Island fever & accidental hitchhiking
I didn’t realise accidental hitchhiking was a thing until I arrived in the south of Italy, on Isola di Vulcano, having accepted a last minute nannying-gig, and reached that oh-so-sweet part of the week where I had a free day to do as I pleased. Initially this was something I had simply assumed I’d have but was grateful to have checked and wrangled a day for some solo exploring (my preferred mode of travel, as mentioned in a previous post). I’m acutely aware that I have the privilege of being a young and attractive girl on her own. I’m not particularly threatening and I dawdle down the road from the top of the island, where the house sits overlooking the Tyrrhenian Sea, stroking the petals of the flowers that litter the hillsides in obnoxiously bright flashes and swaying to the Eagles. My headphones are tangled in my necklace within five minutes, but I continue to resist the Bluetooth movement, with my Kodak clutched firmly in my hands (yes, they do still make them, kids!).
I twirl myself in a half circle as I feel the earth kicked up the back of my heels by a car coming to a stop. “Cosa?”- my eyes are wide, and I blink slowly, absorbing this new scene before me. He sees the confusion on my face- I’d been engrossed in my music and hadn’t heard him. He switches to English. “To the centre?”. I don’t give it a second thought and jump in. It’s an island. I haven’t seen a single police car or officer since we arrived, our security guard is a sixty-year-old man who gives me coffee and a brioche after my morning runs, with skin that is beyond sun-kissed- they’re enmeshed in a long-term relationship, and there is no hospital. Everyone knows everyone. I knew that the gossip that plagues an island this small was also the reason it would be the safest place to hitchhike for the first time in my life, even if it was an accident. A stranger happened to see me dancing amongst the flowers and offered me a brief moment of relief from the sun beating down on my shoulders and turning strands of my hair shades of blonde I hadn’t seen since in it since I was a child. He wouldn’t be the last stranger and I am learning that this is normal, because I am the peculiar one here, wandering by foot around the island, alone. One-part hospitality, two-parts curiosity.
Right now, the island is still half-quiet. Peak tourist season hits in August and we will narrowly escape. Meanwhile, in my single day off I established new friends and my café where I will go to try and post this, pilfering their Wi-Fi because the house has none and phone signal is non-existent. I wander with my phone, tilted to the sky, winding around and around to touch base with my loved ones. Island life can be a lonely life, even when working as an au pair and physically living with a family, because they are not your family and when you look over the balcony you can see the physical boundary of where the earth meets the sea. You are stuck here until they say otherwise. And so, the routine of 6am morning-runs and the kindness of Sicilian strangers are your friend. I will continue to talk to as many people as possible, eat my morning gifts of breakfast (Armando now knows my morning order to perfection: no sugar in the espresso, and a cream brioche) and take endless photos (ok, it’s a Kodak- so I have 27 to be exact) and pray that at least some of them don’t have my finger in. Vedremo!
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