By Joel Stratte-McClure
Marina del Cantone, Italy – I was 4,801 kilometers into my walk around the Mediterranean Sea before I began hearing things. It happened at 3 a.m. on Sunday morning (April 19) after a two-day, 40-mile trek from Naples (Italy, not Florida) through the jet-set resort of Sorrento to the melodious Marina del Cantone (aka the Singing Marina).
Turns out that the terrace of my mountainside squat is within spitting distance of the Li Galli islands, which many believe is still the home of the sexy sirens that tried to seduce Odysseus by chanting their mind-blowing lyrics (Homer called it “sweet meadow lolling”). They’re right. The sirens are alive, well and making lots of noise.
What do they sound like? The early morning show that I heard consisted of a repetition of “Ah we’m all wet, ah we’m all wet, ah we’m all wet, ah we’m all wet….” It was like a pirated version of the refrain from “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.” Except that the sirens didn’t stop chanting until 5 a.m., when they realized they were getting on my nerves.
Naturally everyone around here tries to capitalize on everything sirenish. The few shops, restaurants and hotel in the Marina like to call their promontory the Sirenussae. The Syrenbus in Sorrento claims to be “Pleasure on Wheels” and a lot of tiled portrayals make the sirens resemble Daryl Hannah in “Splash.” A guy could make a fortune putting a video of the singing sirens on YouTube with the claim that their enchanting lyrics completely eased his sore-from-hiking MedTrekking muscles.
Should I? Will I? Watch this space.
Joel Stratte-McClure, an American journalist/adventurer who lived in France for over three decades, has been writing about his global trekking and hiking adventures since the 1970s. His work has taken him to over 100 countries and his articles on a variety of subjects have appeared The International Herald Tribune, Time Magazine, The London Times, People Magazine, Who Weekly, Fast Thinking and numerous other publications. He’s currently based in Los Angeles where, when he’s not hiking, he writes the Tinseltown SpyWitness column for the Los Angeles Daily News and is completing a book entitled “Hollywood’s Twenty-Five Hottest Latinos: How They Got There, What They’re Doing Now And Where They’re Going.” He is originally from Redding.
