I woke up this morning feeling optimistic. Look at the view from the balcony of my hotel room! Just before leaving Rome to come to Sardinia, I created a calendar to organize my activities. For today’s agenda, I had planned to explore my immediate surroundings to get a lay of the land. I wanted to see what kinds of activities there were near Hotel Caramare before I picked up the rental car to venture out to the more rural areas. I scheduled several tours that will have me exploring the mountains and nearby towns in the upcoming days, but before touring those areas I wanted to see everything that Cala Gonone had to offer.
My husband, Todd, took a couple of weeks from work to join me in Cala Gonone. We spent the day walking around the commune to check out a couple of small beaches and the marina right next to the hotel. The beaches in Cala Gonone are not sandy like the ones we are accustomed to in the US. Instead of sand, they are covered with pebbles and rocks. The locals (and European tourists) seem to be fine lying down on the beach and walking into the water, but we were both miserable trying to walk on the pebbles barefoot. The concierge at the front desk of the hotel explained that there are some sandy beaches just a few miles away that we could visit if we wanted to take a drive. This beach next to the hotel is nothing but rocks! I could barely walk on it in my sandals.
At the marina, there were at least thirty small booths selling boat tours and renting boats. We chose to purchase tickets for the full-day tour that would take us along the coast, and if all went well we would rent a private boat and do an excursion of our own. The group tour would stop at the three largest beaches and would allow everyone to disembark for a couple of hours. I was so glad that Todd decided to join me for my time in Cala Gonone. I certainly would not be comfortable renting a boat to navigate the seas in a foreign country on my own!
After setting up the group boat tour, we took a short hike up the coast from our hotel. There were huge boulders to navigate and cliffs that dropped off into the sea. We passed a couple of boys who were diving off the cliff into the water…absolutely terrifying to me since the crystal clear water made it difficult to judge the depth, and huge rocks appeared to be just under the surface! There were no other adults present as these nine or ten-year-old boys were cliff-diving. They were fearless, and I could tell this wasn’t the first time they’d dove off a cliff. In the photo, it’s hard to see how high this cliff actually was, but it was at least 25 feet above the water.
A little further down the trail, there was a family of three swimming and climbing on the rocks below the cliff. I will spare you the details, but the dad was enjoying the rock-climbing in his birthday suit, and his wife was swimming topless. During my time in Sardinia, I noticed that public nudity was pretty common on the beaches I visited. Naked people lie on the beach, jump off cliffs, or swim in the water, and it’s normal. I imagine they are comfortable with the naked human body after living amongst hundreds of naked sculptures and paintings found all over Italy! There were no signs saying, “nude beach”. In fact, there were no signs posted about safety, or what you were or were not allowed to do either. It was sort of refreshing to see that people made their own choices and were responsible for their own safety and well-being without government interference. Now that’s what I call freedom!
Because we stayed in a coastal commune, we had access to catch-of-the-day fish anytime we wanted it. The local wines were perfect and meals were so much more affordable than in the US. We noticed during our stay that everyone drank wine with dinner. The drinking age is 18, but teens under 18 having dinner with parents also had wine. It didn’t seem that alcohol was abused in Italy. People had one or two glasses with dinner and that was about it.
One more thing I feel I must mention before closing. I have never in my life seen so many people taking their dogs with them to restaurants for dinner. These weren’t service dogs, although they behaved like such. They were quiet, composed, and perfectly behaved. I’d have to say that their pets were better behaved in restaurants than most children I see eating out with their parents where I live. They would lie under the table at the owners’ feet. Never did we witness an out-of-control pet. The Sardinians (and Italians) brought their dogs everywhere with them; into restaurants, bars, hotels, beaches, etc., and, it seemed like every other person had a canine companion. Here is one cutie getting ready to leave the restaurant with his owner. He sat quietly under her chair during her entire dinner!
Living in the Zone 