So we are sitting on bus number 201 in the village of Siġġiewi, on our way to see some ancient tombs.
We are not moving.
A Mercedes has parked about two inches too close to an intersection, perhaps two inches further off the wall than he should be tucked, and the bus can't make it through the gap.
Calls have been made, the horn has been beeped, the swearing is over, so now our bus driver has rolled a cigarette and is outside having a smoke with the next bus driver along the route, who is now stuck behind us. One girl, a local, has gotten off our bus and is walking the street ringing every doorbell and buzzer.
We, however, are sitting in the cool, air conditioned comfort of the bus.
We are on our way to the village of Qrendi.
There are two gates into Mdina, and maybe ten little crooked streets total. It is all made of yellow sandstone, and has a definite Arabic vibe to it, kind of austere with clean lines, high walls along the narrow walkways and no traffic.
The one exception is the area fronting the main square at the top of the town, here there are a couple really cool mansions, trees and beautiful flowers.
There is a huge, red domed cathedral down the street a ways.
We stop for a wine and water break.
While we drink, at noon, very slowly a single bell tolls. Then suddenly two bells, then three. It becomes a full ten minutes of banging bells. Then it ended, as it began; the single mid-pitch bell tolling slowly, alone.
Nice.
I am finally fortified, for the morning at least.
The bus driver tries laying on the horn for one long, annoying minute.
Other cars come sneaking in via side streets and before they can back out they get trapped by another car, or worse, a bus, and so the traffic spectacle grows. It has been over thirty minutes now.
We started early this morning with breakfast in front of St. John's Co-Cathedral. I had eggs and bacon for the first time in five weeks. It was a nice change. I forgot to have a glass of wine to fortify my constitution, however.
It is on a hill, is very old, and supposedly this is where old Paul himself sat in a cave and wrote his gospels.
I say "supposedly" because the sign says something along the lines of "in 1575... determined that this was the cave..."
That is a long time past 60AD.
So we paid our €5 to go down under the St. Pawl cathedral to see the grotto, or cave.
But the cool part was that we could also see the the old catacombs.
No bones. Damn. But cool tunnels.
Even better, during the war people sought refuge in the catacombs, lengthening them, eventually carving out their own rooms to shelter in.
It was cool, both physically and just in a general sense to wander through the maze of tunnels and rooms. Some people even tiled the floor of their cave, none of which could have been bigger than ten feet square. Hard to imagine coming down here, night after night, sometimes during the day, to escape the bombs.
At least it is cool in here.
In WW11 Malta was one of the heaviest bombed places in Europe, because it is in a strategic shipping zone for the Italians and Germans.
They joined the European Union right off.
No one can back up, no one can turn.
We sit.
The entire town is turning out for this, people coming to look, go get their friends and come back. People looking out of doors, off balconies, everyone clucking and shaking their heads, offering advice on what to do.
Gail needs to use the bathroom, since we set out over an hour ago now. So she sets off walking up the street, where a kind local takes her in. Others are doing the same thing.
A few people, including two French girls who had been tagging along with us (since we knew where to go) jump off the bus and set out into town for a drink, figuring to hop on the bus once we get going again.
Nothing spectacular, even though this exact place (at the radar station) is the highest point in Malta, and the cliffs drop to a shelf before dropping into the hazy ocean. But as far as great cliffs go, this isn't them.
So that is how we started from the cliffs and got on bus 201 in the first place, flying along, swerving like crazy up the narrow streets. The driver was like a crazy man, dodging and swerving, never using the brake until… until that corner. We screeched to a halt, an inch from slamming into the wall and car. Just that suddenly we became stuck.
Anybody have a tow truck?
There are about seven bus drivers, a crowd of people and several bus riders all talking and scratching their heads.
So, the police start at the back, help direct as everybody backs up about twenty feet; one by one until we (the lead bus) can back up and turn the corner. We sqeeeeeeze by and miss a dump truck by less than an inch, but then we are trapped by two cars. One guy runs out of a cafe to move his car. Another local from the town runs ahead of our bus clearing traffic.
We make it through, take a tight turn and are out on alternate route. Cars have to back out of our way. The French girls are abandoned in the now unreachable center of town.
This is a very cool stack of rocks under a large tent.
It is a megalithic building, put up about 3600 BC. Maybe the rocks were dragged using round stone rollers, perhaps they were hauled upright using ropes, and maybe they were temples.
Or maybe not.
It is like Stonehenge, but smaller sized rocks in a seemingly more complex pattern. There are several chambers, and actual cut doorways with sills for rock “doors” to sit on.
At certain times of the year, namely the solstice and equinox, light enters through a certain hole in the wall or door, and strikes or illuminates certain other rocks. There are markings indicating it could be a huge calendar of sorts, but there are “alters” and little round “fat people” that were sitting here and there. The roof was made of rocks layered up, so it would have been dark in the inner chambers.
By the way, you say it like this:
Ħ is like breathing in while you try to say the "H" sound. So it sounds like "Ager-Eem" but with a little whisper of an "H" up front. Ħaġar Qim.
On the walk down you can see Filfla Island. There used to be prehistoric artifacts there, and then a monastery, and birds... and then the military used it for target practice.
Sounds familiar?
Here at Mnajdra you look out over the ocean. It was built between 3600 to 3000 BC as well, and also lines up with the sun. The two temples thus seem to be related. To me, this one seemed to be bigger and in better shape overall.
You are allowed to walk through certain doorways and to the interior of both temples, not only looking around at the details, but touching the actual rocks themselves. It is interesting to stand there and wonder what was going on, how they were built, and how they have lasted all these years.
It was really getting late in the afternoon by now. The sun was brutal, the heat becoming oppressive. We sweated our way back out to the road, caught the next bus to the Blue Grotto by Wieq İż Żurrieq which was pretty disappointing. I had a cold beer while we were waiting for the bus back to town. After a while the #71 came along, we transferred in a village somewhere along the way, and ended up back in Valletta about 19:00.
After a short rest we went out for a nice dinner at D'office. You can read about it in the Valletta post. It was a great dinner.