Backpacking Around Malta - 5 Weeks in Country Number 65

Europe » Malta
December 19th 2013

Published: December 20th 2013

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The Corn Flake Traveller

Satellite Image

The country is made up of the 3 islands of Malta, Comino and Gozo and other tiny ones

5 Weeks in Malta

The film about my trip for those lazy readers -

Being such a small country famous for it's tourist trade I wasn't all that excited to visit but it turned out to be a beautiful place with some really friendly people.

I travelled with my mate Rich as we had a couple of filming projects in mind for our Modern Explorers website. The first week we stayed and volunteered (arranged through Workaway) at an eco-friendly village called 'The Vortex' - set up by butwhynot on the West of the island. We met some great people, learnt about off-grid living and did lots of filming with the intention of making a film about the village (which I am currently editing).

After a week there we began travelling around the islands of Malta and Gozo. Although we only managed 4 days on Gozo we managed to see a lot of temples and other ancient structures as we were helped out by a shamanic pagan called John Mizzi, who showed us around some of the sites.

Most of our time

Corn Flake Montage

was spent hiking or taking the cheap buses (2.60 Euros for an all day ticket) around Malta visiting its ancient sites for another film and we managed to slip in a few tourist attractions too, like Valletta, the Mdina in Rabat and the Blue Grotto.

Some things that stood out for me were the large number of large churches scattered all over the place, they really didn't seem to match the size of town they were in, for example the church in Mgarr (which was close to the eco-village) was like a cathedral and Mgarr only has a population of 3000-ish people. Another thing that stood out was the cliffs, there was a lot of cliff ridden coastline, which was very dramatic and pretty indeed. My favourite cultural experience came in the form of the legendary Pastizzi, some really cheap pastries filled with cheese or pea - they probably saved me about 100 Euros over the course of the 5 weeks.

For the last couple of weeks Steph came out to stay in a 4* hotel so I was able to enjoy staying in luxury although I did miss my tent when I was

Malta

The 4th most densely populated country in the world

in a claustrophobic hotel room.

The ancient sites that we found were fascinating - temples, menhirs, dolmen, stone circles, underground dwellings and the infamous Maltese Cart ruts - for more details you can keep an eye out on our Youtube Channel for the film I am making, or you can read about it on my Megalithic blog (both coming soon).