History can hide your past, with its cloak of forgetfulness. Allow you respite from any previous misdemeanour. Then, when you least expect, it can suddenly get pulled away. Like a rug from under your feet. Reveal a truth that would have been better left well alone. And then it’s time to pay the consequence.
News from home, via Sue & Dave. An International packet needs picking up from Christchurch sorting office. ID needed. Passport and driving licence photos WhatsApp’d. They are accepted. A little later we discover it’s from Bulgaria. We’re on their wanted list. Apparently Beastie was a very naughty boy on the 21st April 2019 . . . think we might wait for the reminder . . .
Finding the Caronte & Tourist ferry ticket booth in Villa san Giovanni port is straight forward. €89 return is not a bad price. It allows us 90 days on Sicily. We don’t need that long. Or maybe we do! We get completely disorientated in the Disney style queueing system. End up alongside a line of artics. All waiting to board the BlueLine Ferry. “Go into town one kilometre” we’re told. Something we’d already done, but turned left instead of right. This time we get it right.
Twenty minutes later we dock into Messina. Twenty days and two thousand miles behind us. Plans to park up and spend an hour or two messing around Messina get abandoned. We haven’t experienced road mayhem like this since Morocco. A wicked one way system with no chance of parking Beastie, causes an in-cab meltdown, so we decide to go straight to Camping Marmora. A short coast to coast excursion.
The section of camp allocated to MOHOs and the like is stark. Concrete walls topped with bars and concrete pitches. Best behave for fear of being selected for the line up. We’re twenty metres from the rocky and stony beach. We break out. Stretch out for a couple of hours. Return before dark, unnoticed. Incarcerated behind bars weirdly enhances the evening’s sunset.
