We have had quite a weather day today. We started early because we had camped on a beach smack in the middle of Santa Teresa Gallura. No point in inviting trouble since we did camp illegally once again.
The water was very calm as we started but as we approached Capo Testa we heard thunder, and as we were halfway around the cape we saw lightning and it started to rain.
The rocks at Capo Testo are truly amazing. They’re sculpted by wind and waves into a million different shapes, and we spent a good time taking photos in the ever changing light of sunshine during rain with a rainbow.
After Capo Testa we moved down the coast, but my aching back got really bad in the waves, so we turned in for a short break on the first beach we found. I set up all the solar panels, ate a biscuit and fell asleep while Wendy went rock watching. In Italy time is different, so our short break lasted two and a half hours.
When we were ready to set out again, the wind had grown stronger and turned west, so we almost had a straight headwind again.
The rest of the day was a slow push against the wind. We continued until the little town of Vignole Mare where we set up camp on the beach, almost under one of the old Spanish towers.
We’re having dinner in a local restaurant now. Not bad, but they had most unconventionally put bacon in my plate of penne all’arrabiata. That’s definitely a no-no in my book.
Let’s hope that tomorrow, we enjoy fair tailwinds.
Our good Venetian friend Marco Ballarin has been awarded the title of ‘Maestro di Canoa da Mare’. We know that Marco has worked hard for a long time to achieve this level of certification, so here’s a toast to Maestro Ballarin.
Today we rounded the northern tip of Sardinia, the Punta Falcone.
We spent the night on a beach in Cala di Trana, close to Palau. We launched on a calm and quiet day, almost no wind and little waves. It looked like a paddle in the park on an overcast day.
Within 30 minutes we got a slight drizzle, but soon all our landmarks were out of sight and we did another 30 minutes on the compass only, until it cleared up a bit and we got closer to the coast of Valle d’Erica.
We had hoped to stop there for a morning cappuccino, but there were no bars in sight with a good landing spot nearby, so we forgot about our little morning luxury and paddled on along the coast.
Not a second after we stuck our bows into the waters of the Stretto di Bonifacio we got a force 4 to 5 with 1-2m waves thrown in the face. We paddled with this companion on our right for a couple of hours, until we reached the marina of Santa Teresa Gallura, eager for a break and some lunch.
The marina is rather large and we paddled around for some time looking for a good landing spot close to the restaurant when we were approached by two very common looking assholes, one male and one female, who unceremoniously told us that ‘canoes’ weren’t allowed in the marina.
That led us to the conclusion that the people of the marina of Santa Teresa Gallura didn’t like our money, so we turned around and left. Fortunately, just around the next rock were the local city beach, where we could land in peace, be greeted by a couple of impressed locals, and have a good, albeit not inexpensive pizza with a clear view of the beach and our kayaks.
I have had some backaches since I slipped on the brink of beach at Cala Morescue and hurt my back. The pains have been manageable so far, thanks to regular short breaks, but our trip through the waves today made these backaches worse, and as we arrived in Santa Teresa Gallura my back was quite stiff and I had a hard time edging the kayak in the waves. After lunch we decided to stay the night in Santa Teresa Gallura to let my back recover. Hopefully the next days will be less exacting on my back, so we can keep a reasonable pace.
We’ve spent the time this afternoon reading and writing mail, blogging, updating our personal diaries, and charging all our depleted batteries.
Tomorrow we’ll round the Capo Testa and follow the coast SW towards Porto Torres where we’ll be in a few days time, weather, wind, waves and whining willing.
We in Città della Maddalena now. We’ve had a nice day paddling up the east coast of Isola Caprera and back down between that and the Isola della Maddalena. We expect to find a camp site somewhere to the west of here on the mainland.
The Isola Caprera has a magnificent rocky coast, sculpted into a million different shapes, some loking like animals, some like faces and others like abstract art.
If there is on theme to today it must be the many types of weird waves we’ve met. We started from Cala Morescoe near Golfo Aranci and headed straight into some extremely choppy waters off Capo Figaro. Waves apparently came in from two different directions and bounced off the vertical rocks, giving us quite a ride.
From Capo Morescoe we crossed north towards Piccolo Romanizzo, passing Isola Moratio on the way. We had a very brief stop there, but there was no bar and no reason to linger.
The next stop on our path was Porto Cervo. We had been told on many occasions that there was a fantastic marina there with everything we could possibly need. We had another very choppy ride up to and into Porto Cervo. We landed on a beach just besides the marina, which was full of some very expensive looking boats. We packed up everything we needed for a good and sorely need shower and some laundry, hopefully topped by some delicious food and good coffee.
As we walked towards the marina everything looked very quiet and dull. A huge building was full of closed and boarded up shops, and the only open door we could finf led to a very closed restaurant, with tables stacked and chairs covered for storage. We continued and at last we found an open place. It was a very fancy cocktail bar, and very empty, but we got something to drink and a couple of sandwiches which surely suffered from severe identity crises.
We were low on water, the cocktail bar only had one liter glass bottles and the marina supermarket wouldn’t open for another two hours. We decided to paddle on, doing our shopping elsewhere, but on our way out we did manage to find a bar that could sell us some reasonably sized bottles of water.
From Porto Cervo we headed for Isola Caprera. Again we were in for an agitated ride. We had 1m waves coming in from NE and E so we were tossed here and there most of the time. We got some nice tailing waves as we turned west towards Caprera, but we continuously got splashed and pushed by the sideways waves.
Things became a bit easier when we turned west at Isola delle Bisce, since we got some following waves to play with, but we were still tosse hither and thither most of time, including our way into the bay north of Punta Rossa on Isola Caprera, where we set up camp on a secluded beach.
We passed the Isola di Tavolara yesterday. Tavolara has a quite extraordinary history. It is not that often you get to eat in a royal restaurant. The waitress was pretty too 🙂
We’re just a couple of day from the northern tip of Sardinia now.
I guess we’ve only been pizza blogging recently, so today we had sandwiches 🙂
Thursday morning we woke up in Cala Gonone to a dark sky. We were ready to go but up north it was thundering, just where we were supposed to go. We made everything ready and went for a cappuccino. It started raining, another cappuccino passed our way, and at around 11 the rain almost stopped, the thunder ceased and we went paddling.
Cave on the coast
It was a very quiet paddle up the coast. We passed some beautiful rocks and huge caves. We had lunch north of Marina di Orosei, frozen pizza, but as we continued the NE wind increased and so did the waves, so when we arrived at the beach of Cala Liberetto, we decided to call it a day.
It was quite a busy beach, and as there appeared to be a huge camping just behind the dunes, we decided to do the bivy thing, sleeping on top of the tarp just in case. Good thing too. About 5 in the morning it started to rain, and we scrambled under the tarp, but it was rather uncomfortable so we soon decided to get up.
It was a very cold and wet morning, but we had some breakfast, packed the boats and set off into the great unknown.
Capo Comino
Fortunately for us it became a nice warm and sunny day. Before noon we rounded the Capo Comino, the easternmost point of our journey up the Sardinian east coast. There we stopped for a couple of hours to dry all our wet gear and recharge gps, batteries and phone with our Brunton solar panels.
In the afternoon we ran into the normal afternoon NE winds and waves, which slowed us down, and at 5 in the afternoon we landed on the beach of Sant’Anna near Budoni, circa 20 km south of Isola Tavolara.
Snacks on the beach
We had our sandwiches at the local beach bar, Bar Sa Capannizza, where Wendy once again indulged in her latest addiction: the Sardinian beer Ichnusa.
Tomorrow we will paddle to Isola Tavolara for lunch and then hopefully get past Olbia in the afternoon. Sunday looks like a very windy day, so we haven’t quite made our minds up about that. We should be up at the northern tip of Sardinia within a few days, though.
We’re having lunch at Peppes Bar on the beach near the Marina of Orosei. The pizzas were of quite dubious quality, so we won’t stay longer that it takes the GPS to recharge.
We have had two spectacular days in the Golfo di Orosei. Most of time we have paddled in the Natural Reserve of Golfo di Orosei and Gennargentu.
Tuesday we started on a calm and sunny morning from Torre di Bari, and paddled quietly to Arbatax and Santa Maria Navarrese, where the natural reserve begins.
The coastal area of the natural reserve is very mountainous, with tall steep rock walls dropping hundreds of meters into the sea, sloping hill sides and rock gardens, all battered continuously by the waves of a constant NE wind, the Grecale. Scattered throughout all this is a myriad of little inaccessible beaches, caves and deep coves.
We paddled half the length of the reserve on tuesday, and we both agreed afterwards that it was the most fantastic paddled we had ever had. We passed the Pedro Lungo, explored numerous caves and coves, admired the beautiful birds nesting on the rock sides (which we later learned is a rare species of falcon), but failed to find the natural arch of Goloritzé. When the time of sunset approached we were forced to look for a landing spot, which wasn’t easy under a tall vertical rock wall, but as we explored out options, we turned a corner, and faced an incredible arch of raw rock, the arch of Goloritzé.
We paddled throught and around the arch, and just behind it was the brightest white beach, the perfect landing site for the evening, pebble beach, smooth white rocks and a large cave. However, as we approached, we discovered that the cave was already inhabited, by a nice young man in jeans and t-shirt.
Axel, a young German Ph.d. student on a solo hiking holiday, didn’t mind sharing the beach so we disembarked, and started hauling out all our gear. Poor Axed was astonished as we pulled out tent, tarp, cooking gear, food, espresso maker etc. His entire luggage weighted in a 14kg and could fit in a small rucksack.
We had a very pleasant evening together, sharing food, desert and tea, only interrupted by a short shower. As the time to turn in came, Wendy set up tent, but I decided to sleep in the cave like Axel. I have never slept in a cave before and had no intention of letting that experience pass by untried. It was a bit hard to sleep on the sloping cave floor, but I enjoyed looking at the stars, listening to the waves and watching the occasional lightning over the sea. The mosquitoes feasted on me, but it was worth that little sacrifice.
In the morning we made cappuccinoes on the rocks for all three of us, exchanged email addresses with Axel, and launched late, about ten.
The main attraction of the following day would be the Grotta del Bue Marino, and five km deep marine cave. We moved slowly in that direction, as we kept exploring the coastline. We took a nice long break after noon in the Cala Sisine, but quite suddenly the sun disappeared and dark clouds took its place. The small groups of beachgoers started heading for their motorboats and we headed for our boats too.
As we continued the Grecale returned, exchanging the placid waters of the morning for lively waves of 1m and more. We struggled into the headwind and the waves towards our goal, the Grotta del Bue Marino. We had no idea how it would be marked, so we followed the coastline closely peeking into every hole in the rock walls.
When we found the Cave of the Sea Cow, it was closed. It was forbidden to paddle in, only for service personnel the sigh said, and apparently this marine cave can only be visited on foot, walking on platforms mounted on the walls of the cave. As the site was clearly deserted, even though it was only around 5 in the afternoon, we ventured into the darkness a bit, but the cave was too vast and too dark for our little camping headlamps, so we turned back, from darkness and silence inside to light and roaring waves outside.
We continued for a few kms to the small town of Cala Gonone where we have set up camp on a nearby beach after a small forraging foray into town.
We had a nice day on the water today. We started in great style with an hours break after an hours paddling, but after that we paddled for five and a half hours almost without break.
Initially we had it easy. Tailing swells of 1-2m and a pleasant tailwind gave us good speed, but in the middle of the Cala de Murtas the wind changed suddenly from S to W, probably funneled by the mountains. We then had swells from SE and waves from W which was new to me. It caused some interesting wave patterns. Just as we came across the bay for a cherished break, the wind turned to N and the rest of the day was double work at half speed.
We didn’t get as far as we wanted before it got close to sunset and we had to search for a landing spot. We ended up in Melisenda, some 30 km south of Arbatax.
As we started to set up camp and preparing some serious camping cooking, we discovered that our cooking alcohol wasn’t there. I had taken it out of the hatch the evening before and left it beside my kayak, but during the night the sea had eaten away at the brink, and the bottle was gone. The kayaks almost went the same way, as the sea had dug away under them too.
In any case, we were sitting on a beach with food but no gas or alcohol for camping stove. Hunger can drive even the sanest person to extremes, and we walked out into the darkness, dressed only in headlamps (almost) in search of a place to eat. After having scared an elderly lady in a house out of her wits, we got some instructions on how to find the local pizzeria.
Apparently destiny will have it that we paddle from pizza to pizza. It is somewhat of consolation that the pizzas here are very good. One in our little group uses stronger words, though.
Right now we’re sitting in a bar at the harbour of Porto Corallo near the village of Villaputzu.
We spend the night on a beach called Spiaggia San Giovanni, just behind a fish-farm. We had a brilliant dinner in a local restaurant where we ate pizza. According to Wendy her seafood pizza was “orgasmic” 🙂
There’s quite a bit of surf on the beaches here so landing and launching is a bit tricky, but we usually do manage to find good spots.
Yesterday was a quiet paddle from Cala Pira. We had wind and waves in our favour, so we could enjoy the coastline and the sea.
Our plan for today is to get about half-ways to Arbatax, if possible to Marina di Gairo.
