Travel is an adventure. I know it is because I seem to have one every time I set foot outside the good old USA. If it's not driving into Canada with a trunk full of books and getting caught by Canadian Customs, then it's losing my ticket in Hawaii and taking a day and a half getting back home compliments of military transport. Or if it wasn't trying to drive to our hotel in Malta in the dead of night without the slightest idea where we were going, it was trying to get from our hotel in Mellieha to the Hypogeum in Tarxien on election day. None of these adventures were fun at the time, but they'll certainly give me memories for my dotage.

Malta trip 2008 started as an annual business trip to sell my novel, The Cellini Masterpiece, which is set in that country. When we were making our plans, I contacted one of the book dealers who carried my book to tell him the dates to try to arrange a book signing.

"You're coming at the worst possible time," he said. "The tenth of March is election day and the whole island shuts down for at least three days after that. You won't be able to sell any books then."

Disappointing, but I had already made reservations and needed to restock books; I could do that while we overnighted in London. A friend had copies, and I could load up with them on the flight to Malta.

As mentioned in another posting, we missed our connection with my friend and we left Gatwick without them. Our business trip was turning into a vacation in Malta and Sicily. Not bad, but not what we intended.

I had made nine previous trips to the island, but had never visited one of Malta's most interesting archaeological sites. The Hypogeum, a Neolithic underground temple that predated the pyramids, has long been one of Malta's most important tourist destinations. What had once been an easily accessed treaure now requires reservations. On UNESCO's protected list, it has limited visiting hours to protect it from premature aging due to human contact. I made reservations on-line without realizing I scheduled the visit for election day.

Little did I know what a great mistake that was. I had never been in another country on election day, let alone in a country that considers a ninety-three per cent turnout to be shameful. I also didn't realize how it would affect our trip to the Hypogeum. Though the entire island is only eighteen miles long, the hotel where we were staying is at one end of the measurement. Malta resembles a whale. We stayed in the tip of the tail. The Hypogeum is in its belly, some twelve miles away.

We took trips to Valletta and Sliema over the weekend to re-visit some of the sights and see our friend Joey at the Soleado Guest House. Even without heavy traffic, the trip from Mellieha to Sliema took more than half-an-hour by bus. We told Joey about our reservation for the Hypogeum and he told us to allow plenty of time to get there. Everything comes to a stop for several days after the election, he said. Bus service would be delayed. He wrote out some very detailed bus transfer instructions from our hotel to the Hypogeum, avoiding Valletta's traffic. He also wrote instructions from the Hypogeum to Marsaxlokk, the ancient fishing harbour that represented the mouth of the whale at the far eastern end of the island. From there we would take the bus to Balzan, where I had an afternoon speaking engagement at the the American Ambassador's residence.

Joey strongly suggested we allow at least two hours for the first leg of the trip. We took his advice and got up at six the next morning. We breakfasted and were standing at the bus stop at eight. Our bus from Mellieha to Bugibba, where we would change buses, didn't arrive for half an hour.

We told our bus driver of our plight.

"No, no. Don't get out at Bugibba. You'll never be able to get to Tarxien from there. Take the bus from St. Paul's Bay to Valletta and catch the Tarxien bus. You should just get there in time."

We didn't like the implication that we were cutting things close -- if we couldn't keep our appointment, we would have to wait another year to see it. But we took his advice. St. Paul's bay is a bustling community, and we got off on the main street. Plenty of cars passed us by, but no buses. Once again, we had an half-hour wait before one finally showed up.

What had started out to be a leisurely commute was rapidly turning into a feverish race against time. As we rode, revelers with flags and noisemakers stopped traffic all the way to Valletta.

We had forty-five minutes left when we finally pulled into the main bus stop at Valletta. The attendant told us which bus we needed to take, but "I haven't seen one for an hour. I don't know when the next one'll be here. With the crowds the way they are, you may want to take a cab." We exchanged nervous glances and finally decided we didn't want to risk missing our tour. We found a cab. The fare was fifteen Euros, the bus fare less than one Euro. We got to our destination with twenty minutes to spare. Of course the bus from Valletta passed us by as I was paying the cabby.

We found ten other people waiting. While we waited, one of the guides told us that the temple was discovered early in the 1900s when a construction crew, building a house, broke through the temple's ceiling. Fortunately, word got to the right people, and construction ceased. The stones still remain as found, but now behind glass. Sophisticated equipment constantly monitors CO2 and moisture levels, sort of an intensive care ward for a prehistoric structure.

We found out that the Hypogeum was a burial temple, used for centuries, then suddenly abandoned a short time before the building of the first pyramids in Egypt. Remains discovered in the temple suggested burial practices very similar to those of the ancient Egyptians. They are so similar that a few scholars even have theorized the Egyptian priests could have been descended from ancestors on Malta. What amazed me is how the chamber walls were so smooth. In one, at least twenty feet across, the acoustics are so perfect that a whisper at one end can be can be clearly heard everywhere in the room. What has excited archeologists the most, though, are the red paintings on the ceiling showing animals and symbols that could represent words. The temple has been flooded many times in the millennia since it was abandoned. Thankfully the waters never reached the paintings and they remain among the oldest human artifacts in the world.

The tour ended and we got directions for the bus to Marsaxxlok. As we passed the Porte des Bombes leading into Valletta, we realized we had again gotten bad info, something that happened quite often on the island. We were engulfed by a solid mass of humanity. I swear, every Maltese on the island stood in the streets wrapped in the black, red and yellow flags of the Nationalist Party. The black, red and gold of the Labour Party. went back into storage for another ten years.

Politics is as important as religion on Malta. You are born into one party or the other. We saw babies wrapped in the party's flags. The Nationalists are pro-business conservatives, loosely equivalent to Republicans in the US. They also are internationalists, instrumental in bringing Malta into the EU. The Labourites are more associated with working people, much like the Labour Party in England. Labour boycotted the referendum to join the EU, and have continued to be more insular in their outlook. As I mentioned, politics is serious business. Next to soccer, it's the country's national sport. Issues are far less important than familial ties. And today everyone was out in force.

After a fifteen minute wait, the bus finally arrived at Triton Square, the bus terminal outside the gate leading into Valletta. Giving up on visiting Marsaxlokk, we found a restaurant and ate. To make this longer story shorter, we later took a bus back to Balzan. As you might have imagined, we arrived at the ambassador's house too early and the guards wouldn't let us in. Feet dragging, we found a cafe and drank cappucinos until it was time to be let through the gate. The residence, which is Old World lavish, took our breath away and we were greeted with an unending supply of non-alcoholic punch. My lecture/workshop about getting published in America was a success and, when we got done, we took a bus back to our hotel and immediately went to bed.

The moral: Please remind me never to travel to Malta on election day again, will ya?