Italy – Pelagie Islands (Lampedusa) and Pantelleria Oct 3-5, 2021
The Pelagie Islands are in the south of the Mediterranean Sea and are part of Sicily. A few hundred kilometers from Africa and geographically are closer to Africa than Italy. The Pelagian Islands took their name from Greek “Pelagies“ and it means Open Sea.
I flew on Wizz Air (a Hungarian budget airline) and forgot to do their online check-in. It must be done 3 hours before check-in at the airport or you have to pay to have it done. I went upstairs to their pay station and it was 50 E for something that would have taken me 30 seconds online. This is the second time this has happened to me and drives me crazy. Maybe I have learned my lesson.
LAMPEDUSA
The biggest of the three islands (pop 5800). It is an attractive place to explore it by the rented scooter, moped, motorboat, or on foot. Airports Lampedusa (LMP)
The 1 hour and 25-minute flight from Rome to Lampedusa ended with one of the more dramatic views of any flight I’ve taken. There were great views of the entire (tiny island from the left-hand window – dramatic white cliffs on the west end of the island sloping down to the flat area where the main town is. We swooped by seeing the entire south of the island in close view.
I walked the 1.2 km from the airport to the downtown and ate at one of the few places open in the mid-afternoon. I then shopped for a few groceries and walked to my accommodation to spend a quiet night. I foolishly forgot my Kindle at the hostel in Rome, but soon thought of lots of stuff I had been procrastinating on, so no worries.
This has no cheap accommodation (ie no hostels) but I was able to find something for 60E per night, easily the most budget of any other place.
There is virtually nothing to do here but eat, go to the beach or take a boat tour. Seeing as I have 2 nights and 2 full days, I decided to do nothing on my first day but work on my website, plan my trips to Mykonos and Cyprus, and play bridge, and then walk around the island on my second. I had to check out at noon so this gave me something to do.
Lampedusa is a very arid, basically rocky desert without a natural tree, only low desert bush. Old stone walls dividing up fields are common.
Walk around the entire island.
Rabbit Beach. The walkout to Rabbit Beach took about an hour from my hotel (which is about 30 minutes from downtown Lampedusa. Pass a few isolated houses to arrive at a nice restaurant and trail access. This must be the major tourist attraction on Lampedusa. There is even someone at the beginning of the walk down to the beach that keeps count – the maximum at the beach is 550, and there were 450 there when I went down on a Tuesday at 11 am. Large by Lampedusa standards, it sits between a headland and a small island (Island of Rabbits, a small islet known for a nesting ground of the Loggerhead Sea Turtles). It is accessible at low tide but cliffs prevent access. Italians don’t use umbrellas much – they lay baking in the sun.
To continue to the far west end and the most imposing white limestone (chalk) cliffs would have been almost 5 km each way. I had probably gotten my best view on the plane so decided not to.
I continued my walk around the north part of the island and saw few cars and fewer houses in 1½ hours. It approaches close to the cliffs at a 35 degrees sign. High cliffs continue on the entire north side. The high point of the island (not very high) is marked by a white cairn. Eventually, turn south to reach Lampedusa town. The whole walk took about 4 hours and may have been about 15 km, all in flip-flops.
As nothing opens in town until late, I laid my sleeping mat out next to a fountain and slept. Flies woke me up and continued to pester me. I was finally able to eat at 7 pm. Pizza in Italy is nothing special. This was 5/10.
My flight left at 9:20 pm and I walked out to the airport.
LINOSA XL (pop 400) is the smallest of the two inhabited islands and is of volcanic origin characterized by a series of volcanic cones – Monte Vulcano (the highest point 186m above sea level), Monte Bandiera, Monte Nero and Monte Rosso. Cala Pozzolana di Ponente almost collapsed, but the inner caldera still is visible exposing a fantastic wall with the yellow-red colors. The coastline is covered by the rugged cliffs towering above the sea. Archaeological finds are several cisterns from the Roman era, for the collection of rainwater, dug into the rock. Many other finds have been found on the seabed in front of the island.
Linosa has nesting grounds of the Loggerhead Sea Turtle. The black sandy seashore provides the small turtle babies with the most suitable conditions of temperature.
Get there: A ferry leaves at 9 am and returns at 4:30 pm daily. 13€ one-way
LAMPIONE is an uninhabited islet about 200 meters (656 feet) long and 180 meters (591 feet) wide. Today the only sign of man is an automatic lighthouse, from which the name of the island derived. The lighthouse can be reached by a path, that starts from a dock, suitable only for the small boats.
PANTELLERIA
Pantelleria, the ancient Cossyra or Cossura, is an Italian island and comune in the Strait of Sicily in the Mediterranean Sea, 100 km (62 mi) southwest of Sicily and 60 km (37 mi) east of the Tunisian coast. On clear days Tunisia is visible from the island. Administratively Pantelleria’s comune belongs to the Sicilian province of Trapani. With an area of 83 km2 (32 sq mi), Pantelleria is the largest volcanic satellite island of Sicily. The last eruption occurred below sea level in 1891, and today phenomena related to volcanic activity can be observed, such as hot springs and fumaroles. The highest peak, the Montagna Grande, reaches 836 m (2,743 ft) above sea level. The islanders speak Pantesco, a dialect of Sicilian influenced by Arabic.
History. The earliest evidence of human activity dates to the Neolithic period distinguished for its use of obsidian tools and construction of stone structures and tombs known locally as “Sese”. The original population of Pantelleria did not come from Sicily but was of Iberian or Ibero-Ligurian ancestry. After a considerable interval, during which the island probably remained uninhabited, the Carthaginians took possession of it, no doubt owing to its importance as a station on the way to Sicily. This probably occurred around the beginning of the 7th century BC. Their acropolis was the twin hill of San Marco and Santa Teresa, 2 km (1.2 mi) south of the present town of Pantelleria. The town has considerable remains of walls made of rectangular blocks of masonry and also of a number of cisterns. Punic tombs have been discovered, and the votive terra-cottas of a small sanctuary of the Punic period were found near the north coast.
The Romans occupied the island as the Fasti Triumphales record in 255 BC, lost it again the next year, and recovered it in 217 BC. It struck bronze coins, originally with a Punic inscription but changing to Latin by the 1st century BC. Under the empire, it served as a place of banishment for prominent persons and members of the imperial family.
In AD 700, Arabs conquered the island. In 1123, Roger II of Sicily took the island, and in 1311 an Aragonese fleet under the command of Lluís de Requesens won a considerable victory here. Requesens’s family became princes of Pantelleria until 1553, when the Turks captured the island. A naval battle took place near the island in July 1586 when an armed English merchant fleet of five ships managed to repel an attack by eleven Spanish and Maltese galleys.
A Siculo-Arabic dialect similar to Maltese was the vernacular of the island until the late 18th-century when the Romance Sicilian superseded it. The modern Sicilian language in Pantelleria contains many Arabic loanwords, and most of the island’s place names are of Semitic origin.
During the Napoleonic Wars, the British considered the possibility of taking over Pantelleria (together with Lampedusa and Linosa) so as to be able to supply Malta, but a Royal Commission stated in an 1812 report that there would be considerable difficulties in this venture.
Pantelleria’s capture was regarded as crucial to Operation Husky, the Allied invasion of Sicily in 1943 as planes based on Pantelleria could readily reach Sicily. In Operation Corkscrew the Allies bombarded Pantelleria heavily from air and sea in the days before the invasion. The garrison surrendered as the landing troops approached. Pantelleria then became a vital base for Allied aircraft during the assault on Sicily.
Archaeological sites. A Middle Bronze Age village was on the west coast, 3 km (1.9 mi) southeast of the harbour, with a rampart of small blocks of lava, about 7.5 m (25 ft) high, 10 m (33 ft) wide at the base and 5 m (16 ft) at the top, upon the undefended eastern side. Remains of huts were found there, with pottery, tools of obsidian, and other artifacts. These objects are in the museum at Syracuse.
To the southeast, in the district known as the Cunelie, are many tombs, known as sesi. They are similar in character to the nuraghe of Sardinia, though of smaller size, and consist of round or elliptical towers with sepulchral chambers in them, built of rough blocks of lava. Fifty-seven of them can still be traced. The largest is an ellipse of about 18 m × 20 m (59 ft × 66 ft), but most of the sesi have a diameter of only 6–7 m (20–23 ft). The identical character of the pottery found in the sesi with that found in the prehistoric village proves that the former are the tombs of the inhabitants of the latter.
Monuments and other buildings. The island has scattered typical one-level buildings called dammuso of unknown but probably remote origins. A dammuso is a dry stone building with thick walls that usually appear black due to the extensive use of volcanic rock. They have characteristic domes on top painted white to avoid overheating. The domes collect rainwater that is directed to a large tank (usually below the building) or to the nearby soil for use in the dry season.
Geology. The island of Pantelleria is located above a drowned continental rift in the Strait of Sicily and has been the focus of intensive volcano-tectonic activity. The 15 kilometre-long (9.3 mi) island is the emergent summit of a largely submarine edifice. Two large Pleistocene calderas dominate the island, the older of the two formed about 114,000 years ago and the younger Cinque Denti caldera formed about 45,000 years ago.[12] The eruption that formed the Cinque Denti caldera produced the distinctive green tuff deposit that covers much of the island and is found across the Mediterranean, as far away as the island of Lesbos in the Aegean. Holocene eruptions have constructed pumice cones, lava domes, and short, blocky lava flows.
Later activity constructed the cone of Monte Gibele, part of which was subsequently uplifted to form Montagna Grande. Several vents are located on three sides of the uplifted Montagna Grande block on the southeast side of the island. A submarine eruption in 1891 from a vent off the northwest coast is the only confirmed historical activity.
Currently, the island is subsiding, and Montagna Grande is slowly sinking. This is thought to be caused by the magma beneath the volcano cooling and degassing. There are numerous hot springs and fumaroles on the island due to an active hydrothermal system. Favara Grande, in the southeast of the island, is one of the best examples. The island is releasing a small amount of CO2 through passive degassing. Total carbon stock in the first 30 cm (12 in) of the soil of Pantelleria is about 230,000 tonnes. The island is the type locality for peralkaline rhyolitic rocks, Pantelleria.
Pantelleria National Park (Italian: Parco Nazionale dell’Isola di Pantelleria) was established in 2016 and covers an area of 66.4 km2 (25.6 sq mi), or 80% of the island.
See. Specchio di Venere (literally “Venus’ mirror”) is a natural lake formed in an extinct volcanic crater and fed by rain and hot springs. The lake is 12 m (39 ft) deep and is popular for swimming, hot springs, and mud bathing. Other natural attractions are paths to the sea, a large network of trekking paths, hot springs, and a popular natural sauna fed by vapours filtering through rocks in a small cave. Also situated on the Island is Laghetto delle Ondine (“Pond of the ripples” or “Pond of the wavelets”) a seawater lake that has developed into a very desired swimming hole.
The island has been recognised as an Important Bird Area (IBA) by BirdLife International because it supports a population of Eleonora’s falcons, with some 35–40 breeding pairs estimated in 1994.
Wine. Agricultural practice of cultivating the vite ad alberello (head-trained bush vines) of the community of Pantelleria was inscribed on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity of Unesco (see UNESCO – Traditional agricultural practice of cultivating the ‘vite ad alberello’ (head-trained bush vines) of the community of Pantelleria).
GET IN
By plane. The airport is on the island of Lampedusa and has direct flights with Sicily and Italy. Wizz Air flies on Sundays and Vueling on Tuesdays, both with direct flights and easily the cheapest way to go.
By boat. Daily overnight ferries run from Porto Empedocle in Sicily, and during the summer there is a hydrofoil service.