Blog 7: Barbagia & Ogliatra
Okay okay I know I said last weekend was the best and somehow better than the weekend before (and that weekend was also the best and the weekend before that was pretty great too)..... BUT this weekend was somehow even better!! Truly insane and mind boggling and overwhelming in the most wonderful way and I have not yet come down from the high 🤭 (warning: Jelly🪼inspired me to fill my blog with emojis🫣🙃🕺)
......sooo let's get into it!
We started off the weekend with kayaking at the Devil's Saddle🛶👹. We voyaged across the sea (read: kayaked past the boats at Poetto for perhaps 30 minutes) before we had to turn back because it was too windy. But fear not! We were refunded and used the rest of the time to walk down the beach and grab breakfast (ice cream🍨🍦) before heading back to the hostel. (Honestly it was the best of both worlds: a reason to get up and outside, but back in time to pack for the rest of our lovely weekend)
Bags all packed, we headed to Gohan for all-you-can-eat sushi 🍣🍱 (yay!). Things were a bit chaotic (many a roll did not end up where they were supposed to, and Yasmin and Evy sadly left without the miso soup they ordered 3 times), but by the time we left 2ish hours later I was full of sushi and ready for a bus nap.
We had a nice 3 hour bus ride🚌 (lots of music and reading for me) to the central eastern coast of Sardinia. Before arriving at our destination, we stopped at the Parco delle Rocce Rosse for gelato (dragon summer and mister nico aka dragonfruit and peanut butter flavors for me) and to take in the amazing view! Rocks were climbed, stones were stacked, caves were explored, etc.
Then we were back in the bus for an hour and off to Hotel Gorroppu! There was an amazing view of the Supramonte mountain range⛰️🌄, and dinner at the hotel (yummy bean soup🫘, culurgiones, sausage, etc.) with lovely company and lucid dreaming😴 instructions from Ian.
The next morning (lucid dreaming was a fail), I woke up well rested and ready to take on our hike to Gorroppu canyon🥾🪨! My ankle has been feeling "extra spicy"🌶 (Ciana's words), but thankfully Eva is a nature wizard and taped it up for me before we started our trek! We first saw some cows🐮, an old pigpen🐷 and shepherds' shelter🐑, and one of the oldest trees in Sardina (a corbezzolo or strawberry tree, but not like that kind of strawberry🍓). The area is also one of the 5 original blue zones (regions with the longest living populations), so we learned a bit about the shepherd lifestyle and some of the theories as to why it is that people here live so long. Because the shepherds (men) lived in the mountains with the animals, the women cared for the children and also ran things in the towns (which ties back into Sardinia being a matriarchal society). Sardinia is one of the only blue zones where men live almost as long as women - some researchers attribute it to this lifestyle of men being separate and not having to worry about families/society (one study).
We pressed on and reached the canyon about 2.5 miles in (and 1800 ft of elevation lower than our starting point). It was too dry for swimming, but we sat around, had lunch, drank water from a spring, and enjoyed the scenery (while we composed a freestyle rap about the trip). Then we explored the canyon - lots of fun scrambling around on the rocks! After some our canyon out and back, and a slight detour up a nonexistent path🧗♀️, we continued our hike to our pickup spot. We made it out unscathed (Grace fell 3 times) during the final stretch, then loaded into jeeps to travel back up the mountains to meet our bus. (overall we went about 7.5 miles! sad I didn't log it on my watch to have a map of the hike)
We rode the bus to our hotel in Cala Gonone - another lovely seaside town🌊. I wasted no time hopping in the water at the beach, then wandered around the town for some shopping🛍. We had dinner at the hotel (amazing pasta with mussels; a seafood platter with octopus🐙, sea bream, calamari, and shrimp🦐; and tiramisu), then wandered a bit more before taking in the view from the hotel bar on the roof🌇. A few of us left for a walk (yay night walks!) along the beach and down to the other side of the pier to watch the stars🌠🌟 from the rocks, ran into some cats eating pasta🐈🍝, and ended the night on a bench swapping hometown stories.
Now what you've been waiting for...my favorite day of the whole trip! I really don't know how to sum it up in words because WOW was it wonderful. We boarded 2 dinghies🚤 at the marina to begin our journey down the eastern coast of Sardinia. The ride was FANTASTIC, the scenery was UNREAL, the water was SO SO BLUE it looked like gatorade, and I genuinely don't think I stopped smiling the whole time. (No offense to my next vacation but the bar is absolutely through the roof). We stopped at 3 beaches along the way: Cala Luna (where we explored the caves, said hi to cows by the lagoon🐄, and a few people started their shotgun tour🍻); Cala Sisine (where there was a rock🪨 to jump off of and I snorkeled around looking at all the fish🏊🤿🐠🐟); and Cala Mariolu (where I swam around, took in the cliffs, saw some goats🐐, and soaked up the sun🌞). We stopped the boats twice along our ride ⚓️- once to dive off and swim around, and a second time at Portu Cuau to check out a shipwreck🚢 at the bottom of the water. The view as we sped along the coast was absolutely breathtaking, and I was sad to leave our dinghy behind when we reached the dock in Santa Maria Navarrese (I also had tears in my eyes but that was because I lost my grip on the boat when we hit a wave and couldn't stop laughing for a good couple minutes). We finished the day off with window pizza🍕 for dinner, then hit the hay for a lovely night of sleep.
Ciao,
Annie
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