Instead of taking in the ceremony of sheep being slaughtered and the streets literally running red with blood, I decided to go to Malta with Caitlyn. On Friday, I departed early in the morning in order to take into account any unexpected disasters that are wont to happen here. First, however, I stopped at the library to grab some reading material for the plane rides and the layover that I had. Unfortunately, the library was deserted apart from some of the cleaning ladies who told me that it wouldn't be a problem and gave me a piece of paper to write the book information down on. I enthusiastically wrote it down as well as my information including my student email address and my student ID number. After this, they picked the books and put them on the shelf behind the counter. This is not what I wanted at all and decided to give up in defeat and went to look for a taxi.
As luck would have it, I found a taxi at the university gate and I jumped in. The driver told me that he had one more trip to make with students and then we would go to where I wanted. I was fine with that and he drove about 200 m away from the gate before he was flagged down by some students who apparentely could not make the last stretch to the gate. We drove back towards the taxi stand but turned off to pick up more students and then returning to the school. After one more of these and taking a girl to a cafe, we finally made it to the grand taxi station.
I managed to jump into a taxi that had one spot left and was heading to Fez. I sat in the front seat with a moroccan man who was very patient with my constant shifting and was practically sitting on the stick shift to provide me with some extra space. Unfortunately, there was road work half way there and we were treated to a detour through a little town with very bumpy roads and potholes that the car almost disappeared in. This would not have been a problem had I not been clinging to the handle above the door trying my best to not bounce into my seat companion's lap.
I took another taxi to the airport from the grand taxi station in Fez and managed to have a whole conversation with my driver who was asking me about my family and telling me about his wife and baby boy. I had a little bit of time in the airport so I went to a cafe and ordered a coffee to go along with the chocolate croissants that I had brought with me from the school. I later learned that ordering black coffee is a rather manly thing to do here which explains the rather surprised look from the man who took my order.
I made it to Marseilles without issue and shared some candy on the plane with a man from Meknes who had a lot of trouble understanding me which most of the people sitting around us found amusing since they were all listening as well. Due to my lack of books, I played bejeweled on my phone for about four hours until both my batteries and patience gave out.
Caitlyn and I met up and proceeded through security where I was stopped because I had forgotten about my bottle of water in my backpack which was mostly full (1.5 L). I was not about to throw out water that I had paid for so I proceeded to chug the entire thing and was going to make it until a security man who had been watching us with intrest, asked Caitlyn if it was vodka which resulted with me laughing and spitting water all over myself.
We were met at the Malta airport by the propietor of the guesthouse where we were staying. Caitlyn had a wild moment when I hopped into the passenger seat of his car when she thought that I was going to drive. Everyone talks about how England and New Zealand drive on the other side of the road but no one ever mentions that they drive on the other side of the road in Malta as well. The official language of Malta is Malteese whose closest language ancestor is Moroccan Arabic. However, the British occupied Malta for quite a long time which resulted in the vast majority of the population speaking English fluently. Many of the words in Malteese that aren't Arabic based are Italian, French, or Spanish.
Once we arrived at the guesthouse and had settled into our apartment, we were given coupons to a new club that was just down the street in a place called Paceville (pacha ville). Caitlyn and I decided we'd go down for just one drink and scope the place out for future dancing prospects in the area. It was about 12:30 when we left the hotel room. Three hours, 10 drinks, and a lot of very energetic dancing later, we unsteadily made it back to our apartment armed with the most delicious pizza that this world has yet seen. The dancing was indeed energetic and I was even given the simmer down hand motions from some girl while we were dancing. In my defense, this was my first time to go out and actually dance in about six months due to my broken leg and I was back with my boon companion and dancing partner Caitlyn! Plus, there were a lot of free drinks due to a surplus of coupons that were passed out as well as scooped up by the two of us from off of the ground.
The next morning, or rather that morning, we had a leisurly breakfast of eggs and *gasp* bacon! Our apartment had a stove, refridgerator, and sink which enabled us to cook which was really convenient since there was a little grocery store across the street. We made our way to the ferry that took us to another island of Malta which was called Gozo.
We took a little tour around the island and stopped at the highlights such as Calypso's cave( pictured above), the citadel, the Azure window, and the salt flats. The cathedral at the citadel had a bunch of little drawings engraved into the side of it from sailors who were thanking the villagers for letting them stop there on their voyage.
We stopped in a little fishing village for some fresh fish. Most of the fishing boats in Malta are painted very bright colors and have eyes painted on which are supposed to be protection from the evil eye.
We wanted some Maltese wine and were perusing a menu when a couple from Cyprus told us to get the fish. The resturant owner was highly enthusiastic in his endorsement of his fish and even drug us into his kitchen and showed us the fish he was going to feed us. The fish was in fact delicious, as was the maltese wine. A kitty who seemed to have the racket down to an art enjoyed the fish skin very much and even posed for a picture.
We returned to the van and were taken to the salt flats which were really cool, especially the naturally occuring ones. There are little caves in the side of the cliff that they store the salt in once they have "harvested" it.
We made it down to the Azure window just in time to watch the sun go down. You can see the Azure window in many things like screen savers and movies (Count of Monte Cristo is almost entirely filmed in Malta masquerading as Marseilles!).
As we were getting out of the van, the tour guide was helping us out and gave Caitlyn his card and asked if she had any comments to add him on facebook. I've never heard that pick up line before but it was a little misplaced since I don't think she listened to a word of the tour :)
We made it back to the island of Malta after an absurd photo session where we tried to convey different emotions for the camera, they were all too absurd to even put up. After a long bus ride back to our side of the island and a little bit of getting lost, we arrived back at our guest house and decided to take a little nap to get rested up for the big night we were planning. Unfortunately, we did not wake back up for our big night which may have been a good thing since we were supposed to meet our dive master at 8:15.
We woke up and prepared for our dive by basically rolling out of bed and walking a mile to the dive shop. Our dive master was named Stuart and he, like the guesthouse proprietor was from England and settled in Malta. We got our full "kit," which is what he called the dive gear, and he drove us to another part of the island. After some very lucky parking, we got suited up and took a giant stride into the Mediterannean.
He had explained that we were going to use our first dive to mostly get a feel for the equipment and how much air we use. We ended up going out to the wreck on the first dive since he saw that both of us were quite comfortable and as he described it "easy" in the water. It was a little bit of a swim out towards the wreck as there was a light current that we were fighting against. My bum ankle was still a little stiff when it came to the flippers working correctly and had to compensate a bit with my arms in order to not spin in circles.
The Umm Al-Faroud was amazing! It was so much bigger than I thought that it would be, apparently there was an explosion while they were working on it in the dry docks and nine people were killed, they eventually got permission to sink her for the diving community. As we came up to the bridge, there was a huge school of juvenile barracuda circling it and they kept flashing silver. We didn't spend much time there on the first dive. We returned back to the shore and had some sandwiches at a little shop next to the dock. On our second dive, we headed straight out to the wreck and were able to enter and go up the stairs and through some of the rooms. It was really cool to see our bubbles get stuck on the ceiling as we were going up the stairs, they looked like the opposite of water running down stairs. This is movie of the wreck we dove taken last year, everything is the same except there were Barracudas, lots of them.
http://www.divemalta.com.mt/video.htm#Um_El_Faroud
After a little more exploring, we headed back and had just gotten out of the water when what looked like a motorcyle gang on jet skis came and drove all over in the lagoon where there were many divers still down and beginning to surface, I was glad we got out when we did since the sound of boats, even at 20 ft scares me a bit. All in all, it was a great dive! We had about an hour of bottom time overall and made it down to about 76 ft.
Once we had left Stuart, we went to a shopping district to find Caitlyn a dress for dancing that night! We had some ice cream in a sunny square that had a magnificent tree and fountains, and then found her a dress.
We returned to our apartment and, after promising we wouldn't sleep through this time, we took the obligatory siesta that we mere mortals need if you want to party in the Mediterannean. We woke up and got ready to go out at about midnight. We looked slightly overdressed in the clubs since it was technically Monday morning and I guess that's more casual than Friday night, but it wasn't glaring and as the night progressed, we looked less out of place. We stopped in a club to take advantage of free drink cards that we were given and happily blew off several advances off by telling them that we came to Malta for the scuba diving. One man did come up to us and offered to take our picture then insisted on being in the picture with us. When we made our feeble protests, he held up his arm which was in a cast and said, "come on, I have a broken arm."
The helpful bouncer who called me "love" told us about the salsa club so we went there. While we were in the middle of trying to decide what to drink, two Maltese boys stood next to us at the bar. One of them kept leaning on Caitlyn to look at the menu as well and she kept edging away. I finally pushed the menu towards them so that they could have a better view and they promptly broke apart and counseled us on the best drinks to try and see where we were from. Apparently, Americans are a bit of a novelty in Malta since not many go there, which I am grateful for because it results in the islands being very laid back and like a secret treasure. After a bit of talking we got to do some salsa dancing! It was so much fun! They even said that we danced well for American girls, which I am going to take as a compliment even if it wasn't intended as one. The DJ stood up on a box in front of everyone on one song and taught us a dance that involved a lot of hip thrusting but was hilariously fun.
We returned to our apartment with our delicious pizza once again and went to bed. The next morning, I attempted to make pancakes in a pot since that is all we had. It resulted in more of a scrambled mess but tasted alright with jelly. We checked out and took a bus to the capital city of Valetta, it was beautiful!
We walked through the streets for awhile and visited the port. After that, we went to a cafe and had rabbit ravioli since rabbit seemed to be a staple in Maltese cooking.
We caught one of the cute buses next to the statue of the scary fishmen to the airport and had to bid farewell to beautiful Malta.
I hope I make it back there someday soon!
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