A couple of weeks ago, as I was researching things to do around Malta, I was on the Heritage Malta website. Heritage Malta is the organization preserving and protecting all the historical, archaeological and museum sites on the islands. Currently, there are 23 sites open to the public, and hopefully we will have visited most or all of them. On their What’s On schedule, I noticed Ghar Dalam Under a Full Moon. Ghar Dalam is a cave and museum, and so I was intrigued by the idea and purchased tickets.
Since the event was from 7:30 to 9:30 in the evening, we decided to tack on a visit to nearby Marsaxlokk in the afternoon and then get ourselves to Birzebugga where Ghar Dalam is. We left the flat at about 1:30 and took the #13 bus into Valletta for transfer to the #85 bus to Marsaxlokk. We had visited Marsaxlokk with Eve and Michaela and had had a nice dinner there. During that visit, the vendor stalls had all closed by the time we arrived. So this trip, we knew we would have a chance to stroll along the quay and see the market stalls.
We arrived in Marsaxlokk a little before 3:00 and wandered up and down the quay. It really is a very colorful harbor and we enjoyed looking at all the boats and looking through all the vendor stalls. We especially liked seeing all the Malta lace items on display, which were considerable. And there were stalls selling Maltese food products. Honey is a big item. The original name of the island, although not known for sure, may have originated from the Greek word meli, honey. The Greeks called the island Melite, honey-sweet, possibly due to Malta’s unique production of honey; an endemic species of bee lives on the island. There is also some notion given to the name deriving from the honey color of the limestone used in buildings.
We had quite a bit of time to kill and we had some concern about when and where to eat dinner. It’s not uncommon for restaurants to close around 4:00 and then open up again for dinner starting at 7:00. Since we needed to be at Ghar Dalam by 7:30, that meant an early dinner. So, first things first; we sat at a quay-side café and had something to drink. It was a very pleasant spot and we enjoyed watching all the people going up and down the quay. After an hour or so, we decided to ask for menus, and fortunately, the café wasn’t closing and we could eat an early dinner.
I ordered a pizza and Christine ordered a tuna steak, which we figured we both share. Since Marsaxlokk is a fishing village, and the menu had the tuna steak on special, Christine decided it was the thing to do at a café in Marsaxlokk. And it was delicious! I must confess that I haven’t eaten fresh tuna steak much, but this was really yummy and we really enjoyed it.
After dinner we decided that, since we still had about 90 minutes before our event, we would walk to Ghar Dalam. It was only about a 30 minute walk. We checked Google maps for a route, and off we went. We walked through a couple of streets in Marsaxlokk and found lovely hand-painted house name plaques on several homes.
Very quickly we were out of the village and overlooking both sides of Marsaxlokk Bay – towards Marsaxlokk and towards Birzebugga.
In between the two villages, and their large industrial complexes, is stunning farmland. It was a beautiful late afternoon for a stroll in the country and we really enjoyed ourselves.
As we were following the Google map, the country lanes became narrower and narrower with each turn. At one point, we were tramping through some very overgrown places. We spooked a bunch of sheep in a field and some guy leaning on a stone fence in the middle of the field just stared at us. And then, we ran in to a dead end. A large gate was crossing the track and we couldn’t get through. That guy must have known that and he just watched us keep going to the dead end and then have to back track. A woman sitting in front of her little house asked us if we were lost and pointed us towards where we would eventually meet up with a road. We didn’t mind the extra walking, though, since it was such a nice evening and so pretty.
We did kind of scramble down the little farm track in the country lane photo above as it was steep. We weren’t quite sure where it would take us, but we finally did end up on the main road from Marsaxlokk to Birzebugga.
We walked along the bay and then up a street. We always enjoy seeing houses and their decorations.
We found our way to Ghar Dalam, and we were still 40 minutes, so we sat outside and enjoyed the cool breeze and the surroundings.
The program was two talks by scientists about the cave, museum, and gardens. Ghar Dalam (don’t pronounce the Gh) is a natural, waterworn cave in the lower coralline limestone. It is situated in the north-east bank of Wied (Valley) Dalam. The cave stands 15.5 meters above sea level and is 144 meters deep, but pubic access is only through the first 70 meters.
Ghar Dalam is the oldest of Malta’s national monuments. The Pleistocene mammalian fauna found in it reached Malta from the European mainland at the time of the glacial period of the Ice Age, about 200,000 years agao, when land bridges existed between Sicily and Malta. The Mediterranean Sea depth was considerably lower at that time. These land bridges provided a pathway for the European fauna in escaping the unfavorable climatic conditions of Europe, when most of its northern and central regions were covered with ice sheets. The ice sheets never reached Malta but the effects of the Ice Age on Malta were considerable. Malta had a Rain Age! The abundant rain of the Pleistocene period caused floods and rivers, which excavated most of the Maltese valleys. At Wied Dalam the river gradually eroded its bed into a subterranean tunnel until it finally reached and penetrated the tunnel’s roof. There are actually 2 caves, one on either side of the valley. Loads of Pleistocene animal carcasses, clay, pebbles, stones, soil ad other debris were sucked and deposited in this cavern. Human remains dating back 7,000 years ago have also been found.
I was never a very good student of prehistoric history and don’t know epoch and eras and ages. The displays in one of the museum rooms provided really good information about all this. One display was in the form of a clock face and showed in terms of clock hours when things were happening on Earth. It struck me that humans appear at only about the 4 minute mark where one hour represents 50 millennial years.
It was interesting to hear about some of the findings. Hippopotamus and elephant remains were found One of the museum’s claim to fame is its Victorian display cases of the thousands of animal bones and teeth found in the cave. These cases are unique because of the arrangement of their incredibly similar items all wired on the display boards.
There is also a project underway between the museum building and the cave entrance to renovate the gardens and have only indigenous plants. By this time, it was getting dark, so it wasn’t possible to see much of the gardens, but the speaker talked with great passion about how important this project is. Then, after some refreshments, we finally went to the cave.
The interior of the cave was lighted with spotlighting shining on various features. I imagine things are a little easier to see when some sunlight is entering the cave mouth. The speaker did shine his flashlight on various geological features and talked about them. There were some remains of stalactites and stalagmites. And there was an interesting wall pillar, a stratigraphic formation, showing all the various layers and levels of findings that have been excavated over the years, i.e., the different layers where the bones of various fauna were found.
We learned that during WWII, over 200 people made the cave their home. All over Malta, people lived in caves during the war due to the intense and relentless bombing occurring many times a day for at least 2 years. I’m planning to post a WWII piece because it is really important to understand what Malta went through during the war. We also learned that the British military used the cave to store equipment. This is one of the reasons the stalactites and stalagmites were broken, which was done to enlarge the space for equipment.
After the event, we then made our way to the nearby bus stop and returned to Valletta on the #82 bus. We passed some villages that were either having a festa, or were preparing for their festa, as we saw churches and streets adorned with colored lights. Looked a lot like Christmas. Back in Valletta, we and lots of other people, were waiting for the #13. I was surprised at the crowd since it was nearly 11:00 p.m., but then Christine commented that the younger crowd was all heading towards Paceville for their Saturday night out. As we moved from Valletta through Sliema, the bus got really crowded, and we had to kind of push our way out the door at our stop.
So, all-in-all, an interesting afternoon and evening excursion, but we probably liked our pastoral walk the best today. We do love being out in the country seeing the fantastic dry stack stone fences and all the beautiful farm fields and vegetation.