Plan B in Sicily 1-11-16

Spent a restless night gnawing on the auto problem, really uselessly because nothing could be done, but hey...  It is difficult to express how warmly and graciously the Montalbanos (our hosts) treated us and how much help they really gave us.  All I can say is that I will never stay any place else if I ever return to Sciacca.  They own the Conte Luna B&B, it is spotless, extremely well located, quiet and they make you feel like part of the family.  His daughter Christina, speaks English and went out of her way to help us communicate with her father, Mr. Montalbano.
When I got up I went down to the B&B reception area and talked with our host, actually we kind of piece together a bit of French, a bit of Italian, and a bit of English, and we decided to call the rental company early to get things sorted out.  He called and talked with them for several minutes, saying what I'll never know, and then passed the phone to me.  I talked with the agent at the airport in Palermo and it was agreed that I would come up and they would do a car exchange.  So rather than let the entire day get away by riding the bus up to the airport, we opted for a taxi which would take us from Sciacca to the airport in Palermo for 100 euros.   Curiously enough that about what it cost us to go to the airport in Denver by taxi so we jumped at it.
They have a friend, Salvatore, who is a private limousine company and so he took us to the airport.  We arrived around noon and got the paperwork done to do the exchange, so we were on the road shortly before 1:00pm.
To get our schedule back in synch we had to drive all the way across Sicily from Palermo in the northwest to Modica in the southeast via Syracusa, literally diagonally across the island.  It took us about four and half hours and we arrived in Modica around 5:00. Our trip took us just south of Mount Etna so we had super views of the volcano. it had been our our itinerary but we'll have to skip it this time so that we can see the Greek temples at Agrigento.
The sun was still up a little when we arrived so we got ourselves situated and took a walk in the twilight.  It will possibly be an expensive little episode with the car, but I did purchase insurance through the booking agent and hopefully it will reimburse us for the expenses.