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Long Journey Into Night
Leaving Banari the next morning, we stopped to view Patricia's summer home. She was right - the brilliant red door was a beacon, making it impossible to miss her place. Patricia met us at the door and ushered us in for a guided tour. "I bought the place for a real steal three years ago," she exulted. Since then, she had remodelled the sturdy little stone house, blending traditional local features (the red rock fireplace) with modern conveniences (hot running water and a dishwasher). Harmoniously done, it was the best of both worlds. Embers - remnants from her previous evening's dinner party - still glowed in the hearth. When I mentioned the fact, Patricia smirked, recalling the fire that had forced her guests to move their seats farther and farther from the inferno. "At one point I was tempted to ask them if they wanted to set their chairs outside," she laughed. Thinking about sweltering heat led Patricia to recollect the forest fire that had threatened the town the previous summer. (I don't know how - everything is made of stone.) "The outside air temperature was a blistering 56 degrees Celsius!" Patricia said. "But, inside the house it stayed relatively comfortable." I should think so. Almost any temperature would be comfortable compared to 132 degrees Fahrenheit! Our visit was brief as it was nearly Saturday noon and Patricia wanted to make a dash to the grocery store before it closed for the weekend. We stood next to her fire-engine red door, saying our goodbyes. Patricia handed Sharon her Padova address and enticed: "Come, and we'll do Venice." In weak sunshine we rode out of Banari, feeling like celebrities - everyone waved to us and called hello. We were waving so much Sharon said she felt like the Queen. It did seem that the entire village knew us. And, I suppose, after riding through town on four separate occasions, being escorted on a two-hour walking tour, and meeting multitudes of the Giovanni's friends and neighbours, they probably did. Sharon, never comfortable with attention, commented: "I feel about as inconspicuous as a polka-dot elephant riding a tricycle." Even so, I think she was glad we had taken time to slow down and "smell the roses." We followed the instructions Caramella had so exuberantly imparted, and arrived at the thirty-five hundred-year-old nuraghic ruin known as the Nuraghe Palace of Santu Antine. At forty feet tall it was the largest of the more than seven thousand beehive-shaped fortresses on Sardinia. I marvelled that nothing but rock, gravity, and sheer brute force had been used in its centuries old construction. Even more amazing was that the whole complex hadn't collapsed like a weighty house of cards. Circular tunnels (so low they forced me to stoop), ran the structure's perimeter. At various points, intersecting hallways led into the main part of the nuraghe. We followed one, and found there were three levels of dome-shaped rooms. Continuing through dim passageways, winding this way and that, we reached the top of the nuraghe. From our vantage point we surveyed the immense rocks making up the palace. How had they managed to lift such giant boulders into place? And they all fitted together like some mammoth three-dimensional puzzle. I frowned. Some of the lower boulders were cracked from the tremendous weight of the upper levels. Going back inside was a trifle disconcerting. "One little pebble" kept repeating in my head. Safely back at the tourist office I questioned a young guide concerning the nuraghe's construction. Unfortunately, she didn't understand English, and my Sardo hadn't yet developed sufficiently to carry on an architectonic conversation. A few more dinner party language lessons would be required before I could accomplish that feat. I leafed through the English literature on nuraghic culture, but never discovered the information I sought. I did, however, find one writer's rather scathing tourist report. He berated foreign travellers for their boorish behaviour of throwing litter out their car windows and their vile practice of defecating on the pristine beaches. I was abhorred to think some visitors were so ill-behaved. What could they be thinking? Those thoughtless few spoiled it for the vast majority of us who appreciated the island's unspoiled environs and picked up after ourselves. Having escaped our nuraghic palace tour without being flattened we decided to tempt fate further, and headed for the prehistoric burial caves of Saint Andria Prui. At the turnoff we left the main paved route, and cruised along a gravel road. With our usual impeccable timing, we arrived at the caves as darkness fell. I learned that a surefire way to spend an uncomfortable night is to camp next to ancient burial caves. Predictably, weird howling winds shrieked in and out the caves' mouths seemingly whistling to long-deceased relatives. Our tent poles creaked and groaned in the spirited wind, and my overactive imagination conjured visions of specters roaming the sacred burial grounds, tripping over our tent's guy ropes. It was a long night with my head buried beneath the covers waiting for dawn. |
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