Monat: Juni 2011

Nuraghe Island 5: Paper Strip Beach

The coasts of Sardinia are quite beautiful. We found a couple of spots that looked like the Caribbean. And I found that the colors of the sea are much more convincing when I take photographs through my polarising sun glasses. This is how it looked when I was wearing these glasses:

 
Wind surfers riding the mistral …

 
A coastline full of natural sculptures (you can see the coast of Corsica here – the white line is the chalk cliff at Bonifacio) …

 
Some adventurous people had climbed the top …

 
Another beautiful beach with interesting snorkeling areas … unfortunately, there were some small, almost invisible jellyfish in the water that burned our skins when we touched them while swimming …

 
On the small island of La Maddalena: Lobster sculptures, glorious mysteries (vanished), heads of animals, a beautiful balcony …

 
Not sure what this butterfly is called …

 
One of the more beautiful beaches where we spent some hours was full of the dried leaves of some underwater plant. There were soft heaps of them that really looked like paper strips, shredded East German secret files maybe …

 
And on the last day, on arriving at the Alghero airport, we were greeted by lots of swallows who had turned all the lamps into houses …

Nuraghe Island 4: Close To The Edge

 
Bonifacio, sitting at Corsica’s southern end (in a way, the most southerly point of France) and one ferry hour away from northern Sardinia, is one of Corsica’s main tourist spots.

The old city is perched on top of a high cliff in a quite breathtaking way. Its large natural harbour is home of dozens of yachts, and in the summer, it is visited by giant cruisers almost on a daily basis. From our temporary base in northern Sardinia, we could see them slowly approach like spaceships.

 
The harbour part of Bonifacio is full of restaurants and very expensive t-shirt shops. We had a salade italienne and a jus d’orange after we arrived, and marveled at the various million-dollar-yachts, but to get to the old town on the cliff, we had to climb the steep road.

 
The city walls and the outer houses are sitting directly on the edge of the cliff. I wonder what it is like to live in such a house and maybe have breakfast on a balcony above the sea, with lots of nothing below you.

 
The old city itself is picturesque of course, but we really wondered why some of the money that gets spent by the thousands of daily tourists isn’t invested in renovation. Many of the houses were in a very bad shape. Obviously, the money disappears in the hands of people who find better ways to spend it. After all, tourists continue to come, regardless of the condition of the old town!

 
A short look at Christian violence fantasies, mostly because the church was a good place to sit and cool down for a few minutes after walking around in the heat … this life-sized wooden martyr scene, weighing hundreds of kilograms, was sitting on a platform that could be carried around for some Christian ceremonies, hopefully taking place in a cooler time of the year.

 
After climbing down to the harbour, we felt justified to dedicate ourselves to these two extremely delicious little beasts …

 
Time to go back to the ferry. This lovely lady in the waiting hall caught my attention because she was busy loudly browsing the frequencies on a Sony short wave radio. She seemed to really love this little box, and continued playing with it later on the ferry back to Sardinia. I enjoyed being treated with this unexpected avantgarde sound installation.

 
Leaving Corsica and France, back to Italy. It was good to have been back to this remarkable place. I had visited it once in 1988 together with my American girlfriend (a year before I met Sabine). We had been on a round trip on Corsica, and while visiting Bonifacio, we had even met her older sister and her sister’s husband, who happened to be here on that day during a cruise tour of the Mediterranean. Looking at my photos again from that time, I am surprised how young I was then … and how distant it feels. A different self.

Nuraghe Island 3: Towers of the Sky

Eastward across very windy plains full of large rocks surrounded by colorful flowers …

 
… towards a small place called Burgos which lies under an impressive castle … we wanted to take a closer look at it, or take a look downwards from the surrounding hills, but we got lost in the tiny streets of Burgos, couldn’t find our way, and were relieved to eventually find out again!

 
A few miles later, in the middle of nowhere, we saw this group of buildings and stopped to take a look. Sabine was delighted – it is called St. Sabina, mostly consisting of a beautiful little 10th century Roman church and a Nuraghe tower, one of about 700 on the island of Sardinia, dating back to perhaps 1800BC. The tower was in good shape, and I climbed up the dark stairway inside of it, built of huge uneven rocks. Being on top of it felt more like standing on a small hill.

 
Further northeast, we had seen an unusual looking plane flying back and forth at low altitudes, several times, and we had already wondered about it. We eventually found that our road led across a strange artificial lake filled with green water, Lake Coghinas. The plane came back, touched the water surface for a few seconds, and took off again – it was a fire fighter plane that was loading new water, probably on a training mission because we didn’t see forest fires anywhere.

 
We eventually reached Tempio Pausania, our destination for this day. The sky was very blue, but it was very windy and unusually cold – Mistral weather. Fortunately it ceased after two days.

 

Nuraghe Island 2: Fish Out Of Water

The name of the place was Bosa, the river was called Temo. I have never seen a river that was so full of fish – large ones, tiny ones, everywhere you looked there were fish, and in the evening, the surface of the river was criss-crossed by fish that swam around with their heads out of the water. They didn’t tell me why they did that (I spent two hours at the riverside with a hydrophone and headphones – the results were disappointing: the fish of Bosa don’t talk).

 
The old town of Bosa, beneath a large castle ruin, is a maze of picturesque cobblestoned paths and colorful little houses. The view from the castle over the beautiful wide valley is definitely worth climbing up there.

 
In the evening, we found a real good restaurant at the riverside, right opposite the decaying tannery buildings that were one of the sources of Bosa’s wealth many years ago.

 
The next day, on the way to the east, a visit to a medieval church, extramuros … a friendly dog followed us for a while … red poppies and hissing crickets in the heat, and a last look back to Bosa.

 

Nuraghe Island 1: Excited Shouting

Every evening there was a flight show in the Alghero old town, starring hundreds of excited swifts flying high speed manoevres above the roofs, while shouting loudly.

Alghero, which is considered the prettiest town on Sardinia, was our first base during the two weeks we spent in the north of Sardinia. We had a nice flat in the old town (but we had to close all windows and use ear plugs during the night because tourist activities were quite loud until about 3 am – excited shouting of another kind). 



 
After a few days, we got a car and started exploring the surrounding region – hills with a view and beautiful beaches.

 
We drove to see the cragged rocks of nearby Capo Caccia and climbed down (and later, up) hundreds of stairs to a stalactite cave; on the next day, we took a boat to the same area and marveled at it from the sea. On the way back to Alghero, we were accompanied by a group of dolphins which jumped out of the water …