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February 10 Friday Bicycle touring Italy Sardinia from Palmas Arborea Sardegna to Fordongianus Sardinia Roman baths! We arrived on our fully loaded touring bicycles in Fordongianus under a perfectly blue sky with the sun actually having some warmth to it. There were a bunch of Moroccan women washing clothes in two pools below the original baths. We decided to eat our lunch of pizza and oranges along the riverbank. This is the first river we have seen that has looked natural with trees growing along the sides instead of in the dry river bed and it actually has water -- which may be even more amazing after all the dry river beds we have encountered. They should make the rivers a brown line on the map instead of blue. Most of the water on the island of Sardinia is diverted to this farming area in giant concrete aqueducts and then to fields along smaller ducts and finally by pipes providing sprinkler irrigation. On a three kilometre hill into Fordongianus we stopped to remove our fuzzy fleece jackets. While trying to stuff mine into my already overcrowded front pannier, a farmer comes out of the front door of his modest abode. After chatting with us for a while, he says they need rain. No rain -- no money, his wife indicated. They opened a bottle of Dreler beer for us and then stocked my rear pannier with oranges from a fruit tree in their front yard. I learned that the oranges with the red mixed into the slices are good to eat -- they are just a different variety of orange. He also told us the red bulbs on the cacti never bloom -- they just stay like that. His 90-year-old mother came to the door to check us out, dressed in traditional black mourning smock and black kerchief. It must be terribly hot to wear in the summer. In Fordongianus, a new bath area has been built away from the ruins. Presumably to keep the tourists from using the original tubs. Hot water is piped from the thermal spring to the new baths. There are four enclosed baths with a huge sitting and waiting area built on the roof. Probably in the summer the baths are open all day, but now they are open only from 4 - 5 PM, as Sharon finally figured out. I washed up using the warm water from the outflow spout. While Sharon waited for the baths to open, I took our clothes down to the wash pools. Donning my yellow rubber gloves caused much merriment amongst the local washerwomen. I took out my powdered soap, but they shook their heads and gave me a bar of soap. I don't know if it's because their bar soap is biodegradable or they just don't think much of powdered soap. Later, I thought it may be because they think the powdered soap is for washing machines. The water bubbles in at a hot 60º C. There is a gushing cold water hose into the first pool to cool things down. It is still plenty hot and drains away, steaming, into the Tirso River. A few minutes later, the group of washer women get up and, en masse, walk away, leaving me by my lonesome. Sharon appears and tells me they all went for their bath. They rent one stall for the hour and all thirty of them use it for $3. The only one left was a tub and it was an extra $3, and even though Sharon figures she could have soaked for the entire hour, it wasn't worth it. She wasn't too sure about the hygiene aspect. I filled our large plastic collapsible water container with hot water and hauled it under a bridge where Sharon did her hair in peace and solitude, except for one guy who looked over from a hilltop, watching. I think it would be difficult to be a criminal in Sardinia; there's always someone around watching. We pushed our bikes into a treed area along the quiet riverbank, past a sign warning of flash floods in four languages. We aren't overly concerned about getting washed away in the middle of the night. It's a clear starry sky and near-drought conditions on the island. It was unusually quiet, being a Friday night and all. Only a couple of dogs stayed up yapping. Today, in Ollastra, where I mailed film and postcards back to Canada, I saw an old wrinkled man clutching a boquet of bright yellow flowers to his chest. |
