Cherry Coast Adventures: Malta, Part 1

When Tony and I were looking into possibilities for our winter vacation, we were almost overwhelmed with options. I know, whine whine first world problems, poor us. One of the first decisions we made was to narrow it down to places we could trade and use a timeshare week. Honestly though, that still left tons of options! We debated finding some place in the mountains, maybe Switzerland or Austria, but quickly ruled that out because they tend to be a little more expensive, Tony isn't a skier or snowboarder, and neither of us necessarily wanted a snow vacation. We talked about EuroDisney, but thought that might also be a little cold for us.

Some of the next options we batted around were Croatia and Slovenia, but the locations there were slim pickings, and tended to also be in the mountains. We also considered the South Coast of Spain, Thailand, and Sicily. Thailand quickly came off the list for travel reasons and language barrier. We thought the Coast of Spain was going to be our top choice, as there were many options for lodging, and we even considered making a road trip and stopping off at a few different fun halfway points. But...our car is still broken and that wasn't a good option. Travel would be cost prohibitive even if we flew into Barcelona and rented a car or took a bus or train, so we ultimately decided to table that idea and focus on Sicily. Believe it or not, it would be easier to get to the South Coast of Spain than to Sicily! We are talking 12 hours on not-so-reliable trains, or a grueling combo of driving and ferries and with the car and our timeline, that was out, too.

We were on the bring of "just" hitting a few cities in Italy, when we realized we hadn't done a lot of research on Malta. Tony found some cheap plane tickets, so we decided to seriously consider it. Then we realized they use the Euro and speak English! Malta was looking better and better. I double-checked timeshare availability and booked a room with a kitchen. (By that time plane tickets had nearly doubled, but were still very reasonable. Shop early, people!) Now the second-best part of vacation: planning!

I started searching on TripAdvisor and ye olde Google, and learned that Malta is home to some very old ruins, historic harbors, beautiful churches, and parks with cliffs and beaches. I was intrigued by the Segway tour options, and Tony and I decided we definitely wanted to do some traditional touristy things and that sounded fun! There were also a lot of fun Christmas events going on, and when we learned temperatures were predicted to be in the 60s, we started to get even more excited. Malta is comprised of two main islands, Malta and Goza, with several smaller ones, about 90km from Sicily. There were a few things we wanted to do on the island of Goza, but we never quite got around to it. One of the other things I stumbled upon during my research was the Malta Falconry Centre, where you get to learn about and fly birds of prey. That quickly moved to the top of the list of must-dos for us, and was the first thing I reserved in the way of events. Ultimately we decided to play Segway by ear, and booked a Hop-On/Hop-Off bus tour for our first full day in Malta.

Normally I turn my nose up at those kinds of tours, but in Malta it was a really smart choice. There were three options, and we chose the route on the Eastern and Central parts of the island. For 17 Euro each, we got an amazing tour of the island and hopped off to do some exploring on our own. We arranged for transport from our hotel, and got to drive through some of the bigger cities, including the capitol of Valletta. We met the bus at the main bus terminal, and set out on our adventure. We passed some beautiful castles, churches, and harbors, and got off in the town of Paola. We were about 45 minutes early for the next tour, so we bought a meat pie from a local vendor to split and wandered around a bit. Actually, the dude accidentally gave us an apple pie, which was quite tasty. Anyway, the Hypogeum is an underground tomb system that was discovered in the late 1800s when construction workers digging a cistern accidentally broke through to some of the chambers. It is the only known prehistoric underground burial chamber in the world.

The Hypogeum is very well-protected, and custodians monitor the levels of light, heat, and moisture in the chambers. Because of this, only ten people are allowed to enter each hour and a total of 60 people per day. In our group, there were only five of us. The tour lady gave everyone audio guides so we could follow along with the narration as we stopped at pre-approved locations in the caverns. We weren't allowed to take pictures, so the photos below were scavenged from other places on the internet. The Hypogeum was carved out before the Bronze Age, when men didn't have metal tools yet! I can't imagine them crawling into the caves and using bone and stone to carve them out by hand, especially among all of the decomposing bodies in various states of decay. Ugh, the stench. They say more than 7,000 people were buried there over the years. There are three levels to the tombs, with caverns of varying sizes. In some places you can still see the painted decorations, which are traditional scrolls and swirls found all over Malta. One of the neat things we learned and got to experience is the natural resonance of one of the main spaces called the Oracle Room; when people talk or hum into a certain corner of the room, the whole placers resonates and echoes and it sound spooky and amazing! They Hypogeum is also known for a collection of carved figures that were collected there, especially its corpulents. There's a picture of the most famous one, the sleeping lady, below.

Main Chamber of the Hypogeum

Decorative Painted Spirals

The Sleeping Lady

After our tour of the Hypogeum, we had some time until our bus came around, so we walked around a bit more and wound up at the Tarxien Temples. These temples are a are UNESCO World Heritage Site and date back to 3100BC. At this location, tourists can walk around the perimeter on an elevated walkway, and then through the center of the temples before exiting. It's a self-paced tour and there are several informative signs posted along the way. I think it cost something like 7 Euro a person and since we were rushed we did it in about 30 minutes, but I can't imagine spending much more than an hour there even if we had all the time in the world. We learned these temples were discovered when local farmers kept complaining of finding and running into large rocks when plowing their fields sometime in the early 1900s. It's very strange to find such giant rocks and carvings in the middle of what is now a city, for sure! Nobody knows exactly why or how these temples were built, but archeologists discovered stone rollers outside one of the entrances that are theorized to have been used like giant ball bearings to move the slabs of stone. They also think it may have been used for rituals and animal sacrifice, especially since many of the carvings involve animals like goats, cows, and pigs. (On an interesting side note, later on in the trip we learned that giraffe, elephant, and other large mammal bones have been found on Malta, along with calcified sea creatures, which indicate Malta has been both buried underwater and connected to the mainland at various points in time as the earth's climate changed.)