Gozo

On my last full day in Malta, I headed out early to try to catch the ferry over to the island just to the north which goes by the name Gozo. Even smaller than the main island, it's less than a half-hour ride from the tiny port at Cirwekka on Malta to its counterpart Mgarr on Gozo. Since I had a plane to catch early the next morning, I wanted to be sure I wasn't going to get stuck on Gozo after the last ferry had run back to Cirwekka, so I lost no time in catching a bus up across the hills that separate the peninsula where Qawra lies from the northern tip of the island.

The bus arrived just a few minutes ahead of the next ferry, so I had little time to wait, and pretty soon they let the passengers on and started loaded up the car compartment. It's been a few months now since I've been on a boat, but all boats have something of a similar feel - the smell of engine grease and cleaning fluid and salt water corroding steel - and it all felt very familiar.

The day was hot and a little foggy, leaving an air of mugginess over the channel. We passed the tiny island of Comino on the right and docked a few minutes later at Mgarr. Shortly before we landed a woman came up to me and struck up a conversation. She said she assumed from hearing me talk that I was American, though I'm not sure how she knew that since, well, I would have had to be having a conversation with myself since I didn't know anyone else on the boat. She was from South Africa, in Malta on vacation, and asked if I would want to travel together for the day. She seemed quite nice and I hated to say no, but I had a particular destination in mind and didn't think that dragging a stranger on one of my 10-mile forced marches would really seem all that charming to her. We chatted for a few minutes then went separate ways, though I caught up to her again in line for the bus up to the main city of Victoria. The unlicensed taxi drivers are persistent to the point of being a little scary, and one of them had got his claws into her and wasn't letting her say no, she'd rather take the bus. She was a little timid and I finally got between her and this guy and told him to cut it out. He ignored me but walked away anyhow, and she & I hopped on the bus.

From Victoria I had planned to go to the north side of the island. The buses only run once an hour in that direction, and by the map I figured it couldn't be too much farther than an hour's walk, so I started following street signs down the winding way toward the north coast. This did indeed take about an hour, and I was glad to have the shade of an overcast day. Once I was out of the city it was quite a pleasant walk, although on a rural highway with no sidewalk or even shoulder. I dodged traffic most of the way there, and eventually watched as the hourly bus buzzed by me. By that time I was getting pretty close to the coast anyhow, although walks always seem long when you're not quite sure how far you've got to go.

I got to Marsalforn and hung out on the beach for a while, got some ice cream, walked around town, and thought about getting some lunch when I realized it was pushing two o'clock. With the bus trip back to Victoria and then over the hill to Mgarr, it seemed like I was pushing the end of daylight with the time I had left to get back, so I went over to the bus stop to wait for the next ride, as I was not excited to do the same trek I had just completed, only uphill in the reverse direction.

While I was waiting, two different British couples sat down and I chatted with them for a time. Apparently, because it's pricey to fly to Malta but very cheap to stay, most people would consider a five-day vacation like mine to be almost a waste of time. Both couples were there for weeks, though both were heading back soon. One of the couples was staying in Qawra, and the woman said I looked familiar, and might we be staying at the same place? This wasn't the case (the place they were staying had been named "Fawlty Towers" - by the locals, at that - for it's second-rate services), and we eventually figured out that she'd seen me walking along the highway and that's where she had seen me before.

Back in Victoria I had another wait, so I went to grab a bottle of water and a snack from a local shop, then sat on the bus munching on candy and trying to prop up my blood sugar until I got could get back across the channel and get some real food. Once again the ferry was just coming in when I got back to Mgarr, so I didn't have much time to look around the picturesque harbor with its traditionally painted fishing boats, all primary colors with the ancient symbol of the eye of Osiris painted on each side of the bow. Then across the channel, and a long wait before the bus to Qawra managed to acquire a slightly less-than-sober driver who had been sitting at a snack stall drinking some kind of beverage - hopefully not too terribly alcoholic a beverage - before he got behind the wheel and took a good forty people on a hair-raising and bumpy ride back across the hills to Qawra.

Back there I got dinner at the same place as last night, then took one long walk around the peninsula. The weather is starting to cool - the wind swinging from hot, arid Africa in the south has shifted around the compass and is now coming from the north, bringing the spring chill of Europe in the melting season with it. If I wanted to be chilly I could just go back to London and get that, so again I picked the perfect time: warm during my stay, cooling down just as I get ready to leave.

I caught a cab early the next morning and was back at Gatwick by noon. I grabbed my pack from baggage claim, threw on a cart, and ran to catch the first train back to the city. I had a return ticket already, so I hopped down the stairs and arrived just as a train was rolling up the tracks. At just about the moment that the door closed, I reached down to grab something out of my pack and realize, to my utter horror, that it was nowhere to be found. I knew I had it on the luggage cart, I had shoved the luggage cart off to the side when I reached the stairs into the train station, and, by all appearances, I had left the pack on the cart. Unfortunately I was on the express train to the city, so it was a good twenty minutes before the first stop. At East Croydon I ran up across bridge to another track and caught another train just pulling into the station. Back to Gatwick.

This entire trip took a good hour, by which time I was quite sure that Gatwick security would certainly have called the bomb squad, sealed off the terminal, and destroyed the pack inside a bomb-proof container. My phone was out of minutes, so there was no calling ahead to see. I hit up about three offices - lost & found, security, and then another lost & found before I made my way back to the floor where I had left it. A friendly security officer took the description, scratched his head, then disappeared into a back office for 10 minutes. He came out with a piece of the luggage tag, which had my name printed out on it. I produced a passport with a matching name (fortunately, I always carry passport, wallet, and keys on me so I'm less likely to lose them anywhere), and he rolled out the pack...on the same cart I had left it on, he joked.

I headed back to the train station, yet again, and caught the first one into the city, yet again. Only this time my ticket had already been punched, so I had to get the story straight in my head to try to convince the conductor that no, I wasn’t trying to cop a free fare, I really had paid for a ticket and had just been waylaid by the fiasco with the lost luggage. Fortunately, no one was checking tickets on this empty train, and I made it to Kings Cross, and then home, with no further incident.