{"id":51,"date":"2021-07-21T17:15:41","date_gmt":"2021-07-21T15:15:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.travelstarter.co.za\/?p=51"},"modified":"2021-07-21T17:15:41","modified_gmt":"2021-07-21T15:15:41","slug":"a-strategic-island","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.travelstarter.co.za\/?p=51","title":{"rendered":"A strategic island&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The minute I set foot in&nbsp;<strong>Valletta<\/strong>, I felt as as though I had come home. I had the same feeling of&nbsp;<strong>familiarity<\/strong>&nbsp;as that when I went to New Zealand and I think it has the same reasons &#8211; that although now a member of the EU, Malta had long been a part of the British Empire, until it gained independence in 1964.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Listening to the locals speaking is interesting because not only do the&nbsp;<strong>Maltese<\/strong>&nbsp;speak English, but their own language is a mixture of Arabic and Italian and I think a bit of French. So just when you think you might be able to understand a word or two, it loses you. Completely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Comprising of two larger islands (Malta and Gozo), and one tiny island (Comino), and being strategically placed in the middle of the\u00a0<strong>Mediterranean<\/strong>, Malta has been fought over through the centuries, with the large number of shipwrecks being a result of this. I dived the wreck of the\u00a0<strong>Lady Davinia<\/strong>\u00a0which was pretty cool, being an easy entry in the harbour at about 14m. The viz was poor at 3-4m with a tidal surge and a bit nippy at 17 degrees but still worth getting wet for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"413\" height=\"336\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.travelstarter.co.za\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/Travel_to_Malta.jpg?resize=413%2C336&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-52\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.travelstarter.co.za\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/Travel_to_Malta.jpg?w=413&amp;ssl=1 413w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.travelstarter.co.za\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/Travel_to_Malta.jpg?resize=300%2C244&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.travelstarter.co.za\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/Travel_to_Malta.jpg?resize=74%2C60&amp;ssl=1 74w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.travelstarter.co.za\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/Travel_to_Malta.jpg?resize=111%2C90&amp;ssl=1 111w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 413px) 100vw, 413px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><figcaption>Malta<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The minute I set foot in&nbsp;Valletta, I felt as as though I had come home. I had the same feeling of&nbsp;familiarity&nbsp;as that when I went to New Zealand and I think it has the same reasons &#8211; that although now a member of the EU, Malta had long been a part of the British Empire,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.travelstarter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.travelstarter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.travelstarter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.travelstarter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.travelstarter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=51"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.travelstarter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53,"href":"https:\/\/www.travelstarter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51\/revisions\/53"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.travelstarter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=51"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.travelstarter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=51"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.travelstarter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=51"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}