Italy, A Nation of Islands

By Patricia Winton

Italian weather forecasters divide their predictions into four parts: north, central, south, and the islands. Everybody knows that last doesn’t mean all the 450 islands scattered across Italy, but to Sicily and Sardinia, the two largest, and their neighbors.

Making up about one-sixth of Italy’s land mass, individual islands and 13 archipelagos ring the peninsula. There are about 40 islands in and around the Venetian lagoon. In addition, major lakes, and even a couple of rivers, boast islands as well. Three islands are privately owned. Many Italian islands, such as Capri or Elba, are well-known to tourists, but there are lots of fascinating islands not on the beaten track, including the world's best beach for 2013 from TripAdvisor.

Isola di San Michele: San Michele Island is Venice’s cemetery. Once described as a “cruise ship for the departed,” the island rises from the lagoon surrounded by a yellow wall. For funerals, the undertaker can arrange an aquatic hearse (or even a gondola) for a procession to the island. 

Vaporettos to San Michele on November 1

During All Soul’s commemoration on November 1, vaporettos (Venetian water busses) ply between Venice and the island throughout the week to allow mourners to visits family graves. And like cemeteries in most parts of Italy, interment here is temporary—12 years. After that, people with funds can have their bones transferred to an ossuary in a wall. (I wrote about this practice here.) The gate to San Michele opens at 7:30 AM, closing at 4 PM winter and 6 PM summer.

Isola di Stromboli: Stromboli Island (pronounced STROM bow lee) is a volcano that has been in active eruption for about 2,000 years. It usually erupts about three times an hour, but more vigorous than usual activity began last week, prompting coastguard boats to be deployed as a precaution. By February 19, the volcano had calmed again.

Located northeast of Sicily, Stromboli, an almost perfect triangle, has two villages with a year-round population of about 750. It’s one of the few volcanoes in the world where it’s possible to have a really close look at the eruptions. Dubbed the “Lighthouse of the Mediterranean” because the light show is visible from arriving ships, the island boasts a summer tourist trade with hikes to the volcano, scuba diving, and visits to other islands.

The only way to get to Stromboli is by boat, and because the villages are so small, there are no cars or busses. You get around by on small cycles, by apecars (small, three-wheeled trucks), or on foot. There are no large hotels on the island, but a number of B&Bs and small restaurants provide services to tourists.

Lampedusa: This island is the southernmost point of Italy, located just 70 miles (113 kilometers) from Tunisia and has a very African feel with its arid climate. The sea between Lampedusa and North Africa is only about 370 feet deep (113 meters), so the water remains warm enough for swimming about eight months a year. Part of the island is a nature preserve, so there are good opportunities for hiking. TripAdvisor named Rabbit Beach on Lampedusa the best beach in the world for 2013. While tourism, in addition to fishing and agriculture, is a major industry on the island, the beaches are usually not crowded except during July and August. The island has no fresh water source, except for rainfall.

Rabbit Beach in Lampedusa, called world's best beach by Tripadvisor

For the past ten years or so, Lampedusa has been a preferred destination for illegal immigrants from Africa, and during the Arab Spring about 200,000 people rowed across the sea to the island.

Isola Tiberina: Located in the Tiber River in the heart of Rome, this island is connected to one river bank by Rome’s oldest bridge, Ponte Fabricio (62 BC). Another bridge, Ponte Cestio with parts almost as old as Fabricio, connects Tiberina to the other.

Legend has it that the island emerged above an ancient ship, which its shape mirrors. Romans have perpetuated the legend by building a prow and stern at either end of the island and erecting an obelisk in the center to replicate a ship’s mast.

The ancient Romans built a temple to Aesculapius, the Greek god of healing, on the site. The portico of the temple was used as an incubatio, a place where sick people were left out in the cold to purify them and restore them to health. In the Middle Ages, Tiberina hosted pilgrims to the Holy See, and priests cared for the poor and sick there. A hospital, erected on the island in 1584, still operates.

Weather forecasters are calling for very cold weather from north to south over the next seven days. Even the usually mild islands should have frigid temperatures. Strangely, Stromboli may see snow on that eruption.

Visit me on alternate Thursdays at Italian Intrigues where I write about all things Italian.

Five Months on The Rock

By Beth Green

After 12 hours of travel, we sat on yet another bus, watching through the dirty windows as Bangkok traffic chittered and lurched in the golden afternoon sunlight.

We’d been on this public bus for 45 minutes. We were nowhere in the city we could pinpoint on a map and didn’t really know if this bus would take us somewhere we wanted to go, anyhow.

The bus was old, but going strong. It stopped every few feet, and another crowd of school kids, or office workers, or ladies coming home from the vegetable market would get on and squeeze past my sweaty legs and big backpack, politely smiling and looking away as I apologized for being in the way.

The bus stopped at yet another intersection clogged with taxis, three-wheeled trucks, and motorbikes. I watched the shadows outside lengthen. I felt bone tired, but also, suddenly inspired.

“Let’s keep going,” I said to Dan.

He craned his neck to see over the top of the backpack he was cradling on his bent knees, crammed in the plastic seat across the aisle from me.

“Where?” he asked.

“Let’s find an island,” I said.

And so, we went to Koh Tao.

As sometimes happens when you make a spur-of-the moment choice to abandon a plan, we found that road blocks were lifted, obstacles decimated, red carpets rolled out.

We’d been sweating on the bus for close to an hour, stuck in traffic as gnarled as the noodles in a plate of pad Thai. But as soon as we decided to take Bangkok off our itinerary, it all came right. We alerted the conductor, shouldered the bags, leapt off the bus, hailed a taxi, shot through the streets, snapped up a ticket and were sitting on the night train to Chumphorn in quick succession.  At Chumphorn we transferred to a bus, which took us to the ferry. By morning, we were whizzing across the Gulf of Thailand on a high-speed catamaran watching British honeymooners drink beer for breakfast and subsequently puke it up.

We did our dive training at Master Divers, in Mae Haad.

Koh Tao is a tiny speck in the blue ocean, at eight square miles a fraction the size of its famous neighbors, Koh Samui and Koh Phangan. It has three villages, a surprising number of hide-away resorts, and the largest concentration of dive shops I’ve ever seen.

I was there for the diving, and Dan, an indifferent swimmer at this point, was there for cheap beer. Or so we thought.

The three days we’d initially decided to stay on Koh Tao stretched to seven once my divemaster convinced Dan to sign on for a scuba course. We spent the mornings underwater, checking out clownfish and coral and avoiding the island’s strangely aggressive triggerfish. Afternoons we read or walked the sandy lanes that counted as “roads.” Evenings, we met new friends and, yes, drank cheap beer.

By the end of six days, the seed of a radical idea was blossoming. We left, but Koh Tao stayed with us: Palm trees. Tropical reefs. Friendly people. We continued on our Southeast Asia backpacker’s circuit. Cambodia. Malaysia. Australia for the holidays. India. Vietnam. Months passed, and we saw amazing, incredible, life-changing things. And we still kept talking about how we could get back to tiny Koh Tao.

So we did.

We signed up for divemaster courses, found a bungalow with a pet monkey living in a tree outside, and spent five months admiring the way the water shone in Thai sunlight—both above and below the surface.

Image courtesy pelkaphoto

The diving industry on Koh Tao sprang up in the 1990s. Before then, it was mostly uninhabited, with just a few houses where fishermen would overnight. In that relatively short amount of time since then, it’s grown and developed and yet still retained that “deserted island” feel. The inhabitants of the island are castaways themselves. Foreign dive professionals from a hundred countries staff the technical side of the resorts and dive shops while Burmese and Nepalese migrants mind the shops and cook and clean in the restaurants and hotels. Tourists arrive from everywhere. Even the Thai population is adrift here—it’s no-one’s home, and because of that it’s as free and easy a place to be as I have ever been.

Living on a small island is not for everyone, however. Water shortages, power outages. Cash shortages if weather keeps the ferry from running and the banks from bringing more change. Jokes about “island time” are not really jokes, just a reflection of how perceptions of urgency are diluted by the sea that surrounds us.  Bad weather is the bogeyman.  If the ferry isn’t running, you might not make your flight in Bangkok next week. Emergencies are dealt with as swiftly as possible—but may require help from another island, or the mainland, an hour or more away.

And, like in many enclaves of expatriates and long-term travelers, there are some who come and never leave—but say they’d like to. Anyone who’s spent some time on “The Rock”—as Koh Tao is affectionately called—can name-drop two, three or a dozen people who have stayed over the time they should have. People who sit in perfect paradise and only notice the mosquitoes. Some of these became inspiration for characters I’d write into a mystery novel manuscript some months later.

Scuba self-portrait.
Water gets in my mask when I laugh.

Dan and I discussed staying on Koh Tao through the low season and on into the new year. We could have dipped farther into savings—travel budget gone now—and pulled out enough to pay the tuition for dive instructor courses. We’d need updated equipment. A higher rate of insurance. Maybe a larger apartment—a one room bungalow is fine for a few months, but indefinitely?  Outside practicalities had invaded our island life.

So we left. And chased money. And closeted up our dive gear.

But every so often, at an airport, we say, “Hey, let’s keep going. Let’s go back to Koh Tao.”

And one day, we might.