Sweet waters in Sampieri.

Today me and a friend from Rome paddled few miles to explore the coastline East of Sampieri. The first picture is at the "Pisciotto", a ruined bricks factory, than we almost reached the beach of Maganuco and paddled back to the base of our club.

Between the bay of Sampieri and Maganuco there is the sandy bay of Marina di Modica and we just paddled into the mouth of the small river that bring sand to the sea. It was pretty short but nice and peaceful, with some ducks swimming around.

Back into the Sampieri bay we decided to enter the mouth of the river called Torrente Petraro. This is a bit longer (at least the sailing potrion) and it was really interesting to observe some birds like a Little egrett, some Sandpipers and an interesting nest with bird and 5 eggs of Purple swamphen.

We spotted a small snake too that quickly disappeared into the shallow water.
Back at the base, a beer and some food was a good finish.

In Italiano: 

Little egrett = Garzetta 

Sandpipers = Piro piro

Purple swamphen = Pollo sultano

Rock gardening in Siracusa!

One of the most beautiful destinations of Eastern Sicily is the rocky coastline which lies at north of Siracusa. It is just 3 or 4 nautical miles but could take a lot of time tu run if you try exploring all the caves and arches you can find along the cliffs.
This time we went there with a large group, about 16 paddlers, and the sea conditions were so good that it tooks the entire morning to explore every single cave and small bay we met.

The big surprise was a ship wreck that recently got agrounded on the rocks during a force 8 NE gale. All the crew was rescued with the elicopter of the Coast Guard. Now they are still working to remove the huge ship that luckily was empty at the time of the disaster. So little or no oil on out clean coast!

Here some links to photo galleries on Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.3368538785984.146421.1644639905&type=1
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.3659944660000.2166235.1316184743&type=1
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.3268599445376.138445.1579037017&type=1
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.3915421367660.174870.1343227221&type=3