Each spring, fishermen in the little Italian island of Favignana go to sea to hunt giant tuna, which they harpoon and hoist aboard in a bloody ritual called the mattanza. A traveler with a strong stomach can arrange to go out on a fishing boat in May and June, the prime season on this island off the coast of Sicily. Other times, travelers with a sense of adventure can count on men such as Giuseppe Messina, 72, on whose boat, the Maria, I recently spent an hour and a half puttering around the island as we darted in and out of grottoes chiseled into rocky cliffs.

"Barca, madam?" he asked as our group of six stepped off the hydrofoil on a day trip from Trapani, Sicily. Fishermen sat in their boats along the docks, sewing their nets. A man in orange hip waders was doing a brisk business selling glistening silver sardines.

Messina wasn't a tour operator, just a retiree hoping to make a few dollars by showing a group of strangers around the island where he was born. We negotiated a price (about $15 per person) and climbed into his freshly painted, blue-and-white wooden skiff -- two of us on the bow and four on the stern with Messina at the rudder.

Favignana is the largest of the three Egadi islands off the northwest coast of Sicily. Messina was born here and, after a career working on a passenger ship based in Rome, he returned with his wife, Maria, bought an old fishing boat and named it after her.

As we left the harbor, Messina pointed out a 1,000-year-old Spanish castle atop a hill and a 19th-century tuna processing plant, an island landmark and once one of the largest in Europe, where he worked as a boy.

Favignana is mostly rocky, barren farmland with a few roses for good luck.

"Capito?" he asked, Italian for "Do you understand?"

"Si," yes, I smiled.

He apologized that the sea wasn't as blue as it is when the sun is brighter. And he said he was sorry that the water was too high for him to take us into another grotto.

No problem, I said. We were snug in his boat, chatting in Italian and laughing and dodging the salt spray. Everything was perfect.