Desert island

Writing in Kansascity.com, Joseph Van Luchene from Westwood describes his summer visit to the "desert island south of Sicily":

The first thing a visitor to Malta should do is buy a six-pack of two-liter bottles of water. They lasted the entire week we were there ¡X but barely. The second thing is to remove the buls-eye that seems to be a part of your body. In Malta, they drive on the wrong (left) side of the road. We thought we were taking our lives in our hands every time we crossed a street. We both knew we had to look the other way, but it's hard to remember which way that is.

We saw lots of old stuff - a temple (Tarxien) and an underground tomb (Hypogeum) tha's 5,000 years old. They dug down into the rock to create the tombs. These would fill up, so they would dig another room even deeper. In the third level down, they carved a model of an above-ground temple, including a domed roof. Amazingly, they did this without metal tools and in the dark.

One day we went to the walled city of Medina. It rained lightly early in the morning but then started to clear up. We left our rain gear in the room again, it's a desert island. They had as much rain that afternoon as they usually have all summer. The streets flooded, retaining walls collapsed, traffic snarled, arks were started, and we got drenched. But for the most part the weather was great - hot and dry. Did I mention it's a desert island?