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The fourth book in the World bicycle touring trilogy series March 8 - March 19 Tuesday - Sunday Bicycle touring Italy Sardinia Arbatax Sardegna Well, our world bike tour has been most relaxing. We ended up staying almost two weeks at Bruno and Iole's -- probably overstaying our welcome by a week, but it sure felt good. If it wasn't for Sharon pushing me to go, I would have stayed another week. Nino invited us for lunch one day and I found out he has a collection of American movies on video. He has titles like Dracula, in English, since it helps him with his linguistic skills pronunciation. "I'm a chic zombie," promptly sprang to mind. I could spend another week just reading his books and magazines, relaxing, and watching his collection of movies. Nino made rice and mushroom (fungi) and also a special recipe for Fungi di Carni. Fungi di Carni looked like slices of meat when he opened the oven to check on the proceedings. I asked him what kind of meat is that? He didn't understand. I said is it Beef? No. Pork? No. Lamb? No. On my second round of questioning, he finally settled on beef. When he served it, it was my turn to be surprised. It turned out to be a huge mushroom that just looks like meat. It is aptly named. It sure had me fooled. What have we been doing other than cycling every day? Bruno and Iole took us for a couple of car rides to explore the Arbatax area. We walked a beach near Arbatax with fine sand and large granite rocks along the beach. Very picturesque and beautiful. We visited a whole bunch of dolmens -- they are houses of fairies that have little rooms carved out of rock. Incredible. Some rocks had two rooms inside. It is amazing. I can't even begin to imagine how long that must take to chisel out. One had a branch held up in a base of rocks on its roof. Flintstone TV in Bedrock City? As we were leaving the fairy village, Bruno backed off the road into a ditch when we were turning around. The back end of the little car hung off into space. Sharon and I got out and pushed the car back onto the road. When the cars are this small, we can practically lift them with one hand.
The next village over from Arbatax has the oldest olive tree on the island of Sardinia. The olive tree is huge and gnarled. It looks like it was on fire more than once and still it continues to grow. We drove to the top of a hill on a road that was so narrow, if someone had been driving up I don't know how we would have been able to back down. And if Bruno's little car had been any wider, it wouldn't have been able to make it up the road. There was a sheer cliff dropping away on one side of us and the steep mountain on the other side. Iole was nervous. She kept saying, "Oh, Bruno. Stop. Oh, Bruno. Bruno, back up!" And, having already witnessed Bruno's backing up skills on a level road, I was none too eager to have him demonstrate those skills on an impossibly steep mountain road with a huge drop off on one side. I was thinking, Keep going, Bruno, keep going. I don't want to back up on this road. Attaining the top, we had a great view of the Tyrrhenian Sea and surrounding Arbatax area. Bruno brought his binoculars. I scanned the pristine beach below with them, but I didn't see any topless women on the beach -- not one soul, as a matter of fact. Still a little cool to be on the beach in March. Which reminds me, I wore my shorts into Tortolli one day and got immensely stared at. Everyone is still bundled up with scarves and fur-lined parkas. I had on a shirt and shorts. It was "only" 20º C. Brrr. We had more pasta with wild asparagus. The Sardinians go out and pick it in swampy areas. Tasty. There's not much asparagus around this year, though. There hasn't been enough rain. I think one has to be quick, too -- everyone on the island of Sardinia seems to go out to pick wild asparagus. Nino asked us one day if we would like to go asparagus hunting with him. We declined his kind offer. He returned a couple of hours later, empty-handed, and said the only things he found were the cut stalks. Alas, he was too late. Another time Nino had us over for lunch. He made another specialty Italian dish that he had learned from his Sicilian friends. We also had some of Nino's famous sausage and coffee. This special sausage is only made in his area of Italy, and he brings it over on the ferry with him, so his Sardinian friends have started calling it "Nino's Sausage." Nino makes coffee in a special way, too (Italians are perfectionists when it comes to their coffee). Just as it is beginning to perk, he pours it into a mug with sugar and cream, and then he stirs like crazy to make a paste. The paste is then divided into the mugs and the coffee is poured in. It froths and makes a head on the coffee. Iole has been baking cakes like mad. She has been happy to have us cyclists around with our gargantuan appetites. So far my favourite is her coffee cake. Imagine. Before we starting cycling across Canada, Sharon and I didn't even drink coffee. Now that we've been cycle touring in Italy for three months, we're addicted! The cakes are delicious and I always eat too much. Wouldn't want it to go stale. Bruno works hard in the 'gym' everyday, which he is fond of calling the orchard. For several days he cut down cane. He uses some to hold up plants in the garden. The rest is stacked and burned. He cuts the cane stalks down every year because they block too much light in the garden. The cane is about 40 feet tall. In the summer, they tell us it is totally green. Right now, in March, it is a yellowish-brown. Bruno spends a lot of time grafting olive trees. He is doing about 200 of them. He will transplant the little olive tress at their other hillside property out of town. He cuts all the branches off and then lops the top off of the one to be grafted. The piece to be grafted on, about six inches from a good producing olive tree, and has its end shaved on one end. A V-shaped notch is cut into the little tree and the piece gets wedged into the notch. Some paste is applied and then the cut is bandaged to keep from drying out. He uses a wild olive tree for the base (it is supposed to be more resistant to diseases), and they use a domestic olive for grafting -- because it has bigger and better fruit. In between time, Bruno waters the orchard and garden, tills the soil, and picks oranges. The work is never done in the gym. Their garden is a year-round affair. But they grow different things at various times of the year. The garden grows all the types of vegetables that we grow in Canada, plus some that I've never heard of before such as falva beans and fenocci (which has a licorice-tasting root). They also grow these types of trees in their orchard: orange, lemon, grapefruit, banana, date, olive, pomegranate, plum, apple, cherry, and peach. The grapefruit are bigger than softballs but Bruno and Iole insist they are small. They tell us that the grapefruit used to get as big as watermelons before the devastating metre-high rain made the trees sick. Their oranges used to be the size of the grapefruit. We went to a market with Iole. There is nearly everything imaginable. A down jacket was very expensive and it didn't even look nice. I bought three pairs of new socks that are grey in colour with wool. Multi-purpose -- warm, and they dry fast, and, being a grey colour, they don't show dirt as easily as my white sports socks. Each evening we go over to Bruno and Iole's and watch TV. Usually CNN news, and Jay Leno, while chatting with Iole and Bruno. A blazing "orange" fire always crackles merrily in the hearth, occasionally sizzling a stream of water from a branch onto the floor. We have cycled 2100 kilometres (about 1300 miles) on Sardegna. We have seen lots of beautiful sights. It is hard to believe that all of them were on this tiny island. We certainly have enjoyed a variety of experiences on this bicycle tour. I mailed another roll of film home. I think it is my best work so far from our cycling trip, since it includes so many interesting people subjects. Sharon sent her journal, some postcards, and some souvenirs to remind us of Sardegna, along with our Sardinian map. It cost a small fortune for the postage and that was by snail mail. We had everything wrapped up in a large envelope. The woman at the post office wanted us to put it in a box. Iole questioned her why. The postal woman finally decided it was okay for us to send it in the envelope. But then the postal woman wanted us to send it via First Class mail for over double the price of snail mail. But Iole questioned her why again. Finally the postal woman agreed to send our envelope the way we wanted. On the way out of the post office, Iole told us that she has a friend who goes to the post office about three times a year to mail a parcel ... and every time she leaves the post office in tears. The postal workers are an intimidating militant lot. You are supposed to use special wrapping paper and bundle it all with a healthy dose of string. The whole nine yards. Literally and figuratively. We discovered why Iole and Bruno always have a fire going at their place. Our apartment stays cool during the day. So cool, I can see my breath. It makes the hot chocolate taste even better. We watch sunsets from our apartment's balcony. The apartment building is surrounded by mountains on three sides; the sea is on the fourth. We can see lights from villages twinkling up on the mountainside. After getting used to the rigors of cycle
touring, we're getting spoiled by staying at Bruno and Iole's.
We have washed our clothes three times since we got here, and
we've had numerous showers. Hot water is glorious. I haven't
been this clean on our bike tour for so long -- since I left
home, I'd have to say. I'm even beginning to get used to sleeping
without all my clothes on again. The ferry cost $101.60 for both of us, including our bikes. It is a twelve-hour ferry ride, back to the Italian mainland. The Italian ferries cost about half of what the French ferries cost. "Change your mind, Louie?" That was the last question I heard as I waited to board the ferry. They have been calling me Louie since they found out I thought that nearly everyone on Sardinia was named Louie. It wasn't until we had been cycle touring on Sardinia for nearly three months that Sharon told me it means "him." Which reminds me of a story: in the bar at the Santa Cristina sacred well, a guy was explaining to me that I have to watch Louie. They are waving their hands around. Later, they warn me to watch Giovanni and I thought they had told me his name was Louie. Confused, I point to the old fella. The guy telling me slaps my finger and admonishes me, "Don't point!" And this, in a country where their hand signals contain way worse lurid connotations than pointing. There were three guys drinking and they would each take turns telling us that we had to watch out for so-and-so. Then so-and-so would say that we have to watch out for the other guy. They didn't seem to trust one another. Anyway, it shouldn't be too long before we're bicycle touring on Italy's mainland. |
