Into the Hills

For some reason we expected Sicily to be quite dry, brown and scrubby like parts of Sardinia but it is not. The view from any hill is most definitely green. A patchwork of different grasses, yellowing vines, the deep green of citrus and the silver green of the olive groves. The olive harvest is on now so there are often plumes of smoke rising from distant factories as the oil is processed.

From a distance the villages and towns look interesting but close up many of them are actually quite ugly. For so many years the mafia controlled the construction and they did not build beautiful (except for themselves). Often the original buildings of interest are hidden in a maze of tall apartment blocks painted the usual Mediterranean colours, pink, yellow and brown but all quite gaudy and not the soft weathered look that one sees in places like the Amalfi coast. Occasionally there is an exception and mountain village of Palazzo Adriano is one. Here the construction is natural using mountain stone and the streets and alleys are beautifully cobbled.

People do not work much here, everything is closed from 1-4pm. Many of the olives do not get picked, there is nobody to do the work. Rather surprising in a place which is so poor but many people seem to have given up. They are very warm and accommodating but when you talk to them they just say "What's the point? We are poor, the politicians have stolen everything." So they sit around bemoaning the fact, some work.