Rocking the casbah and more

 Since I only have my iPad it’s too time intensive to type a lot of descriptive information so I’m going to post some pictures from our last few days with only some short commentary.

Along our way from Palermo to Mazara del Vallo we passed by a Greek temple in the distance.

One tile display of many on the walls of the Casbah in Mazara del Vallo - the Casbah is a section of the town originally settled by immigrants from Tunisia (which is only about 75 miles across the sea). It is a warren of narrow streets and alleys.

We went to a museum in Mazara del Vallo built to house a Greek statue of bronze made in the 3rd or 2nd century BC. It depicts a dancing satyr. It was found in 1998 by the crew of a local fishing boat on the sea floor at a depth of 1600 ft. They were fishing for a specific type of red shrimp that lives at that depth and snagged the satyr in their next. It was big news at the time and the statue was sent to Rome to be analyzed and cleaned up then put on display there. It was eventually returned to Mazara del Vallo. The picture below tells the story of the finding of this treasure and of the fishing boat captain Francesco “Ciccio” Adragna. He’s a bit of a local celebrity.

After the museum visit we were split up into groups of five and went to the homes of local families for lunch. Dennis and I were assigned to Captain Ciccio himself. Twenty eight years later he’s retired from fishing and a bit more gray.

The next day we traveled to a lagoon near the city of Marsala on the west coast of Sicily where conditions (water, wind, and sun) are ideal for producing salt. Salt has been produced there for hundreds of years. There is a museum/working salt mill that demonstrates the process of channeling the sea water through a series of ponds where the sun and wind act to evaporate water eventually leading to the precipitation of salt crystals. Windmills were used to turn an Archimedes screw to pump sea water from the lagoon to the first concentration pond.

That evening we went to a local restaurant which was closed for the evening and with the help of the chef (very proud recipient of a Michelin star) prepared our own dinner - pasta (hand made by 4 members of our group; mixing and kneading the dough then rolling it and passing it through a pasta mill) topped with a red pesto sauce (made by my group with cherry tomatoes, garlic, basil, almonds, and olive oil); an eggplant Parmesan made by another group, and finally an almond parfait for dessert. The chef was quite a character. Here he’s forming a big heart with one of our group.

That’s all for now. More to come in a few days.

¡Salud!