Agrigento & The Valle dei Templi

Tobias Heller
3. Nov. 2016
4 Min. Lesezeit

Agrigento - my next goal on the sicilian list. Why do I go there again? Ah, right: there is the so called 'Valle dei Templi' which should be indeed worth a visit, whereas Agrigento itself does not offer overly too much to see apparently. Currently located in Ragusa, I start the morning early in order to go there, not knowing that a long day filled up with confusion lies ahead of me.

Prologue

Homeless in Agrigento

The journey to go to from Ragusa to Agrigento turns out to be distressing and quite difficult to manage. To get a train from the station is futile today, as the holidays seem to render everything inoperative. I even ask at the tourist information which bus instead will take me to Agrigento for information. The elderly lady with a confused appearance as though this question would exeed her abilities by far, answers in very bad heavy broken english, I would even go that far that she speaks more of italian with some words spread into her sentences. Isn't that a tourist information? Ah yes, we are still in the south of Italy, and things haven't improved ever since I entered Calabria, so pointless to assume it would be different on Sicily.

I so end up finding myself sitting at the supposedly right bus station, from where I would have to take an ominous bus, of those existence I am not quite sure yet. A bunch of youngsters tries to help me eagerly, though not really speaking english they give their best effort and by all I understand, the only chance of going there today is by taking the bus to the Airport of Comiso, from where - hopefully - busses will leave for Agrigento. After an hour of waiting there finally appears a bus, that soon rushes through hilly, abandoned looking landscape. At the airport I finally find a mini bus company - after a good hour of further searching, which indeed covers the distance to Agrigento and I jump in onto the backside rows happily after dropping my heavy bag into the trunk. I close my eyes while we move onwards accompanied by the last rays of the sun illuminating the area in golden light.

Sightseeing & Daytrip

The Valley - A walk through History

When I awake the first thing that puzzles me is the fresh and cool air against my face, followed by a dull aching stiffness of my back as I try to move. I find my backpack nestled behind me in the corner of a wall built of heavy stone bricks, my head resting upon it and my body wrapped tightly into the sleeping bag, fully dressed. Memories of yesterday's night start swirling back in a flush, leaving me with a somewhat clearer image of how I got here. As I arrived so late I decided to sleep outside on a bench next to the police station - for safety reasons. Funny enough, as an older man support by a walking stick passes by he throws a 20 Euro bill onto me, mumbling in italian that I should buy some food with it. My attempts to give it back are futile, struggling to explain that I am actually anything but a homeless person - or maybe I am, considering where I sleep tonight?

Later at night I feel a soft spray of water coming down on my face, opening my eyes I wince as I see alarmingly long flashlights shooting along the darkened night sky. It then starts to pour heavily, which makes me leave the place in order to search for something dry, and this is why I finally end up in front of the post office, on an uplifted level and a roof above. Closing out the option that Italians would act as Germans, getting up to an unearthly hour to maintain the flow of people needing to send their post as early as possible, I lay down here. Grumpily I put my belongings back in the backpack, heave it on my shoulders and move in direction of the thing I am here for - the Valle dei Templi.

The walk down to the valley is not the shortest, but I finally get to the entrance, and fortunately I am able to drop off my bag here at the ticket counter for the time being inside the temple site. Feeling like a heavy burden has - literally - lifted from my shoulders, I look froward to explore the area. The temples extent is massive and requires a lot of walking. The leftovers of the temples are impressive, located in this mainly deserted landscape which consists of several hills going up and down in waves, covered by from the sun dried out grasses and bushes. The city of Agrigento lies to the north in the background, overlooking the valley and being a pile of various houses with the same appearance.

Some withered Columns are sticking out into the sky, having been able to withstand forces of nature and mankind. Loads of broken column remnants, bricks and other debris of the temples are scattered around chaotically across the open space, partially overgrown by grasses. As I proceed into the vast outstretches of the valley, I encounter the old remains of an antique temple, with an open space in the front, a statue of a winged man in the front like broken angel. After several hours I finally reach the end of the park, and when I am about to take some final pictures, my camera suddenly does a weird thing: it is frozen, not able to access the card inside, which makes me switch it off and on again. When I try to display the last pictures I did, the card is completely emptied. I get furious about it, since my hike in the alps I always had problems with it, sometimes photos got deleted without visible reason. While I return to the main entrance I redo some of the shots, hoping this time the card would remain untouched. Anyways, after this long, sleepless and disastrous night I am fed up with Agrigento anyways, though the Valle dei Templi turned out to very nice to see. After picking up my luggage I return back uphill to Agrigento tiredly and on the verge of starving as I haven't eaten anything the whole day. I nearly scavenge the whole supermarket, and loaded with food I take the next train for Palermo.