I'm enjoying your report and eager to hear about you wire/ferry troubles. I've been through wire he-l-l before so I have a feeling I may know what's to come. I have friends who live in Malta - one's a pilot for Air Malta. They've refused to allow us to ever rent a car there - claim they'd be accessories to murder. One little tidbit about Malta: You may have noticed there aren't many birds around. The young boys there tend to shoot at just about anything that moves. As a result many types of migratory birds have learned to bypass Malta in their migrations. When they'd first moved there, my friends had a bird feeder near a window and were feeding one little bird. It didn't take long before there was a hole through the window and the little bird was gone.