Exploring Malta and Gozo

Malta isn't a destination many people outside of Europe consider as a holiday destination. Europeans, on the other hand, pack out Malta in summer, and for good reason - there's something for everyone on this Mediterranean island nation.

Strictly speaking, it's made up of three islands: the "mainland" of Malta, the secondary island of Gozo, and tiny Comino. All together, the surface area is considerably smaller than Lake Taupo in New Zealand. They're situated in the middle of the Med, south of Italy and east of Tunisia, which means that in summer the weather is scorching -- but there's always a beach nearby to cool down on. The sandy beaches are always packed, in the style Europeans favour, but the locals head to the rocky beaches where they can jump straight into the deep azure water.

We lived there for six months, which was a bit of overkill. Malta is a great place to visit for a week or two - you can spend a couple of days relaxing on the beach before starting to discover the rest of the tiny country.

Linda exploring Gozo Gigantija Temples

One of my favourite days was our first day-trip to Gozo. My husband and I hopped on the rickety bus in St Julians, where we were living, and paid the (very cheap) bus fare to the driver before squeezing onto one cramped seat. The roads in Malta aren't well-paved, so we wobbled along for about 45 minutes to arrive at the ferry terminal. We'd just missed a ferry, so we were stuck in a waiting room which got gradually more and more crowded as people arrived.

The 25-minute ferry crossing was smooth and beautiful, we passed Comino on the way but didn't stop there - if you want to visit you have to go by private boat. On arrival in Gozo, we hopped on a bus that was exactly the same as the one we'd taken on Malta but painted grey and red instead of yellow and orange. This rattled us all the way to Victoria/Rabat, the capital of Gozo. By this time we were a bit peckish, so we picked up a bottle of Kinnie and a couple of ricotta pastizzis, both Maltese staples. Kinnie is an acquired taste, a soft drink with a bitter orange flavour - not at all like Fanta. And pastizzis are the most delicious thing in Malta - layers of filo pastry encasing either ricotta cheese or mushy peas - we usually went for the ricotta option.

Gozo is a hub of histroy

Next, we climbed the steep stairs to the ramparts of the citadel, which afforded a 360-degree view of the island - it's much greener than its sister Malta. We couldn't see our next stop, or at least we weren't sure if we were right in our guess, so we walked back down to the bus station to find our bus. Gozo is a hub for history, hosting as it does the oldest free-standing structures in the world, the Gigantija temples. These small, rounded, roofless buildings pre-date Stonehenge, the Pyramids ... well, everything really. According to legend, they were built by the giants who previously inhabited Gozo, hence the name.

Getting back from Gigantija was a bit more of a mission than we'd expected as we'd missed the last bus back to Rabat. But Gozo is tiny, we thought, we could just walk back. Well, for a start the distance was more than we had calculated, secondly the weather was oppressive, being mid-summer, and thirdly we definitely hadn't known about the car rally. It's apparently one of the most popular in Europe, and it ran right across our path. We scrambled down a hill to avoid the cars that were setting off, then walked more slowly through those that were lined up to take their turn, trying to look like we belonged with the spectators who lined the street three-deep. As we wandered through the field on the other side of the road, we came across groups of people trying to get a bit of shade from the crops growing there - it didn't look like this idea was working too well, though.

We had to walk all the way around the rally route then double back a bit to get back on the road to Rabat. We made it though, and even managed to get there in time to hop on the right bus back to the ferry. Perhaps we would have seen more on an organised tour, but we would have missed the best parts of the adventure.

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