Three weeks with a host near Noto, Sicily

My seven week trip to Italy is mainly a volunteer/host experience where I work for about 25 hours/week in return for room and board. I spent 2 weeks with a host in Ostuni, Puglia, then took a train down here to Noto, Sicily where I've been for a little over 3 weeks.

Noto is a city of 25,000 with a beautiful historic centre and some interesting sights. My host, Adriano, is a 27 year old Italian from Milan who, with his family, is developing a high-end B&B property and olive grove on a hillside a couple kilometres outside of town.

Main house at "Olive Alive", Noto in the distance

While I've been here Adriano has been busy coordinating contractors building a swimming pool. With summer temperatures up into the 40's Celsius (104 F) a swimming pool is essential for a place like this.  

Concrete being poured for swimming pool deck

Adriano needs a lot of volunteers in the fall during the olive harvest but I've been the only volunteer here for my 3 weeks. The olive trees were pruned in the winter and my job has been to turn big piles of branches into a firewood and tied bundles of kindling for next winter. It's been repetitive but simple and my workplace is beautiful and the daydreaming has been entertaining. It will be a sad day for volunteers (of a certain type) when this job is eliminated by a chipper!

This is about a week's work 

Adriano also asked if I could make some rustic benches out of big pieces of almond trees that had been cut last year. Oh, if I only had access to big olive branches and slabs of almond back home. It is so different from fir, pine and willow! But I like local materials and olive and almond are definitely not local at home.

Chain saw benches of almond wood. A rustic table and two more benches will be added. 

My stay with Adriano has been extremely interesting and worthwhile. His accomplishments and what he is doing now are amazing for a young guy. He's also a really nice person and a natural host. You can read about Olive Alive at http://www.olivealive.it/. If you are interested in this type of travel, check out www.workaway.info or www.helpx.net. Adriano's listing is at http://www.helpx.net/host.asp?hostid=32700

I'm leaving tomorrow for 10 days of "holiday" in Siracusa, Catania, and Naples before flying home.

Camera gear and gizmos

This is a blog about travel experiences, not photography but I'm more serious than some so I carry more equipment. Everyone packs differently and I like reading what other photographers take.

My priority is to be able to capture mostly landscape, architectural and street photos under a variety of conditions without being bogged down by equipment. One checked bag and a carry on is my limit because I want to be able to move around without a car or taxis.

Here's the camera gear and electronics that I brought on this trip.

From left, roughly counterclockwise: Macbook Air with homemade sleeve, external hard drive with homemade sleeve, Nikon D7000 with Nikkor 12-24mm lens and soft case, Fuji X100s and soft case, UltraPod mini-tripod, Feisol carbon fibre tripod, power supplies and battery chargers. The Nikon and Fuji battery chargers share the same little power plug and don't require a power cable. In the centre is a short extension cord with a European adapter taped to the plug end. Lastly, a Delorme inReach satellite communicator that can send and receive emails from anywhere with a view of the sky.

Comments

• I got the Delorme inReach for backcountry travel. It hasn't been essential on this trip, so far. 
• The little homemade extension cord in the middle of the photo is great for charging multiple devices. 
• The small and light Fuji camera has an excellent lens, is a joy to carry and is less conspicuous than my DSLR for street photography. 
• I took the above photo with my "new" refurbished iPhone 3 which I planned to use mainly for GPS. However, I also got a SIM card at a Vodaphone store in Naples for voice and text within Italy for 20 Euros/month and it has been worth it. 

More gear doesn't guarantee more good photos but it can help. The tripod allows capturing moody and unusual images when the harshness of daylight is gone. The mini tripod does the same thing but less well. I use it while walking in the evening when the full size tripod is inconvenient. I often use it sideways, braced against a wall.

I'll say more about bringing two cameras in another post.