SOUTH COAST of SICILY

TRAPANI TO MARINA DI RAGUSA

Pretty outlook in Trapani Harbour

We said goodbye to my cousins in Trapani and left the harbour the next day to sail south to Marsala.

We travelled from Trapani down to  Marina di Ragusa in the South

Marsala is of course famous for its sweet fortified wines, not really to our taste, but there were some good Enotecas in the town with an excellent choice of very acceptable Sicilian Wines.

One of many baroque churches

 Fig Tree + healthy parasite in one of the Piazzas

The Marina was a good walk out of town but it was worth the trek into Marsala.  It's relatively low key place with a pleasant pedestrianised historical centre, spacious piazzas and honey coloured baroque buildings.  Marsala is also famous as Garibaldi's point of entry into Sicily in 1860 with his army of 1000 red shirts - one of the pivotal points in the movement towards a united Italy.

Captain 'ever vigilant' in case we bump into .....

..... a freighter

Granitola

From Marsala we sailed SW - we anchored in a quiet bay off the small town of Granitola.  This coastline lacked the drama of the Northern Coastline, it was also much more built up.

We continued following the coastline SW until we reached moderately large port of Sciacca.  Sciacca is typical of many Sicilian coastal towns - apartment blocks crammed cheek by jowl and the port area was quite dilapidated looking.

View from old Sciacca looking down on port and marina

Renovator's dream

Old Sciacca was on top of a steep hill overlooking the port - I climbed up the steps early one morning. Some efforts had been made in restoring the old town but there were still some 'renovation opportunities'.  The town is famous for its ceramics...........

Sciacca is the largest town on this area of coast, it's also home to a very large fishing fleet.

Trawlers in poor evening light

There are some excellent restaurants down in the port area - if you can reach them!  There are no footpaths and we were competing with 'formula one' traffic, the food was worth it though......

No laundry at Sciacca so I got the rubber gloves out.............

Alan inspects the barbecued meats...............

Further down the coast we stopped at Port Leone, just past Agrigento.   We anchored near the small but busy harbour - suffering the constants wakes of small motor boats.  Then later that night the sea developed a horrible rock and roll motion - we upped the anchor at 4.00 am and moved on!

LICATA

View of Licata from the Marina - mausoleums on hill line.

Licata was our final stop before reaching our destination of Marina di Ragusa.   The marina was large and new, obviously a pivotal point for the locals as they took their passeggiata there each evening.  It was a pleasant enough town but without much historical interest.  We did have an excellent supper at Hosteria L'Oste e il Sacrestano run by a delightful young couple.