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Yesterday we went to the Gole Alcantara (Alcantara Gorge), a gorge created by an eruption of Mt. Etna about a thousand years ago. Today, they have a botanical and geologic park you can visit. Usually they have an elevator that takes you down to the riverside, but this is the Easter week holiday and so the elevator wasn’t working. Looking at Julie and I, the man at the ticket counter didn’t even offer that we should go down the many, many steps to reach there on foot. Wise man.

First, the botanical part of the park. It included plants of the region with wild and tame olive trees (I’m in Jacob in the Book of Mormon…seems familiar to have both), many citrus trees, and, among other plants, many prickly pear! That was surprising for someone coming from Arizona. Cortez brought cactus back to Europe and now it seems particularly the prickly pear flourishes in Sicily. They eat the fruit and make jam from it.

First, some citrus trees (I’m trying to write some short articles about trees, so I took an abundance of these pictures.)

Some olive trees…the trunk in the picture below doesn’t seem as gnarly as the ones I remember from Israel, but perhaps they were planted for the botanical park and are quite young.

And the cactus! Some that seemed planted for the park and some growing down the cliff of the gorge.

The park even feature animals–some real and some not! I tried to get a picture of the lovely butterflies, but, alas, my fingers are too slow.The lizard, however, posed for a long time. I got two shots off before he ran away.

Did I tell you that I was blogging about the volcanic gorge? Well, I’m nearly out of time (because we are exploring Mt. Etna today) and it may have to wait for another post. The pictures take a while to load and I need breakfast–sheep ricotta and strawberries!

Sicily is a volcanic island and I’m on a quest to learn about volcanoes. The first day we arrived and surveyed our  apartment, we took a long look out our living room window. We loved the view, as you can see from the pictures we took. However, I didn’t even look for Mt. Etna, assuming we couldn’t see it.

Later in the day, as we walked around the village to explore, we came upon a lookout in the parking lot (that is a story in itself) with a magnificent view of Mt. Etna. The sun  was setting on my first close-up view of the mountain.

You can clearly see the steam coming out from the top.

Early next morning at first light, I opened the shutters to see what I could see. Wow! Right outside our window.

The sky was clear and the mountain beautiful, although the air was cold…Mt. Etna in her glory.

Tomorrow (Tuesday) we are going in an off-road vehicle to see the Grand Mountain (which one is the grand one I’m not yet sure) and Mt. Etna. Our host for our house is arranging the tour for us and his daughter will serve as our tour guide. I hope we don’t freeze! We seem to be cold most nights and early mornings just in the village, which is only halfway up the mountain and removed from all that snow.

Arriving and seeing Motta Camastra for the first time was so much camera-ready fun, that we took lots of pictures on our first walk  through town.

I hope you enjoy this mountain village as much as we did. (I’ll restrain myself and only upload a few.  I’m sure to add many more in days  to come.)

First, narrow roads and walkways. The first picture is the main road into town (and yes, they do drive cars on it, although the (small) cars take the entire road in most places). The second picture is of the main street from our balcony. The third picture is a narrow walkway to houses off the main street.

Being built on a mountain, you can expect stairs and stairs and stairs. Up the stairs, down the stairs!

But, being built on a mountain, the views are spectacular. First, the views from our balcony, from inside our apartment looking out the window and then from outside on the small balcony.

We walked down the narrow road near sunset to a lookout point somewhere in the village and got these wonderful views of the valley below, with the Alcantara river running through.

The statue above is of a man called Carmelo Grassi. If we can figure out the sign behind him correctly, he is a writer. I would guess he either wrote about Motta Camastra or was from the village. I decided he was the guardian of the lookout point.(Update: Later research confirms he is a writer; we have a history of Motta Camastra in our house that he wrote–written in Italian, of course).

In the next post, I put up some pictures of my first good view of the spectacular volcano, Mt. Etna. What a beautiful mountain.

Julie and I arrived at our first apartment in Catania a bit harried by the drive. We got lost, of course, coming from the airport to the flat and had to be rescued by a security guard at a grocery store and the father of our host. We made it, but had no time on the first day to explore.

We made up for it on the next two days. Here are some results of what we found.

Vincenzo Bellini, a classical music composer, was born in Catania. He is a favorite son. Here I am at a statue honoring him. We discovered the other side of the garden with the picture of Julie I have already posted is the garden honoring Bellini. It is a couple of city blocks wide with lots of places for children to play, people to run, and us old folks to sit in the sun.

On the walk on the second day, we happened to pass the  Instituto Nationale di Geofisica Vulcanologia, the Catania office. That was a find for someone supposed to be writing a book about volcanoes!

My phone did not accept the Italian SIM card and I gave it to Julie for her phone, and so I was without a SIM card for part of our exploration of Catania. The following pictures are all from Julie’s phone.

Buildings in the old section of Catania, including the Duomo (lower picture). We also caught the end of the fish market (supposed to be the biggest and best in Italy) as they were cleaning up.

Finally, we took a bus tour to see more of the city since we hadn’t had much time. It took us up the coast a short ways. We saw these stone “cyclops” protecting the shore that the commentary on the bus claimed inspired Homer while he was writing Odysseus.

The ruins on the right are the leftover ruins of a Roman fort, plus what was built up in later years.

On Saturday afternoon we are moving to Motta Camastra. It is a wonderful place to take pictures and to make you wish you were here, too. So I’ll post more pictures tomorrow.

Since we rented an apartment instead of staying in a hotel, we can cook some of our meals here in Sicily. Today we went shopping at neighborhood shops and to a large supermarket (to find the gluten-free food). We thought we might try dinner with the Italian national colors–gnocchi (gf) with Pesto di Pistachio (bought in a bottle),  zucchini sauté with spring onions and Pecorino Romano cheese, and fresh tomatoes. Good, eh? (Delicious)

Of course, I had to spend my first full day in Sicily looking for some gluten-free pasta so I can enjoy all the rest of the great food here. The host for our apartment sent a link to stores with gluten-free food, so we walked this morning to a nearby supermarket (although we walked in the wrong direction even with a map).

Look what I found!

I also found some delicious goat cheese and salami…good for our first lunch in Catania. My new Italian word for the day, learned while shopping at a fruit and vegetable stand, is cetriolo (cucumber).

Ah, I also found some gluten-free gnocchi, which I forgot to put in the picture because it was in the refrigerator.

We did find a nice park by walking the wrong way to the supermarket. It was worth it to see the children and parents playing together and the older people sunning themselves on this lovely day.

Julie and I were warm from our walk and removed our wraps, but a clerk in a store told us it was a cold day, and most of the Sicilians on the street did have their coats on. I thought the temperature was perfect!

I’m not sure why we needed to walk several blocks to a park, though, since we have one outside our apartment veranda. I took these pictures walking down one side of our flat’s three-sided veranda.

Neighborhood park in Catania View from apartment veranda

The tree tops next to our veranda

Now that the “writing leave” has really begun, I’m starting to give proof that I really will write with a series of posts .

One set of articles (or chapters) I’m planning to write is about trees. The topic matches one in materials we will use in the online language courses we are creating.  While I was in Arizona, I took the chance to take photos of palo verde trees in the bloom of spring.

Palo Verde tree with blossoms Photo aken March, in Gilbert Arizona

Palo Verde tree with blossoms Photo aken March, in Gilbert Arizona

The palo verde is the state tree of Arizona. They are found primarily in the Sonoran Desert (Arizona and northern Mexico). The Spanish name means “green stick” and the green trunk and branches allows photosynthesis to occur. The tree has very deep roots, allowing it to tap into water sources even in the dry desert.

These trees were in the neighborhood where I stayed in Gilbert and were gorgeous against the clear blue sky.

As I prepare to take a Sabbatical from my university teaching job, I’m creating this blog to share with family and friends the adventures of my “travel to write” for the next several months.

My project for my leave from Brigham Young University–Hawaii this semester is to research and write graded readers for students learning English. In my department at BYUH, we are creating online English language courses and learning materials. To support these online learners, we need materials written in easy English that give the students opportunities to practice reading in English at their language level. In our field we call this extensive reading.

For a first day of blogging I want to say that I’m leaving a truly beautiful place here in Hawaii for adventures in other lands. Just to emphasize the beauty,  I’ll find a few photos to share (and learn how to post them at the same time.)  Laie, HI is a wonderful place to live and work.