Today was a bit of an odd one. We had been thinking of doing a boat tour along the Golfo di Orosei coastline with a friend of our host. When we contacted him he said the weather today and tomorrow wouldn’t be conducive to being on the water. Just too rough. We agreed that he would contact us on Tuesday late afternoon to let us know how Wednesday might work. We are thinking of ways to make this happen, though our initial plan had been to be somewhere else by the end of day, Wednesday. I guess we’ll see what happens.
So then we thought about going for a drive to a spot where you can hike for two hours down to a beautiful part of the coast, and then back up. However, we weren’t going to be able to get away as early as we had hoped, and as it turned out, it was a little bit cooler than expected with lots of cloud in the morning. So we decided to drive a loop through the mountains to see a number of villages and a Bronze Age site that comes highly recommended.
We stopped at the grocery store across the street for supplies, and then with Bear’s assistance, we drove inland from where we are staying in Dorgali.
Our first stop was at Serra Orrios, an amazing Bronze Age Nuragic village from 1600 BC. If you are into this sort of thing it’s really quite special. If not, then it’s just a nice pile of rocks. Except for a Spanish couple who spoke good English, we had the place pretty much to ourselves. They related their experiences with a large tourist population where they are staying on the water down below Dorgali. They shared their efforts to undertake a different walk down to a beach and the large numbers of people they encountered on the trail. We then went different ways to explore the site.
The site contains over 100 buildings of which 49 are huts and the rest are for livestock and the two temples. From the main temple, there is an access gate leading into the rest of the village.
This gate led almost directly into the site for Temple 2.
We started walking through the various buildings. You have to imagine when you’re looking at the living quarters that they have walls anywhere from 4-6 feet high and a wood framed roof covered with grass. Pretty advanced stuff.
Our step back into time completed, we settled into Bear and began circular drive up into the interior mountains. It was definitely cooling down and we decided this was a good day to stay away from any sort of beach. Lots of wind and dark clouds in the morning. Definitely not what was forecast.
Generally speaking, there weren’t many places to pull over to see the views. Our Michelin map told us that most of the time we were driving along scenic routes, but we usually couldn’t see them for the trees. Occasionally, I would pull over and put on our emergency flashers and find a good place to take a shot.
Occasionally, the sun would pop out, but most of the time we had pretty heavy, black clothes. No rain.
We find using Google maps to navigate is very helpful, but comes with certain challenges.🫤 Today was no different. We were happily driving along when we received a message on the navigation system telling us that it had found a more efficient route for us to travel. We accepted the suggestion and drove along a road that could only be called a road in very general terms! That said, it was much more scenic than the Michelin scenic route was!😆
There was so little traffic that we could actually stop and have a look around. We were also travelling through some vineyards which opened the skyline.
The road eventually improved, at least to the point where there are no huge potholes. We were still not back onto a better road yet, but the driving while slow was at least easier. Bear seemed happier too!
We had some fun navigating through several of the small villages and towns. Partly it was the lack of road signs, but also Google maps directed us through somewhat challenging streets. We’re talking inches away from the walls on each side of Bear. We’ve had these experiences many times before, but each time sort of feels like the first time.🙂
We eventually reached the town of Fonni where inside 10 minutes we witnessed almost 5 vehicle accidents! The drivers there must be teaching each other how to drive because they were all pretty terrible! We were almost hit by a car that didn’t bother to stop for a stop sign.
We stopped for a refreshment to gather ourselves and figure out the next part of the route. We carefully managed to find our way out of Fonni and continued our path further south.
We ended up stranded behind an intercity bus, and when we were finally able to lose it we stopped to think through our options again. We decided that we had selected a route that would take many more hours to complete. Not wishing to arrive home in the dark we decided to turn around and go back to our place by a slightly different route. We particularly did not want to go back to Fonni and we managed to miss it by a good 3 km! Phew!
Now back at our nice accommodation with beer in hand and this post just about finished, it’s about time to go and find our evening meal.
The day ended, sunny and warm. We’re not quite sure what we’re going to do tomorrow, but we’ll think of something. It all depends on the weather.
Cheers!🍷
Geoff
Distance Walker - Wandering & Wondering! 