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Published: April 9th 2014
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The brochures state Gozo is an island of mystery, history and faith. It also moves to a strikingly different, more leisurely pace then its sister island. This we found to be true!
How did we come to be here? While this adventure was in the planning stage I must have spent the majority of my spare time "googling". Through that I came across a slightly more unique way of seeing the island of Gozo then just by a coach - Gozo by jeep!
The day started a little slow, in that we were very late to be picked up and we still had more stops at two hotels after ours and with a ferry to catch the van driver was struggling to control his temper over the amount of traffic.
The ferry ride across to Gozo was very pleasant and the jeeps were waiting for us and because we were four travelling together we had a jeep of our own and we had "Maurice". who was the leader of the pack for the day. There were three other jeeps with four people and one with six - fourteen of us in total.
Now Maurice was born on
the island and claimed to know every person and every inch of the island, which after spending the day with him I have no doubt that is true.
After the windy weather yesterday, today was stunning with beautiful clear blue skies, sunny and warm.
Once we set off in convoy, the day evolved with one stunningly beautiful sight after another and we would have covered almost all of the island and being in jeeps we could go places the big coaches couldn't.
One of the first stops was at the Ggantija ruins where one of the temples is said to be the oldest stone structure in the world even predating Stonehenge and the Pyramids by hundreds of years.
There were many highlights to this stunningly beautiful island and I especially loved the Azure window, though when you look at it you do wonder how much longer it is going to survive as the roof section looks extremely precarious. This appeared not to worry some as there were people walking all over.
Lunch was included and we stopped in the beautiful Marsalforn Bay which is on the North Coast and is a more developed area than
any of the other bays.
Immediately after lunch was another interesting sight, salt evaporation, also called slatterns or salt pans which are located on a stretch of the coastline.
The countryside has prickly pear everywhere, historically they used to plant it along the borders of their fields as wind breaks. They do not make full use of the plant, although the locals eat it and there is a liquor made from it and is on sale on the island. If the farmers did not occasionally chop it back it would eventually take over their land as it grows readily and spreads.
The final place we visited was the Citadal Victoria located on the hilltop over looking the city of Victoria and from the high walls there are views in all directions.
At this point it was time to leave this fabulous island after an amazing day.
This was topped off by not returning to Malta on the ferry, which was how we arrived on the island - we departed by jet boat allowing us to visit the blue lagoon and the caves of Comino Island.
It was an happy and exhausted foursome that returned
to our hotel,
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