At least I still have fingers...

I can officially check Sicily off of my list of places to visit.  I have been saying we are visiting Reposo, but I was mistaken and it’s Reposto.  A town located at the base of Mt. Etna, one of Italy’s biggest active volcanoes, and that is practically untouched by tourism.  A brand new marina was built with hopes of bringing more tourists in, but with its high prices, and undeveloped area, it’s still a place that people stop at on the way somewhere else. 

This is a clear view of Mt. Etna from the bow of our boat through the marina.  The clouds cleared for about 2 hours and then covered it up again.

I had my first real injury during the docking at Porta dell Etna.  Everything was going really well, there were two people there to help us dock and we got the bow line without a hitch and I was going to cleat it and my 3 middle fingers got caught between the cleat and the docking line.  Not good.  For anyone not familiar with sailing the cleat is the piece of metal attached to the boat where lines are tied and held in place.  Once a line is cleated, it isn’t going anywhere and can hold a massive amount of force and pressure, from sails, docking lines, or anything else you can tie to it.  What I figured happened was I was pulling the line to keep the boat from going backwards, that is its purpose.  When the line started pulling me I wanted to wrap it once around the cleat to relieve some of the pressure and get more leverage.  I must have pulled with my left hand which was on top and wrapped it around not realizing my right hand was still close enough to get tangled.  The boat pulled back and the line pulled forward and my eyes started to water.  I luckily was able to use my body weight and my left hand to create enough slack to pull my throbbing fingers out.  The pain much resembled slamming your fingers in a car door.  You never quite know how it happened, you feel foolish after it happens, and it hurts like hell during and after.  Nothing was broken or bleeding so I was really lucky there and aside from some swelling and a little blood blister I got off super lucky.  The swelling was taken care of my Captain Wayno with an ibuprofen and wrapping my hand around a cold beer.  We had a talk about what went wrong and chalked it up to a very fortunate learning event that could’ve ended very badly.

We checked in and what was supposed to be a €50 night stay was actually a €90 night stay plus we had to pay for power and water if we wanted it.  Conflicted between wanting a day to relax and recharge/fix things before heading out to sea for 3 days and the expensive docking fees, we decided to leave it in the hands of the weather.  This was the 19^th and my birthday is on the 20^th.  I asked Dad to go out to dinner for my birthday and since we weren’t sure if we would be in port, and because most restaurants are closed Monday night, we went into town in search of a restaurant.  We stumbled across, with the help of some lovely old men hanging out on the street, Astemio.  I couldn’t have asked for a better place for my birthday dinner.

Astemio is pretty nondescript from the front.  It’s advertised as a wine bar/restaurant and had a menu posted out front that showed half “mare” which is marine food and half “terra” which is non-seafood from land.  So that right there sold me.  Every other restaurant we walked by was “Pick your fish from this pile and we will cook it how you like it” (for those who don’t know, I am not a seafood person which makes eating out from port or port somewhat of a challenge at times) We went in and the interior was sleek and modern, quite a shocker from the drab and concrete outside, but what was even better was that they had a garden in the back.  There was a garden surrounded by a bamboo barrier that made it secluded from the apartments and buildings around it and that again had that sleek modern design that just popped at night.  There was a flat screen TV mounted to one wall with all kinds of music playing (it was an MTV type station that actually played music constantly) and the entire garden had little white stones as the ground.  Our waitress said her English was no good, but she carried on conversations with us and was absolutely helpful and delightful.  It’s a family run restaurant and her brother was the cook.  Her grandfather is American and that is where she picked up what English she knows and has practiced on random boaters that come to the secluded town like us.  I ended up ordering an amazing veal in lemon sauce with onions and potatoes that came with a spinach salad on the side.  It was delicious.  Dad got a buffalo mozzarella (this area is its birthplace) and spicy pepperoni calzone, but after tasting my meal said he should’ve gotten mine instead.  We ordered two crafts of the local Sicilian red and had the best time.  For dessert they had a mouse ice cream kind of thing drizzled in chocolate and a sweet dessert wine served in a shot glass.  Now I was thinking after all of this we would be running up a pretty nice tab, a whole €38 later we left with such a great impression of Sicily and of the restaurant we couldn’t have asked for a better time.

A toast to my birthday.  We ordered dessert and with it came a very sweet dessert wine that as you can see they serve in shot glasses for very small sips are a time.

As we left, there was live music playing in the piazza in front of the Basilica Martice San Pietro, so we decided to check it out.  It ended up being an Italian ska band, Baciamo la Mani, playing a free concert on a Sunday night.  There were people of all ages out at 11pm on a Sunday night dancing and just hanging out enjoying the music.  Small children and dogs ran around playing while parents and older people sat in the chairs or on the steps of the church, like we did, tapping their feet and enjoying the energy coming off the stage.  It was the perfect ending to the night.  Who could ask for anything more?

This was the ska band, Baciamo la Mani playing in front of the Basilica Matrice San Pietro.  It was such a fun concert.

There were people dancing and chairs out for people to sit and enjoy the free outdoor concert in the center of town.  Like I said, people and dogs ranging from the very young to the very old out at 11pm on a Sunday night.  It was great.

We decided to stay in Reposto one more night because of the weather and because we really needed an extra day to chill out and fix things.  My one job on my birthday was to go grocery shopping.  You would think that would be easy enough, right.  There is a chain of grocery stores in Italy called PAM.  These are very much like American supermarkets.  A one stop shop where you can pick up everything from crackers to produce to meat and get some toilet paper or toothpaste alone the way.  I was told there was a PAM close to the marina.  I didn’t end up finding it until I had already been to 2 other supermarkets and walked clear around the city.  I found two smaller grocery stores that function more like convenient stores in the states.  You can get dried goods, drinks, toilet paper, and there is a cheese and sliced meats counter, but no “carne” meat or produce.  I got the basics like soda and beer and eggs, but had to search for a place to stock up on meats and veggies.  A nice lady told me the butcher shops aren’t open on Mondays but would be open Tuesday, the day we leave.  She directed me towards the PAM express which was mini-version of the bigger chain.  Luckily they had a butcher was a small, but big enough variety of chicken, pork, and sausage.  Stuff I could identify and translate.  So I was good on that front, but their vegetables and fruits looked sad and on a boat with constant humidity down below fresh produce doesn’t last long at all.  We stocked up before we left Amalfi and a red pepper had actually imploded and turned into more of a rotten juice by the time we got to Reposto.  So it is of great importance to buy things as fresh as possible otherwise they won’t last and you are looking at bugs and smells from down below.  I ended up at a fresh vegetable market and bought what looked half decent.  A couple of oranges, apples, fresh carrots, and that was about it.  That is what canned vegetables are made for right?

The rest of our time in Reposto was spent napping, filling the water tanks, and putsing.