FrankingWorldTraveller

Malta

It is hard to pick a departure point to being an entry about Malta. The tour books begin, “7000 years ago, Malta….” With a history beginning before history was recorded, it is a daunting task to try to capture in a paragraph anything meaningful and not totally distorted about a country with such a long chronicled past. So I will leave it to you, gentle reader, to look it up yourself to the extent that you have interest. But in the tiniest possible nutshell, it looks something like this:
7000-1800 B.C. – Prehistory. Some humanoid form settled here, built temples with pretty elaborate engravings (before the bronze age, thus, using other stones to carve stones). These temples were built in honor of Gods unknown, or to people unknown, and the people who built them seem to have up and skedaddled around 1800 B.C. to parts unknown. That’s the coolest thing in the world to me, having walked around two of these temples. They are pretty amazing in their construction, given that they were built before humans were assumed to be able to do more than grunt, point and reproduce. (Jamie Moore has me questioning the use of the serial comma!!)
That they are a mystery fascinates me. I’m sure some scientists have a pretty good idea about who they were, where they went, but they disagree to the point that MYSTERY is still the published answer to “Who built these temples (hospitals? museums? strip clubs?) and for what purpose?”
Here is what they looked like.

800 B.C.- 60 A.D- The Phoenicians and Romans and Carthaginians.
zzzzzz. Enough said- Google it. Lots of ruins, etc. that I didn’t have time to visit. Except for the city of Mdina- gorgeous old Roman era town, some photo below. Water management was a Roman thing (aqueducts) whose importance can’t be overstressed. Water, it’s what’s for drinking.
60 A.D.- big year for future tourism because St Paul, the fisherman apostle, was shipwrecked on Malta during this time (read Acts (it is in the Bible)) and manage in a few short months to convert the whole island to Christianity, to which it still clings, or at least, about 85% of the population does. Here is the cave where he was believed to have stayed, in Rabat, called St. Paul’s grotto.

400 A.D.- 650 A.D. more Roman and this time Byzantine domination.
870 A.D.- The Arabs conqured Malta. Soe architecture remains, but the mose evident remains of Arab domination is in the Maltese language, which is written in Arabic letters, but the words sound well, Arabic. It sounds more like you are in Jordan than Sicily, just 60 miles away.
1090- Arab domination ended with Roger the Norman’s conquest of the Arabs and delivery of Malta to its people. Various noble families ruled and Malta was attacked won and lost again by pirates, etc.
1530- Knights of St. John- made the Maltese cross. Ruled and built and generally left the island nation in great shape, plump for picking by Pirates…
1565- The great Siege- get a book…
1566- Foundation of Valetta (great name, no?).
1570s until 1798-The decline of the order of the Knights of St John.
1798- Napolean conquered Malta.
6 weeks later the people of Malta ran the French off the island and begged the protection of the British Empire.
1814-1979- British Protectorate
1979- now- Independent Malta. 2004- Malta joins EU as a nation.

How cool is all that in one small set of 3 tiny islands?!?

Now modern Malta is one of the most densely populated nations in the world, and while they have maintained Valetta as a beautiful historic fortified city on a peninsula, the area surrounding it is filled with high-rise, high-density ugliness, and it remains a popular summer home for many Europeans, mostly English.

The Grand Harbor marina is lovely (if you ignore the shipping port next door) and well protected, making Malta a popular winter home for many yachts.

Thank you, Wikipedia for this text, that I have no hope of spelling correctly.
It was in the “bay of the sirocco” (Xlokk) that the first Phoenicians landed and set up trading posts on Malta, during the ninth century BC. During the Great Siege of Malta, Marsaxlokk harbor was also used as an anchorage by the Turkish fleet.
Overlooking the northern arm of Marsaxlokk Bay is the hill of Tas-Silġ, which contains remains of megalithic temples of the Tarxien phase, with later alterations resembling the Ħaġar Qim model. Bronze Age material has also been found scattered around the area. From the end of the 6th century BC to the 1st century AD, the hill was used as a religious site, notably as a temple dedicated to Astarte/Hera. Marsaxlokk was part of Żejtun in the past years. The Tas-Silġ site was used again for religious purposes sometime in the 4th century AD, when it was adapted to a new religion, Christianity, and possibly used as a monastery.
I just wanted to show the photos and remind all cruisers in Malta- take the tour bus and have lunch here. Adorable!

We are resting comfortably in our home at Lake Tahoe for a while, more exciting photos to come! Thanks to Eleanor, for this lovely photo taken on her dock!

These are photos from the UNESCO World Heritage site at Hagar Qim and Mnajdra Temples.

Some first day photos around Valetta.

Here is the GPS route. It tells nothing of the 12-15 foot seas. We are at anchor napping!
Wikiloc GPS route

We went to Tunisia to clear out of the EU for one day. That’s all it takes to restart what is called the VAT clock, or the 18 months a foreign yacht can stay in the EU without having to pay VAT on the boat, about 21% of the boat’s value. We have already paid tax on the boat to the US, so why pay it twice? It was really the only reason to go to Tunisia, but I’m glad we did.

Rather than try and rent a car and drive with Arabic street signs, not to mention drive with the most acrobatic style of drivers I have ever witnessed, we went on a car with Kais, from the Yacht Services agency. Seriously, Italian drivers from Naples better move over, there is a bigger beast on the road. The Tunisian twenty-something. Driving, shifting gears, texting, calling, Facebooking, photographing, all while driving at 100km per hour. Our tour was over 200 miles long. if you want to see our Google Earth route, you can click here:
http://en.wikiloc.com/wikiloc/spatialArtifacts.do?event=setCurrentSpatialArtifact&id=4726518

Anyway, Kais was delightful company all day, even when he was asleep.
We had what felt like a complete tour of the Tunisian countryside with our first stop at Kairouan to visit the first Islamic City, founded in the Maghreb in 670 A.D.
Here we visited the two mosques, the Great Mosque, and the Mosque with Three doors. One of these is the actual first Mosque built, at the inception of the religion. I believe that the Great Mosque is the first mosque, as it was built at the onset of the Muslim religion. It is certainly the most beautiful I have seen. It seemed ornamented more than others I saw in Egypt and Jordan. Neal had to wear this cloth to cover his knees just to enter the courtyard. We were not allowed to enter the prayer room, as it is still used daily for prayers.

El Jem is the Roman Colliseum in Tunisia, the largest in North Africa and third largest in the world.

We had the whole place to ourselves! We toured the underground chambers, where beasts and beast fighters slept in small cages, and climbed to the highest point to see all of the city.

El Jem is now restored enough to be a concert venue for classical music and children’s choirs, but the surrounding town is pretty rough. I ate French fries for lunch, because nobody dies on French fries (or cheese pizza, but it was finished). After driving across miles and miles of small towns with entire sheep hanging to dry in the morning sun, I knew I would not eat lamb!! I played vegetarian and got chips. Afterwards, we toured the House of Africa at Thysdrus, the museum of wonderfully maintained mosaic art.

Then we went to Monastir, saw the Ribat:

Afterwards, we visited the marina. At the marina we met new cruiser friends we heard on the SSB morning radio check-in. I heard they were in Tunisia, so we drove a short distance, according to Kais, to meet them. It was about 60 miles, by my estimation, but we yelled “ahoy Silver Fern” at their boat, and we were at a bar having a beer within 5 minutes. Sailors are so friendly, they make all the seasickness worthwhile. Mostly.

Big Day!

The wind died about 4 a.m like it suffered a stroke. It had been howling for 3 days straight, then nothing. Sudden silence. The quiet woke me up. The heat soon sat down on our little village and we went to town to buy SIMM cards.

I took one out of a data stick, and showed the man that’s what I wanted. The sweet little man was so kind with our lack of Italian, he called a friend or relative to talk to us to decide what we wanted then spent 1.5 hours on the phone with service to make it work.They would’t work because we had American Passports. I left behind the SIMM card from the old data stick that was dead and unusable, so I didn’t worry about it. While waiting I looked up the translation of “copper ribbon for electrical ground” in italian and showed to to the nice man. He said no.
When we returned our rental car afterwards, the shop was locked tight though we could see the employee inside ignoring my phone calls. Later we went back to return it to the manager, Giancarlo, and we took our empty can of cooking gas. After paying out 75Euros a day for the car (I remarked that is was very expensive, and he explained that Italy has the highest paid man in the world for a president and everyone has to chip in on his salary), he asked his employee to take us to the store to buy the cooking gas. It seemed a well fitted store, so I asked if we had the copped ribbon to ground the SSB better. The driver translated for us and he and they didn’t have it. The driver knew another place to try, so he took us there. The driver and guy at the shop tore up the back room bringing us one gage round copper wire after another unit we gave up. The driver knew one more place to try. He motioned for us to stay in and he would run inside and ask, and before we could cluck “we’ve already tried this store” he ran inside the store when we bought our SIMM chips. He returned a minuted later and handed me the SIMM card I left inside earlier. Same 2 Americans with a sailboat buying up the town. SIMM cards, UHT milk, onions!
Home (boat) now, making two or three dinners to freeze for delivery to Tunisia.

Vanessa