About Two Islands of Malta (3)

Image from
“Black Mountain – Part 3”

More Hiking…
before Our Problem Escaping

By James T. Carney
Photos by
Detmar Straub

We resumed our hiking the third day, over a field in whose stone we could see ruts that some believe to have been worn by prehistoric carts.
    We also visited some cave dwellings where people would hide and live to avoid Ottoman raiders. People were still living there when the British took Malta over. The British forced these people’s resettlement into towns to avoid the impression that the British Empire had cave dwellers along a huge cliff overlooking the sea in the 19^th Century. (Also, the cave dwellers weren’t paying British taxes.)
    We saw some beautiful sights of the sea where it came up against the bottom of the cliff. One of the most interesting things we did was visit the catacombs that had been carved in a limestone quarry after it had stopped operating.

    Posted outside the catacombs was a map showing various significant points along the walks through the catacombs. Unfortunately, none of the significant points were marked by placards, or by anything else, nor were visitors given maps, so we wandered through unguided. There was so little space between grave sites that I was skeptical that Christians in ancient Rome had been able to hide out, or even hold services, in the Roman catacombs.

    We then hiked inland to the old capital of Malta, Mdina, which is a completely fortified town. Like Edinburgh Castle in Scotland, it is built on a towering cliff and almost impregnable to any attack but through the main gate. The city is now lit up at night and makes an imposing sight from miles away.

Our fourth day saw us take a bus to the island of Gozo, the second biggest of the Maltese Islands. We saw the citadel of Gozo, which was the only place on the island where some Maltese were able to hold out in 1551 when the Turks captured the island and carried off all its inhabitants to Istanbul to be sold into slavery.
    Gozo is famous for its salt, which is “farmed” from the sea by entrapping sea water in a series of small enclosures. The water evaporates, leaving behind salt to be harvested, cleaned, and bagged to be sold as “Gozo Salt.”
    Another point of interest was a prehistoric site containing two separate buildings side by side although built in different periods. Each building contained several rooms – one per family – and had obviously been built in an area zoned for multi-family dwellings.
   The fifth day saw the resumption of hiking. We covered six and half miles, going from what had been a fishing village but was now a major town to another town of similar background. Most of the trail led around cliffs overlooking three different bays from the sea. It was quite scenic.
    The sixth day we returned to Mdina to hike from there to the sea. Our HF Holidays guide for that day had never been to Malta before and was trying to follow the directions provided by a trail book created by a previous guide. The book was not very clear; some of the trails were closed and we got lost five different times. One episode was so bad that a Maltese housewife whom we asked for directions took pity on us and actually drove us back to a point on the trail that corresponded to the guidebook. The mileage notes in the guide book were notoriously inaccurate. As I said above about our first day’s hike, a woman’s pedometer showed five miles about half way along what was supposedly a five-mile hike.
    On the last day, we hiked from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. with only a couple of brief stops on what was supposedly a six-mile hike. When we returned from this hike and prepared to pack up and leave the next day, disaster struck.

Det and I had taken our Covid tests (at $130 per test) that morning, the U.S., not realizing the pandemic had ended, required that a traveler be tested a day before boarding an international flight leaving or returning to the States. No one explained how travelers were supposed to take the test just one day before at trip that lasted over two days, as my itinerary specified.
    The hotel notified us that I had tested positive and that both of us had to be quarantined in our hotel room for at least seven days before we could escape (in spite of the fact that Det had tested negative).
    Well, the poet said,

Stone walls do not a prison make
Nor iron bars a cage,

but after being confined for seven days I was not in the mood to be poetic about it. No matter how contagious Covid is, Det, despite being confined with me for a week, did not get it. And I was basically asymptomatic – just a coughing fit and a sore throat during the night after being tested. And I had hiked about eight miles that day with no symptoms.
    I feel sure that I got it from one of our British companions, because they had not been tested before they left the UK, and the latest variant of Covid is now rampant there. The rest of the group were told to be tested when they got home because of their exposure to me, and a large number of them did then test positive.
   Det endured our confinement better than I did, because he was in the midst of writing a major article dealing with motivations for employees to observe or not to observe the cybersecurity measures required by their employers. I would say that he easily put in thirty-five hours of work on his laptop.
    I did a lot of sleeping and a fair amount of reading of the books I had brought with me (for the plane ride) and of books I could access on Det’s Kindle.
    Our room had a TV as well. I have to say that the hotel was extremely helpful, not only delivering our breakfast and dinner regularly (and in huge quantities) but also getting us a desk from which Det and I could work and bringing us six-packs of Heineken as needed. It was about as comfortable a confinement as one could have, but confinements are confinements, and I hate confinements. I can remember at Yale when I worked in the Calhoun College library for the midnight shift. I was perfectly free to study, which is what I would have been doing anyway, but I found it irksome not to have the freedom to pick up and go.

All confinements end, and on Saturday a week later we got up before sunrise to head to the airport and home. We had rearranged our travel schedule with little problem, assuming that our Friday tests proved negative (as they in fact did).
    Now, as the old song goes

Our story had no moral
our story has no end,
it just goes to show
that there ain’t no good in men

(or in the governments they create). It will be a cold day in hell if I leave our shores again before all this nonsense with Covid is over. In addition to the testing issue, the amount of red tape we had to deal with was incredible in comparison with past trips across the pond.
    People who want to protect themselves from Covid can do so by being vaccinated, unless there are serious health reasons why not. People who choose not to protect themselves should be prepared to suffer the consequences.

Copyright © 2022 by James T. Carney, Detmar Straub