Tuesdays in Bugibba is “Refresh your gas cannisters day”. Every bar and restaurant in the square and around my hotel uses several of them, and it takes several hours to pull new ones off the truck, take them to the various customers, return the old ones. I know this because they started at around 7am. I was glad I’d gone to bed relatively early.
I got up and walked down to the harbour, taking a new route, seeing more local housing. The wind was up, making the sea choppier than the last two days. It meant visibility had improved but also that a small boat would be less comfortable.
I wasn’t on a small boat. It seats 48 people, on one deck and the roof. I sat on the roof and immediately regretted it, several hours of sun were not going to go well. I begged some sunblock from a young Australian man, sharing details with a girl he’d clearly met while in Malta. She sat opposite me, untied her dress and dropped it to reveal a bikini struggling in its role. Perhaps excelling in its role.
The captain handed us wristbands, the paper ones held on with glue that rips your hair off. To my right another man wrapped it around his wrist, laughed, showed us all that it didn’t reach around.
The boat set out, the wind picking up strongly as we rounded the headland. It caught my hat, tried to steal it away but I’d planned ahead, fitted the laces that tie it on.
We poked the nose of the boat into a cave, reversed back out. Another cave, this one large enough to turn the boat inside. The Australian continuing to interrogate the woman with him, keen to know more. A policewoman, owns her own flat in High Wycombe, 60k deposit from her parents. Wants kids but in no rush, figures she wont need to find a man for a bit, will panic if she reaches 35. I wondered just how far off that is. She thinks she’s under paid but likes the shift work, gets to do royal details, doesn’t eat fish. This confuses the Aussie, he lists a dozen fish to confirm. They nearly split on the topic of prawns.
The boat stops at a small island, people test the warm med, I get to stretch my legs. There is a tiny beach there, and a hotel, but the stop seems mainly to be so the boat can sell food and drinks to the passengers. €2 for a can of beer, €1.50 for a bottle of coke. I’m cheap, just spend €1 on a cup of instant coffee, hot and sweet.
Half an hour later everybody is back on board and we circle around the island. I admire a beautiful blue lagoon, take a photograph. We sail into it; its not a blue lagoon, it’s the blue lagoon. No, wait.
On shore multiple stalls sell drinks, food, ice cream, cocktails. The food is cheap for an isolated island, all supplies ferried in, no alternatives for visitors. 5 euros for a burger, 2 more for chips. The cocktails cost more but sell well, every viewpoint occupied by girls taking a selfie of herself, the blue Mediterranean, her cocktail in a hollowed pineapple.
My phone provided interesting feedback on my predominant vocabulary, automatically changing a correctly spelled ‘shore’ to ‘shite’.
I went back onto the boat, watching everybody jumping off, sneaking aboard the next, bigger, boat to use its water slide. It seemed a good time to eat so I bought lunch on the boat. Cheaper than the shore stalls and the boat ride is too cheap for them to profit from that alone.
Not great but for 6 euros (Inc coffee) and that view? Malta has some upsides.
We left the lagoon, the boat mostly empty. Another stop would collect them on the way back.
I took advantage of the space, lying on the bench, ten minutes of sunbathing. It was enough. The Aussie and police woman had set out their towels on the roof, where there were no seats. I left them there, drinking beer, still flirting. After the boat dropped us on Gozo it moved off, turned away, heading straight back to the lagoon. I guess parking charges are too high at the Mgarr dock.
The boat was greeted by a minibus, its driver offering me a lift. I hadn’t paid for the minibus tour so declined. He looked up at the town behind the harbour and told me, “There’s nothing here. I can take you to Victoria.”
Perhaps that was the wise option. I declined anyway, strolled up a steep hill to the church. It was closed, three girls lounging in its arched doorway, one singing happily along to the music they were playing.
I walked back down the hill, found a cafe. I ordered ice cream, and a coffee. Sat in the shade for the first time all day, cars and vans driving off the ferry by me, I relaxed, still 2 hours before I had to go anywhere. Victoria would have been too much of a rush, not appropriate in this heat.
Three scoops of ice cream demonstrated how lucrative a generic German Eis Bistro could be in Malta but were welcome enough in the early afternoon sun. Add coffee and a large water (turned out to be a 75cl bottle) and after paying the princely sum of €6 I ended up needing to once more apply my only exclusion to the “No hats indoors” rule: when using a public bathroom your head is the sanitary place to leave it..
The restaurant had two toilets, their individual rooms marked male and female. The one marked male also stated “Out of order” so I waited for the other to empty, a sheepish man making his way out. As I left a woman was waiting. She laughed at me for using the lady’s so I smiled back.
Back on the dock to wait for the boat, watching the fish in the Mediterranean. Small fry flitted near the surface, their larger cousins visible through the clear waters several feet below.
I didn’t get the bigger ones on camera. They scattered as the ferry arrived, keeping its “every twenty minutes” schedule then swam back to the edge of its wake, frolicking or feeding in the turbulent water.
I switch lens on my camera, offset a red warning pole with the blue sea and sky, hoped the final photo matches my vision. Another photo, two identical colourful boats that I couldn’t get symmetrically in the frame, their motion on the water too random and disconnected. I’ll share the photos once I’m home, had a chance to process them.
A boat arrived, young women getting on, a couple getting off. It went again, followed by the ferry on its return journey. In the background the noise of the next one being loaded, enough traffic to justify a bridge, something spectacular offset against an azure sea.
The time for my boat arrives. It doesn’t. The minibus hadn’t returned either, I wondered if I had the wrong time. Looking out to sea I see the boat rounding the edge of the harbour, deck covered in people again.
The minibus times it perfectly, people getting off as it stops and getting straight onto the boat, itself still being tied to the dock.
On the roof a Danish couple talk to the Australian and the policewoman. I find out all their names, that they’re from Copenhagen, he’s from Melbourne. They compare the population of Melbourne to that of Denmark, decide Sydney is a more comparable size.
As we crossed back from Gozo to Comino the boat started rolling, 30 degrees from left to right. A big wave and the roll goes to 30 degrees on one side. Passengers were alarmed enough to go “whooo” but no real panic. I just hooked my bag strap around my leg, the roof lips too low to be sure of catching it.
The Dane bemoans American laws, that they stop him drinking on the street, smoking pot, doing what he wants. “In Denmark the police don’t care, or they tell you, ‘Go home, you fucking idiot'”
He tells the police woman that British police wear silly hats. They all laugh.
We pass the blue lagoon again, this time the other side of the island. Another cave, another island stop, more small fish. I find out the new couple met in person only that morning, having found each other online last night.
Allegedly a dolphin is spotted, but nobody speaking English saw it. The Dane gets drunk, then while the two girls are swimming he confesses to the Australian his substance abuse problem, admits he loves his girlfriend because she tolerates it.
We reached the jetty we’d left 8 hours before, the captain shook hands and I abandoned the young lovers.
I didn’t want to go straight back to the hotel and spotted a German restaurant. It’s run by actual Germans, her fluent English switching seamlessly to her native language when a German regular came in. I ordered a schnitzel, telling her I’ve had pork and veal ones but never before a chicken schnitzel.
It came with the knife like that. The potatoes were excellent, the schnitzel just fried chicken in breadcrumbs. The day’s special however was indeed special.
Hot apfelstrudel mit vanilla eis, as good as any I’ve had in Germany. I walked back to the hotel a happy man.
As it happened, a sunburned one too. Red cheeks and nose, despite the sunhat, a sore wrist on one arm, the other wrist so burned it no longer even hurt. My hands are arms were fine, just the wrists getting toasted. Very strange. I grabbed a shower, then rested my knees, watched the cricket. Only 5km walked but a ten hour day, the bright sunshine sapping more energy than it provided.