The first thing I did in Malta was go to Gozo. That’s what had been recommended to me most in the couple of weeks – well, ten days – between booking and flying, so that was my first stop.
It was hot when I reached my local bus stop, which was made out of glass so there was no shelter at all from the direct sun. By the time the bus arrived, I was ready to collapse from heat exhaustion and was not amused to discover that the bus had the heating jammed on. Now, I admit that the locals were mostly wearing scarfs and puffy coats but I promise, it was hot. I know I’m not good with heat but if I’m wearing a t-shirt and getting light-headed then it genuinely is hot.
I bought my ticket and joined the general scrum for the stairs to the ferry, which was already docked and emptied and ready for its next lot of passengers. I don’t believe in staying inside on a boat, ever, and I was already too hot so I went searching for a spot that was both shady and in the wind. A spot at the back did the job nicely and by the time the ferry set off, I was starting to cool down.
Gozo isn’t very far away. It’s about 4.5km in a straight line from harbour wall to harbour wall. It takes the ferry about twenty-five minutes and it looks eminently swimmable, although I know at my current rate it would take me about three hours, assuming I didn’t get got by the cold, the shipping traffic or the creatures (are there sharks in the Mediterranean?). By the time you’ve finished looking at Malta, you’re almost on top of Gozo already.
At the other side, feeling cooler and a little calmer, I sat down on the harbour wall to consider my options. I had a twelve bus trip card with only two trips used and my plan had been to bus around the island, except that the only buses leaving from the harbour were going to Victoria/Rabat, the small town that serves as the island’s capital. Yes, buses would probably fan out from there. But my eye fell upon the hop-on-hop-off sightseeing bus. It’s not my usual thing but it struck me that it would show me everything of interest on the entire island and give me plenty of opportunity to hop off anywhere that particularly caught my interest.
So on I went. The bus was less than two minutes from departing but somehow, the second row on the top deck was empty – I can only assume no one wanted to risk toppling off the seat and falling down the stairs – so I settled in with my map and my headphones and began picking places to stop.
In the end I only stopped at one. I’d thought about Ramla Bay but it was only our first stop and anyway, the bus stopped in the middle of a narrow country lane, no beach in sight. The giant temples were another temptation – monolithic temples that predate any other manmade structure on Earth. These things are older than the Pyramids or Stonehenge and they’re so big that it looks like giants must have built them. But the audioguide was very vague about whether or not they were open to the public so I decided not to stand at the side of the road near some spectacular things I couldn’t actually get at. As it turns out, they are open to the public and so they’re on the list of things to do if/when I go back to Malta.
Calypso Cave, that was another one. We had a five minute stop at the top of the headland there, but the caves were down the hill and they may have collapsed or may have been blocked off. I’d have seen a lot more of Gozo if people could be a bit more specific about whether you can actually see things or not.
But I did get off at Dwejra. That’s where the Azure Window used to be, a fifty metre high arch carved in the headland by wave power. Unfortunately, that same wave power got a bit carried away and the whole thing collapsed and fell into the sea in a storm about two years ago. They describe it as “the remains of the Azure Window” but there are no remains, there’s just the end of the headland where it used to be attached. However, my guidebook mentioned “distorted crater-like topography” and that tempted me, so I hopped off.
It’s a great bit of coast. The road comes sweeping down the hill, over a viaduct that you can only see when you get to the bottom, past a big bit of valley and then down to a section of limestone shelving complete with rockpools. The limestone is itself is full of shells, not fossilised, not stuck in the mud but formed into the rock. If you scramble up the side from one of the bigger rockpools, it feels very weird to stick your hand on, all ceramic-like crinkled edges.
To the south is Fungus Rock, a large chunk of rock where a rare flower – not a fungus – grows. Backalong, it was sampled by royalty from across Europe for its health-giving properties. Nowadays the rock is protected, not because the plant is magic but because it’s rare and delicate. Behind Fungus Rock is a big bit of cliff – I hadn’t really realised Malta had big cliffs. To the north is the site of the former Azure Window and behind that some nice stratified cliff.
And above our heads, a helicopter. It buzzed over, went out to sea, came back, hovered low, repeated this over and over again. It was very clearly a working helicopter, the sort that works as a coastguard or search & rescue or something of that kind and yet it didn’t quite seem to be doing anything. Then it stopped, hovered and lowered someone on a winch, then a second someone, then it buzzed away again. A quad bike accident in the valley, inaccessible to an ambulance, or just quicker and easier than sending an ambulance?
By the time I’d scrambled up to the road to investigate, the helicopter came back and winched two people up, together this time, the one clearly in charge and the other waving their legs. I’m pretty sure they were both in uniform and I’m pretty sure they were the two people who’d been winched down earlier and I’m pretty sure no one was left on the ground after the helicopter vanished for the last time. In other words, I’m pretty sure it was training.
Once I was done with the beach and the cliffs and the rocks at Dwejra, I got back on the bus. We drove down to a nice bit of bay at Xlendi, and then back through Victoria/Rabat and back to the ferry. Some of the streets in Gozo are very narrow and it’s pretty impressive to get a bus through them. Malta has some quite famous balconies, allegedly the inspiration for Juliet’s balcony, although I’m not at all convinced Shakespeare ever came all the way to Malta. They’re about six inches above the top of the windscreen at the front of the bus. You could quite easily leap off them and into the bus if you didn’t mind that you’re likely to hit a seat back and do yourself an injury. Some of the corners were so tight it didn’t seem physically possible to get a bus round them. One bit of road in the middle of Victoria/Rabat was one way traffic only – except buses. That was possibly the narrowest bit of all and you think it’s ok to put a bus down it in the wrong direction? Madness!
I didn’t rush to get back on the ferry. In fact, I was tempted to get back on the bus and do Gozo again. My ticket was an all-day one; I had the right to. But it takes two and a half hours to do the circuit and while both ferry and X1 bus run pretty much all day and all night, I was aware that I had half an hour on the ferry plus an hour on the bus before I got home and while it was hot and sunny, it was also January and it seemed it does get dark relatively early even in Malta. By the time I got round the circuit a second time, the sun would definitely be low. And anyway, there was only one more sightseeing bus departing that day – I would have zero options for hopping off and hopping back on a later one. So I chilled a little in the ferry terminal, had some late lunch, read my guidebook to see what I’d just seen and got back on the ferry in my own time.
On the whole, I think I liked Gozo. I’ve definitely got a long list of things I want to see and do if I go back and if I do, I think I’ll stay over on the island for at least one night. Gozo: highly recommended.
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