After days of work for the maintenance at our campsite, Giuseppe and I, in a late afternoon of mid-April, we decided to disconnect for a while 'plug. Get in the car and head to San Lorenzo. San Lorenzo is a district in the net, between Marzamemi and the reserve of Vendicari, which hosts, without fear of contradiction, among the most beautiful beaches of south-eastern Sicily, to which it is accessed by a series of parallel streets named by ordinal numbers. The crystalline sea with a shallow and sandy bottom is particularly suitable for children. On this occasion we went forward on the 4th street, then on the 9th street.


From the IV road you reach a small beach, between two characteristic sandstone cliffs shaped by the constant and millennial flow of marine motions, with light sand, tending towards gray but with golden reflections. That day the view on the right is disturbed by a camper parked on the cliff, which in the summer actually acts as a parking lot. So we decide to move beyond the visual line of the camper. On the top of the cliff the view opens up to the most famous beach of San Lorenzo, which is accessed from the first three streets. For Spiaggia di San Lorenzo we mean this long sandy beach which, mainly during the summer, is served by beaches and commercial establishments.


Before returning to the campsite, we decide to visit the beach of the IX road, which is the southern entrance to the Vendicari reserve. Here the landscape, much less anthropized, becomes more wild. Here, too, you immediately enter a cove similar to the previous one but separated from the road by a dry stone wall, almost a dividing line. Obviously in mid-April there is still no soul and we were able to park at the end of the road but, on the right, just before the end of the 9th street there is a guarded parking lot, active during the summer.


Next to it is another sandy cove, smaller and more intimate, with a breathtaking beauty, surrounded by sandstone caves. Seized by wonder we have noticed how the same place, in the absence of swimmers and umbrellas, appears different, probably also for the period and the next hour at dusk. The fact is that we were amazed, excited by so much charm, as if it were the first time in that place. Not yet filled with amazement, we enter the path that enters the reserve. The vegetation is absolutely marvelous, among red lichens on the rocks, dwarf palms and small bushes of semigreed plants and thyme seems to find us in an unexplored and uncontaminated territory. And how much peace. However, a monument suddenly brings us back to the world in which we live every day: a statue depicting a refugee in order to cover the body with the arms, perhaps because of cold or fear, rises towards the sea in I remember the seventeen victims among Egyptians and Palestinians who in 2007, one night in late October, lost their lives trying to reach Europe. We continue along the path for a hundred meters. A fantastic scenario opens up over the whole reserve and a new, dreamy beach cove, before the long beach of Cittadella dei Maccari (an ancient Byzantine site inside Vendicari). But this is another story...