Originally published August 2013.

You never forget the first time you see the Mediterannean Sea.

Our ferry arrived in Palermo at dawn and the sea glowed pink. We got in the car and drove west toward Marsala, where my boyfriend’s parents keep their boat. For three days in Marsala, we were occupied with scrubbing the mast, decks, hull and everything in between.

And then we waited for the winds to change.

The northwest wind didn’t do us much good since we wanted to head south toward Pantelleria, so we waited some more.

And by the time I had been on Sicily almost a week, still all I had seen of the Mediterranean was the clouds pass over the grayish waters in port.

Finally, we decided to forgo the sails and use the motor to travel to the nearby Egadi Islands.

My boyfriend and his mother unmoored the thick ropes that held us to the dock and his father started the motor. I watched mostly.

I had been on a sailboat before; a few times I had been rail meat on my friend‘s sailboat racing around San Francisco Bay. Which is to say that I didn‘t know really anything about navigating on the open ocean. And I certainly didn’t know how to do it in Italian.

The greenish gray port water faded behind us and I saw for the first time the famous brilliant blue cobalt stretch as far as my eyes could see. Thin white lines zigged and zagged in massive broad strokes, back and forth all the way to the horizon.

The waves were nearly ten feet high and the islands of Marettimo, Favignana and Levanzo were nothing but vague shadows with musical names in the hazy distance in front of us.

The boat danced dramatically with the rhythm of the waves and any fear of seasickness that I had dissipated with absolute contentment of being at sea. The fresh salt air filled my lungs and the waves splashed over the deck and sprayed into our faces back at the stern.

After awhile, I carefully made my way down the stairs and into to the small cabin I shared with my boyfriend under the port stern. I curled up under the light sheets of our bed and listened to the soft whir of the motor, the muted shattering of the waves under the hull and felt like I was in a giant womb.

The boat soared and plunged and rocked side to side and my entire body rose and fell with the rhythm of the sea.

I woke up after an hour or two. The boat still moving quite a bit, although much less than when I had descended.

I don’t know if I’ve ever slept so deeply and peacefully in my entire adult life and I was famished. I slowly climbed the ladder and sat down at the outside table where everyone had just finished lunch.

 I took even bites of olive oil and garlic marinated zucchini, fresh bread and cold Italian sausage from the barbeque in port the night before.

As I ate, I looked out and surveyed the world around me. Favignana had morphed from a vaguely outlined island in the hazy blue distance to the concrete form of a mountain, towering over an ample coast of tall brown rock.

Massive rectangular caves had been carved deep into the sandstone by the Carthaginians thousands of years ago and thin staircases extended up from the water’s edge to the top of the cliffs.

Small groups of the island’s modern inhabitants crowed the flat stretches below and threw themselves into the warm water from above.

The boat drifted into the calm surrounding of a long cove on the south side of the island. The brilliant cobalt was now behind us and we were surrounded by a turquoise brighter than any city fluorescent and clearer than a high C of a concert piano.

Sailboats of all sizes were anchored around us into the white sand below. The clouds stacked high above the mountain and their dark edges revealed a massive Norman castle at the crest, intact but falling apart.

The whole island was full of old things, ancient things. Aside from the caves and castle, the interior of the island was pockmarked with deep, angular holes where the rock had been chiseled away, stone by stone, and sent off on ships to build Carthage.

As my boyfriend and I walked along the smooth dirt road from the sailboat to the supermarket in town, we gazed into the gaping holes, the stubborn, unkempt ruins, and out across the arid landscape, which felt just as ancient.

Stone walls stretched through fields, groves of olive trees, palm trees, cactus, bougainvillea,  as we passed the occasional herd of donkeys and low, flat houses.

You could actually feel the oldness of the land as you walked over it.

 A strange sensation crept over us as we walked, a mysterious intermingling of fascination and insatiable curiosity. It seemed to be guided by a some magnetic force that pulled us closer, but to what exactly we couldn‘t say.

I’d felt something like it twice before on this planet, in a small coastal town in the jungles of Costa Rica and on the misty northern coast of California.  Neither place was anything like Favignana but the energy hummed just the same.

After walking for over an hour, we were running out of light to get back–down the jagged rocks by the caves and back to the boat–and we hadn‘t even arrived in town yet.

Quiet awe turned to slight preoccupation and then immense gratitude when an old woman pulled over her van and picked us up. With a chirping voice and the kindness and generosity only grandmothers have, she drove us out of her way and into town.

We knew the sinking sun meant to go back to the boat but the pulsating energy of people in the small town center pulled us in.

Tourists, locals and the strange in-between flowed through the uneven stone streets. They congregated in front of the church, at the bars for an aperitivo or in one of the dozen or so shops dedicated to selling anything and everything tuna, a Favignana specialty.

I sat on the corner of the street with my boyfriend as we shared a beer and watched the world swirl by. The smooth female vocals of a live band floated past a tiny bar playing a Manu Chau song and it reminded me of the town in Costa Rica.

 I let the refreshing newness wash over the warm memories and felt strangely at home.

We finished the beer and reluctantly began the trek back to the caves and the boat.

We tried not to slow down to keep looking around but the ancient landscape had turned magical and we couldn‘t help it. Clouds still drifted through the darkening gray sky, and parted to reveal only the brightest stars.

The old Norman castle was lit up behind us and the winding pathway all the way up the front of the mountain was dotted with tiny lights. I kept turning around to look at it, and couldn’t help but stop when I saw that the veil of clouds had lifted from over the castle.

The thinnest sliver of a crescent moon had aligned with brilliant Venus directly over the glowing lights of the castle.

For a few brief moments, the entire dark face of the sea twinkled a million and one tiny points of shimmering moonlight, before the night finally settled in and we made our way down the cliffs and to the boat.