After our short stint on Sant’Antioco we started our full Sardinia road trip, driving clockwise around the island and staying several different towns along the way. We drove inland through the southwestern corner, between the Monti del Sulcis mountains (to the south) and the Monti Linas mountains (to the north, more on them later!), then north through the Campidano plain. In addition to the OpenStreetMap-based maps on this site, there’s a great relief map of Sardinia here. Most of the drive reminded us of California with the foothills around us covered in dry scrub and the jagged peaks off in the distance.
We stayed just outside Oristano (about half-way up the west coast) in a cool farm/flower shop/hotel/restaurant/event center called Ros’e Mari Farm and Green House. The owners took a huge abandoned, aging nursery/greenhouse complex and converted some to modern restaurant/event space, while doubling down on plants in the others. It is a HUGE farm inside & out.
The restaurant is very nice, without being full of itself. We had our included breakfast there each morning and dinner twice. It’s in the main building with its cavernous (but not badminton cavernous!) ceilings and everything is perfectly presented. The food is delicious and creative!
Some dishes we enjoyed there during two dinners..
Ros’e Mari is a great destination of its own, and for us was a great base for this region. There’s plenty of room to park for free and it’s less than 10 min from the towns of Oristano and Cabras, both of which proved to have cute downtowns with lots of excellent dining options.
We went to two restaurants for dinner in Cabras: Terracrua Restaurant and Trattoria Sa Bell’e Crabasa. Simply put, Trattoria Sa Bell’e Crabasa was “good”, and Terracrua was one of the best meals we’ve ever had in many ways.
We walked in the door at Terracrua from a dark but charming street into a beautifully decorated, intimate space (we understand that there is additional seating upstairs and in a garden as well). We were the first ones seated in the main room and another couple was seated immediately after us. The waitress asked if it was ok for the couple’s dog to sit near us, which we of course encouraged. It was a sweet dog and knowingly immediately curled up under their table. It was a casual, comfortable, friendly, and non-assuming setting. We ordered two tasting menus, one meat with wine pairing and the other seafood. Unfortunately while I made sure to photograph the dishes I failed to get the menu so expect varying levels of detail!
Given our experience with several other restaurants giving us bread without any topping, the flavored butters (I loved the black garlic one!!) and flavorful extra virgin olive oil were a treat.
We were thankful that the antipasto dishes were reasonably sized since there was a lot to try. The highlights were Savitri’s courgette and my oyster. I am not an oyster aficionado, but appreciate them at the right time and place. This was a big oyster and the green apple was such a strong and perfectly complementary flavor that I can taste it now just remembering it. Brilliant.
The primo course was a step up in size and just as intense. I mistakenly expected the squid ink pasta to be pasta with squid ink in it, but the ink was the dominant ingredient of the sauce instead. I was happy to be wrong, wow did that sauce pop! I ate every last bit and scraped the bowl like soup afterward. The pasta guanciale was just as flavorful in a totally different direction. We both kind of sat there looking wide-eyed at each other.
By this point in the meal we had also shared several “damn this is good!” glances with the couple seated next to us, who were clearly more familiar with the whole scene. We started talking with the lady, Angela, throughout the meal and she and Savitri started talking another language foreign to me, wine. Savitri was trying to catch up to the wine paired with her current course and Angela poured her a glass of her personal favorite from a bottle they had bought.
The secondo course was more hearty and no less amazing.
The desserts were creatively presented and eagerly eaten.
After we’d eaten and were still talking with our newfound friends, the chef/owner came out and greeted Angela and her husband, and introduced himself to us. His name is Chef Tiziano Vacca. Turns out he’s rather well-known, and in our eyes well-deserved! We parted ways and walked out into the warm breezy cobblestone streets.. it doesn’t get much better than that.
We did have a quick snack and drinks one day in Cabras at Bar Sole Luna. I have to mention it because it made us aware of a drink we’d never heard of but that I plan to get to know a lot better, Cold Coffee Cream. It’s essentially a frappe but with heavy cream instead of ice cream. I’d normally dismiss such an abomination right there, but by using good Italian coffee it redeems itself enough for a worthy mention. Then they go and add good chocolate and nuts and stuff and well.. I’m available for testing in the Boston area.
Oristano has a cute downtown area that we walked around in the small town hush between lunch and dinner. Across Sardinia, between 3pm and ~8pm (occasionally 7:30) everything shuts down. No early suppers. If you find a place open they are pandering to tourists. Gelato shops generally stay open though, so the world is sound.
We had one lunch in Oristano, and it was a special one at Granma Pasta Garage. They are well-known in the area for their extensive offering of fresh pasta every day, which you can buy to take away or eat it there.
Everything is fresh, made a few strides away as we ate. Great vibe, great team, and great taste! I had the Zozzona, which translates to “Dirty” or “Slut” Pasta. It has all the signature sauces of the top four types of Italian pasta all at once. It was delicious in the dirtiest way, no slut-shaming here. We really wish we had a chance to go back for dinner. If we did I would like to just have Caccio e Pepe to isolate the simpler flavors.
We walked .5 mi (.8 km) to an unassuming gelato shop called Gelateria Il Chicco. It is outside the pretty pedestrian area but more than made up for that by being open! Gelato is a great fix for a hot walk.
Ok all this eating needs to be offset by some activity. Fortunately Oristano serves as a central hub for activities in every direction!
We drove about an hour southeast from Ros’e Mari to Parco della Giara. The drive alone was impressive as we drove across the plains then up, up, up the face of the plateau that houses the park on its top. It’s about 350 m (1155 ft) above the base and nearly flat on top so feels like a disconnected world. Apparently it really is, as this isolation is why wild horses only live on top..
To try to see wild horses we followed the recommended strategy of going where they like to go, so we planned a loop across the plateau that included different types of vegetation and several of the wet areas where they tend to congregate. We didn’t book a tour and instead used reviews and Organic Maps (my go-to offline map app that uses OpenStreetMap to have the most complete trail coverage!). Ten minutes later and we saw this beauty well off to the side!
Judging by its trajectory and where other hikers were walking, we circled around to get a better shot and.. it disappeared. In fact over the next couple hours we had a lovely walk with lots of cool sights but never saw another horse. Tons of fresh horse droppings though! (photos available by request). We even heard one whinny loudly at one point and agreed what direction it was, but couldn’t find the source. Despite being a little let down we had a great time and it felt very authentic and unstaged.
More on nuraghes later, but in short these are buildings from the Nuragic Age (1900-730 BCE). Over 7,000 of them have been found in Sardinia. This one was pretty disheveled but still has a royal view off the edge of the plateau on the back.
There are tons of cork oak tree up there. People have harvested the cork from the bottoms of most of the accessible ones, so you can see and feel the cork easily.
No shortage of creatures, large and small!
We would definitely recommend visiting Parco della Giara. Make sure you give yourself time and flexibility to explore, and if you do see or hear a horse, beeline toward it because you might not see another!
We paid a short visit to a small village called San Salvatore di Sinis near the coast. It is a bizarre yet beautiful place. It has existed for thousands of years, beginning somewhere in the Nuragic age. Most of the current buildings originate from late 17th century AD Spanish influence, and much of its notoriety comes from the 1960s, 70s, and 80s “Spaghetti Westerns”. It is still active as a major religious event every first Saturday of September with the Corsa degli Scalzi event. We walked around increasingly fascinated. It is a ghost town except the main bar/saloon and a few seemingly random houses. It looks like a movie set and has been a movie set, but it was and is real too. I kept thinking of the faux Rock Ridge scene from Blazing Saddles (second reference in a week, not sure what’s going on there either!) and Goldfield, NV (the old capital of Nevada and now ghost town).
Savitri wants to turn the whole village into some sort of artist community. I think she’s onto something.. and/or on something.
Angela that we met at Terracrua loves Maimoni Beach so we decided to check it out. It is one of a series of beaches along the west coast of the Sinis Peninsula that are composed almost entirely of rounded quartz crystals about half the size of a grain of rice.
The sand clings to your skin still, but since it’s so big and clean it brushes off really easily and doesn’t tend to get up in your bits. At the same time the water is so clear and clean that when you dry off you don’t have nearly as much of that sticky feeling the ocean usually leaves. It is SOOOO nice!!
Our final adventure from our Oristano base camp was our most memorable.. We drove south to the Monti Linas mountains to hike Mount Arcuentu. It was the most prominent and jagged peak catching our eye during most of our drives over the previous several days, and accessible as a day hike.
The plan was simple, drive the 1.5 hours south to the trailhead, hike the 3.3 mi (5.3 km) round-trip out-and-back trail to/from the summit, drop by the nearby waterfall Sa Splendula, then get back to Oristano early enough to maybe go to the beach again and recover.
We got to the trailhead parking area, which turned out to be a sort of common area for a few driveways for local farms. It’s fenced in fully on all sides except the driveways so we stood for a few minutes trying to figure out how to get past the fence and.. was that a good idea or had this trailhead been discontinued? I reread the AllTrails description and it clearly said to enter through the green gate so we found that and proceeded. As we did, we noticed several people up on the hillside ahead yelling. We thought they were herding sheep or goats or something (common in that area). We walked maybe 300 ft (90 m) farther to another fence which we had to untie a cord to open. Seeing animals grazing nearby we understood why. As I was about to retie the fence shut behind us I saw another couple approaching so I waited until they arrived. Turns out.. they were discussing the yelling people, and knew from past experience that they were part of a hunting party! The man (Giuseppe we would later learn) went and talked to the nearest hunter while the lady (Luisa) talked to us. Giuseppe confirmed that there were 40 hunters engaged in hunting wild boar right where the trail passed through and that it would be very dangerous for us to proceed for another hour. As he told us this we heard gunshots followed by cheering nearby.. so we quickly agreed to leave.
Fortunately Giuseppe had done his homework and knew of another trailhead 2km (1.2 mi) and 100m (330 ft) back along the road. We followed them there and launched anew. The new approach was substantially longer but included walking along the neighboring ridge which was spectacular!
Along the way Giuseppe and Luisa educated us about all sorts of local plants and traditions. They pointed out myrtle berries, which are used to make a popular digestif called mirto. I also had some gelato flavored with it.
One of the most distinct features found all over the mountain are “feeder dikes”. Mt Arcuentu is an ancient volcano, and these are where magma pushed up through cracks, hardened, then millions of years of erosion has exposed them. Some look like fortress walls, others like dinosaur spikes, some massive and others furniture-sized. It’s a very unique landscape.
While we were looking wondrously at the mountains around us, we were also being watched by large birds of prey. From what I can tell from AI silhouette identification and a record of birds found around this ridge, we saw a combination of golden eagles, common buzzards, peregrine falcons, and common ravens.
As we approached the top, the last quarter mile (0.4 km) was a whole different type of hike. First it went nearly vertical so we had to climb up jagged rocks and along the dirt sides of steep slopes. Partway up this section we sat and enjoyed some local bread, cheese, and meat Giuseppe & Luisa had brought (and we appreciated greatly! Quintessential Mediterranean staples!). Luisa decided to camp out there while we continued to the top. I don’t think I could stop just below a summit, but I admire that she found a point where she was completely content and embraced it. We climbed while she lounged luxuriantly on grass meditation mats.
The trails were pretty consistently sprinkled with goat droppings, even up on the steep rocks. In many sections it was hard to find the trail, not because it wasn’t visible but because goats had worn numerous alternate trails that may or may not lead us clumsy humans off a cliff. Giuseppe explained that goats often sleep and raise their young in little caves like these.
After the vertical part we suddenly broke out onto the top of the massif. It flattened and there were large grassy areas and a small misty forest. There are ruins and active shrines. I didn’t realize until the next day that some of the ruins are from Castello di Arcuencu built on the summit in 1100 AD!
The summit of most mountains feels like all of a sudden you’re on top of the world. It’s a feeling that never gets old and I love it. Mt Arcuentu gave that vibe with an exclamation mark. You can see jagged rock mountains all around you, the dunes along the coast, the vast expanse of the Mediterranean to the west, and the extensive inland plains to the east.
The birds at the summit had a new trick to show us- we could hear their wings beating loudly. As Giuseppe says, it sounded like a drone.
The views from the top also gave new perspectives on the volcanic phenomena we’d seen while climbing.
We reconnected with a rejuvenated Luisa and worked our way back down to the base of the steep rocks.
We decided to complete the loop by returning via the original “hunting” trail (now that the hunting was long over) then down the road to the cars. What started as a 3.3 mi (5.3 km) out-and-back hike had expanded into a ~5.5 mi (8.8 km) loop, and we loved every minute of it.
To celebrate and recover, we all decided to drive down to the western coast. Savitri, Luisa and I soaked our feet in a rock pool while Giuseppe braved the waves. The waves washed away the miles while the sun set fiery over the rocks. Giornata perfetta.
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