Today we’re visiting the city of Santa Maria Salina on the island of Salina. The town's naming committee had a field day. There are other villages on the island, but really, the “big town” is S.M. Salina.
As it’s only a day trip, our plan is simple: get in, have breakfast, hike the hills behind the town, come back to the port, have some gelato or granita, and take the boat back home. And, to our utter surprise, that’s precisely what happened (talk about a boring story). We did learn a couple of things along the way:
First, in Salina, Apple Maps is more accurate than Google Maps. The hiking map we obtained at the town information center showed streets that didn’t exist on Google Maps but appeared on the Apple side. We were surprised to find that, but it did make us feel more secure in our paper map.
Secondly, if you plan on hiking in Salina, or anywhere in the south of Italy, really, you’ll learn just why there’s a siesta. The sun is brutal between 12:00 and 17:00. We took the trail around 13:30 and had planned for about three hours of hiking. By 14:30, we were toast and making our way back down the hill. There was very little shade, and the vegetation trapped the heat from the stone very efficiently. They did such a good job of keeping us baking in the sun that I wondered why we were not using those to keep our houses warm in winter instead of fibreglass insulation. Getting anything done in that heat is impossible. We ended up turning back early, spending our time waiting for the boat to return and take us back to Lipari, sitting in the shade, enjoying granita and sparkling water. We understand why people around here would choose to do the same.
