June 6.
Our plan is to bike to Partanna. The place isn’t listed in our guide book which makes us suspicious. What’s the author of this guide book trying to hide from us? We decide to find out.
The ride to Partanna is short and unpleasant. My fantasy of Sicily as a land of sleepy farm roads has been shaken by a never-ending succession of close shaves and near-misses. Even German cyclists avoid biking on the road to Partanna. There are just a few drunk locals on rusty clunkers, the odd nun, and us.
We’ve got a place to stay thanks to the waiter. What happened is this: at breakfast, S. mentioned to the waiter that we were looking for a place to stay in Partanna. Instead of shrugging, which is what I expected the guy to do, he pulled out his cell phone and started calling his friends and friends of his friends till, after a long time and a lot of us telling the guy he really shouldn’t go to all this trouble, he finally found a lady in Partanna with a room we could stay in.
Because we’re in Sicily, and everything I know about Sicily I learned from Hollywood movies about the mafia, the whole thing makes me nervous.
“When a guy does you a favor, there comes a day when that guy wants you to pay him back,” I explain to S. who admits that she’s “only seen parts of” The Godfather but, even so, says I’m being paranoid.
We grind up a zigzag of hairpin turns into Old Partanna where we promptly get lost. S. asks a man we pass for directions. The man explains that we’re on Vialetto Trapani but the street we’re looking for is Via Trapani. Then he hops in his car and offers to show us the way. We tell him thanks, but no thanks. It’s been our experience that when you’re on a bike and someone in a car offers to show you the way, it’s better to say no thanks because they’ll drive really fast and you’ll nearly kill yourself trying to keep up with them. But the man insists, so what can we do? We follow the guy who drives really fast and we nearly kill ourselves trying to keep up with him.
When we finally find the place, we ring the bell. A sweet old lady takes us up to the room. The lady doesn’t speak English and we don’t speak Italian, so there’s not much to say. We smile, she smiles. We never figure out who she is or what’s her connection to the waiter at breakfast. It’s just one more unsolved mystery. When you’re on a bike trip in a strange country, those start to pile up.
S. and I find a place for dinner. When we finish, it’s dark and Partanna has turned into a ghost town. The narrow streets are shuttered. Empty and unpoliced. On Via Cavour, a stray dog marches into the middle of the street and starts barking at us. He stands his ground, daring us to come any closer. At this hour, stray dogs call the shots in Partanna. We turn around and find another way home.