🇮🇹 Sicily – lava and blue 🌊☀️

From Catania across half the island – toward Monte Cofano and Monte Monaco, where lava turns into blue

🌋 Mount Etna was calling to us already from the plane

Even before landing in Catania, we saw it through the window – massive, smoking, lit by the first light of the day.
Etna. It looked like the guardian of Sicily, saying: everything here begins with fire 🔥

🚗 Roads shaped by the wind

After leaving Catania, the landscape shifts like a kaleidoscope.
The A19 highway runs over valleys and through the mountains, suspended on bridges and viaducts that were meant to be the pride of southern Italy.
Today, in places, they look like nature is trying to reclaim them – a piece has fallen off, another has sunk, and the “lavori in corso” signs have become part of the scenery.

– Is this a bridge or a highway?
– More like a bridge to a highway that’s also a bridge 😅

One thing’s certain: this is a route you don’t forget.
And even harder to find a place to refuel ⛽️ 🤭

🏝️ San Vito lo Capo peninsula – our little paradise

After hours of driving, we finally turn off the highway toward the peninsula. With every minute, the road gets narrower and the air smells more and more like the sea. The greenery thickens, the cliffs rise, and then San Vito lo Capo appears – a town at the edge of the world.
On one side the sea, on the other mountains, and in between a kind of silence that doesn’t need filters.

Our home sits at the foot of Monte Monaco – with a terrace in the shade of olive trees and a view of cliffs that change color depending on the time of day.
We were far from the town and the road – in a place where silence has its own sound. Just cicadas, wind, and the scent of sun-warmed herbs.
This is the Sicily you won’t find in guidebooks – wild, calm, and real.

🌵 Prickly pears – the thorns and sweetness of Sicily

Here, prickly pears reign – cactus figs that grow literally everywhere. On the slopes, by the roads, in gardens, and between stone walls.
They look like green fans covered in spines, but inside they hide the sweetest taste of the island.

Their fruit – fico d’India – is covered in thousands of tiny spines that can pierce even the best vacation mood 😅 But once peeled, they taste like a mix of watermelon, melon, and fig – Sicily in an edible version.
At local markets, they’re sold ready to taste, and their pulp is used for jams, liqueurs, and granita.

Fun fact: prickly pears aren’t actually native – they were brought here from the Americas after Columbus’s voyages. But Sicily fell for them so much that they became one of its symbols – right next to the volcano and wine.
Their juice is also used to make a natural gel – an antidote for burns and bites (and Sicilians really use it!).

🌸 Between herbs and salt 🧂

The vegetation on the peninsula looks built to survive. Succulents, agaves, and dwarf palms grow here in the sand as if they drink sunlight instead of water.
Among them bloom wild oleanders, heather, and white lilies, their scent so intense that one gust of wind is enough to feel Sicily with your whole being.

The ground is dry but full of life – snails clinging to stems at every step, small lizards darting between the stones, and above it all the scent of salt and thyme.
Even the weeds here look like a piece of art.

🌇 The end of the day under Monte Monaco

The day ended just the way I like it – no plan, no rush, and an Aperol in hand 🍹 We sit on the terrace, look at the mountains, and try not to count how many kilometers we’ve done today. The air is still warm, and from the garden comes the scent of cacti and sun-warmed dust ☀️

No music, no people, just us, the view, and that feeling that everything here makes sense 🥰

This is where we’ll stay for a few days.
From here, we’ll head into the mountains – first to the raw, sun-scorched Monte Cofano, then to proud Monte Monaco, looking straight out at the sea.

🏔️ → Onward: Monte Cofano and Monte Monaco – raw Sicily without filters