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Published: August 30th 2009
The View From The Top
Cagliari Central, SardiniaSO! Then we arrived in Cagliari, and had to kill some time while Enrico finished his day at the beach. We chucked our luggage in the local bus terminal’s luggage storage for a bit of cash, then ate some self-prepared lunch and decided to go for a wander. We found ANOTHER tourist info place, got a map, and then legged it.
Cagliari as far as we can tell from our small adventure is a very pretty place. Unfortunately for some reason while we were walking around it started to get hot. Very hot. Not only that, Sardegna has shade poverty, and that means that fishies get over sweating like a paedophile in a pre-school very quickly. After walking along a castle wall for a good ten minutes, I got sick of trying to find a way in, probably like most people who try and get through a castle wall. So we turned tail back to the cooler downtown area, where Dominika made another beeline for the Gelato stand. I was goaded into eating some gelato, which was quite nice, but I forget the name, something like Panacotta? Yeah, that’s it. Lovely.
After we bollocksed around for a while longer,
Enrico finally dragged his sunburned sand-caked butt into town to pick us up in his little VW Golf TDi. We thought it may have been hard for him to see us, being the only three idiots standing around in 35-degree heat with backpacks and a tent outside the bus station, but he found us quickly much to our surprise.
Barely surviving the Italian driving on the way home in the lil’ Golf (by CHRIST that thing is fast for a diesel!) we arrived in Quartu Sant’Elena about half an hour out of Cagliari. We were very impressed with Enrico’s place, it is totally organised and civilised for a bachelor over thirty! The guy has great taste in clothes and watches too I found, but that’s a prerequisite for being Italian isn’t it? That night he cooked us linguine carbonara Sardo-style, and that was absolutely fantastic. It really hit the spot after a day of starving like… filthy backpackers should. After this, he told us that he was going out to a “Pool Party”, asked if we wanted to come, we said no, he dashed off to the bathroom and came back with hair slicked back, white pants, white shoes
The Park In Cagliari
Cagliari Central, Sardinia and a blue pinstripe shirt. He then said he would be back in an hour to take us for a walk on the beach. This was at 9pm
After Dominika fell asleep on the couch after a big day (the poor thing), and with us going to bed at midnight, Enrico still wasn’t home. We woke up the next morning to him smiling and happy. That was lucky, I thought he was going out to buy a kilo from the local mafia the way he was dressed. He had a day in store of more beaching, and after breakfast we were bundled into the lil’ Golf of Death and whisked away to the Southwest of Sardinia - a place called San’Antioco. On the way we stopped to pick up one of Enrico’s friends, with the beautiful name of Rosella! Her family ran a small breadmaking business on the way in a place called San Giovanni… a name that crops up a lot.
We made our way out to the beach and spent hours snorkelling in super-clear water (20m+ vis), sunbaking, drinking beer and eating icecreams before we went back to the breadmaking business and were treated to the
Lunchy Munchies!
Cagliari Central, Sardinia fruits of their labour… Beautiful pizza bread of olive oil, cherry tomatoes and cheese, bread, local beer and garden fruits. Wow. I was blown away by the hospitality, we left with a pile of bread a bull couldn’t jump over and the best grapes I’ve ever eaten. Aleks got some figs that she demolished that night with gorgonzola and fresh bread. Think this was probably the highlight of her trip.
We also managed to do a scuba dive in Cagliari the next day. It was Aleks’ first time back in the water since her PFO Operation, and was a good opportunity for me to get back in in non-tech configuration. Enrico organised the gig through a mate of his, and we met down at the marina to be fitted into some great Mares gear and wondering what sort of “Joe’s Garage Dive Shop” setup we were diving with. The guy barely spoke a word of English, but I found out he’s an old-school CMAS Trimix Instructor and really knew his stuff, so that was cool. And so in a little rigid inflatable boat it ended up being just Aleks and I, Gianni, his wife Rita, and their darling daughter.
Big Church: Closed.
Cagliari Central, Sardinia We took 20 mins to get out to the site, in the middle of the channel, dropped anchor, and fell in. Once again the water was exceptionally clear, and pretty warm too. We did 18m for 51 minutes, saw a moray eel, seven nudibranchs, a bunch of fish and an octopus. Aleks loved it, and I was happy too, it cost us €45 each and it was worth every cent.
That night we had a big seafood cookup of a mussel tomato soupy thing and prawns and to top it off, Sardinian whole fried fish. Guts and all. Those of you who know Aleks, Misia and I know that seafood isn’t our favourite thing, but Enrico as usual wouldn’t take no for an answer and cooked up a storm like a madman. The girls politely ate a mouse’s serving each, and then looked at me, pleading with their eyes for my help. I then went about eating about 30 mussels, three prawns and one and a half fish. It was 40x more seafood than I’ve ever eaten and yeah, it was good. But shit, not that good. But someone had to eat it, or it would have been very,
Nemo Mapping
Cagliari Central, Sardinia very rude! So Nemo covered for them, and won their hearts :D HA!
Well we were done in Cagliari, and set out to Cala Gonone halfway up the East Coast for our final destination in Sardinia. The trip was looking like it was going to be a freakin’ nightmare, with three trains and two buses the only way to get to our destination. Hell. It was a super hot day and Enrico took us to the train station, giving Dominika a very huggy goodbye… I think our little Italian man had a bit of a crush on our little Polish girl, but unfortunately it was not to be, as Misia wasn’t having a bar of it: awww :D
The train first went to a little town in the middle of nowhere called Macomer, on the opposite side of the island to our intended destination. Weird, but we were okay at that stage. We also happened to be on a train with about 8000 backpackers in a big group from France, and we were praying that they weren’t going the same way as us. The train from Macomer to Nuoro (somewhere further to the East side - phew!) was
Chinglish At It's Best
$2 Shop, Cagliari Central, Sardinia ONE CARRIAGE. Not only that, all the backpackers were on it, and it was the most insane rollercoaster line you have ever seen. Sheer cliffs to the sides, the carriage kept bouncing all over the place, and I had the worst headache I’ve ever had from what could have been a bad mussel, so I was feeling atrocious by that stage. The elbow in the head from the stupid frenchy backpacker chick didn’t help.
I must make a comment here about the scenery in the middle of the island. I have been to California, and many rough places in Australia that are dry and stark and barren, and they bored the crap out of me. But Sardinia, wow! The sight of a little town perched at the foot of a sheer 500m black basalt cliff face just astounded me. The rolling hills and rivers look like Norwegian Fjords and the sunsets are amazing. The bus ride from Nuoro to Cala Gonone took us through areas of the highest peaks in Sardo and I gotta tell you that was one of the highlights of the trip for me. Amazing. You really need to see it for yourself one day. In
Essential Sardinia
Cagliari Central, Sardinia LOW season! :D
We arrived at Cala Gonone via a big tunnel through the mountains and then down the windiest (as in turns, not wind speed) road I’ve ever been on. I wish I’d been in a Porsche, that would have been an amazing drive. But unfortunately I was in a bus, and that made it very interesting, there were some very close calls with some campervans. The view was amazing from the road, and once we got there we checked into a camping site just up from the main drag. This was to be our last stint at camping, and we pitched our tent over a nice floor of pine needles, which we liked far better than dust and straw I can tell you.
The next few days were pretty laid back. We ate some very cheap and very tasty restaurants. Aleks and I went for a walk over fifty miles of seaside rocks to find a cave that didn’t exist and ended up going snorkelling, where I went out too far and nearly drowned. Misia ate more ice cream. We drank lots of tasty coffees and met a few of the staff at the bar attached
Busted!
Cagliari Central, Sardinia to the campsite restaurant. I played ping pong with an eight year old kid from Porto Torres called Mateo and got soundly thrashed.
The last day before we left, we left early in the morning with the intention of hiring a kayak and beetling a long the beaches and grottoes to the south of Cala Gonone at our own pace. But it was high season, and every canoe, kayak and longboat in the nearest 600 mile radius looked to be booked out. Dominika had booked herself onto a €45 trip of the beaches and the grotto as she hasn’t seen many beaches like this before, but being the spoilt-for-choice Aussies that we are, we decided that we just wanted to see Grotto del Bue Marino. This is a grotto similar to the one in Capo Caccio, a seawater cave that stretches for miles into the cliff faces, of which only 900m is accessible to the public. The boat and entrance cost us €18 which included a guided tour - although it was in Italian, a lady told us at the start about what we were going to see in English, so that was nice.
After that it was
Enrico's Place
Quartu Sant'Elena, Sardinia time for us to leave, so the next day we caught a bus from Cala Gonone to Olbia and then spent time waiting for the flight to arrive. It was a long wait punctuated by drinking even MORE coffee, watching a couple sleeping in the corner kissing incessantly and feeling like puking, and doing crosswords. We also got some dinner downstairs at the restaurant for five euro and for a giant plate of pasta that was a pretty sweet deal! The flight back was not only at 2 in the morning, we got stuck on smaller sized seats (bad for Aleks and I but not for shorty Dominika). Lucky it was a short flight, and we arrived back in the morning in Warsaw at 5:30am, shattered and happy, and were picked up by Krzysiek at the airport.
I learned a couple of important things on this Italian journey. Number one, Camping Envy is a real thing. Sometimes in the morning when climbing out of our little tent and seeing these giant mansions of tents next to us I felt a little pang of jealousy. They had cookers. They had laptops. They had televisions and giant campervans and lots of
The Long & The Short Of It
Quartu Sant'Elena, Sardinia other things. But then I realised that my entire setup was in my right hand as I walked away from every campsite, and that although mine was smaller, it’s not the size that matters. Hehe. It’s about the fact that their holiday probably will last about a week, maybe a bit more. Mine’s just starting and it’s already been four months long. So stuff their laptops. I don’t need them.
I also realised that I like being by myself sometimes. I like the feeling of silence and my own thoughts and it blows me away that I’ve been surrounded by people for four months now and, well, it’s getting a little repetitive. Sometimes it’s good to get your space and write, or listen to music, or play guitar or whatever it is that you need to do to get yourself lifted up. So that’s my advice to you dear readers. Pull down the shades and wander the great indoors from time to time.
That is all.
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