we drove around somewhat aimlessly in the back mountains looking for the old village of Gibillina but we were finally confronted with one of the Sicilian realities: road closures for landslides, etc.

After failing to get to old Gibillina we then set off on back roads towards Marsala where we toured the huge Florio wine factory. As we pulled in and parked there was a tour just being put together and, seeing our car with French plates one of the tour guides came over and started speaking to us in French but then seeing we were perplexed asked if we spoke Italian and then English. In any case, we ended up joining a tour group from Louisiana so it was a lively time for sure.

From Marsala we headed north to search out the salt pans of Trapani – again which we failed to find since, as it turns out, they are covered to protect the salt from the rain. We wound our way along the base of Erice as we headed back to Scopello for the evening.