Sardinia
sardinia.net
Sardinia is
brilliant. Great weather, food, sites...
We booked a fly/drive deal
through Voyages
Ilena - as you can see from the web site they mainly do package holidays
with accommodation included, but they had advertised a fly-drive package without
accommodation for a super cheap rate, so we jumped at it. Just flew out with our
camping gear and drove around the island, mainly staying at campsites with a
couple of nights at hotels in the major cities. We flew into Alghero
in the northwest, and drove down to Cagliari on the southern coast for a
couple of days, before heading up to the village of Oliena just off the east
coast. Cagliari
is a brilliant litle harbor city with fantastic food, incredible historical
architecture, and a great archaeology museum, we had a wonderful two days there.
In Oliena we camped
at a campground for 9 days while we did hiking/climbing in the area (you can see
the mountain we climbed behind the kneeling woman in the first photo on the
Oliena website - the campsite is about halfway down the mountain, right about
where you can see the treeline end). We also had a couple of beach days while we
were there, as Oliena is only about a half-hour drive from the coast. Although
it was quite hot when we were there (in August), on top of the mountain it was
much cooler, almost Alpine weather, so take a fleece with you if you do any
climbing.
Sardinia is very poor and rural, so most people outside the
urban areas still live in a very traditional way. If you have the chance, you
should listen to some "bimba" music - traditional shepherd's folk music, a
capella singing, where some of the shepherds will maintain a low, rough monotone
as a background to a single singer's melody. It's very hard to describe - if you
think of a group of male singers singing a voice equivalent of bagpipe music
you'll probably come closest to what it sounds like. The shepherds also brew
their own wine, very strong stuff that has a particular smoky flavor, but it's
not sold in shops so you'll have to buy it directly from them. Well worth
trying.
