Off Sardinia, an Island With Wilder Shores
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IT was half an hour after sunset in Sant'Antioco, one of the most undeveloped corners of Sardinia, and we were lost. I had driven out of the ancient Ligurian fishing port of Calasetta minutes earlier, following a strip of asphalt that dipped and rose through empty grassland and Mediterranean scrub. Quickly, the paved road leading south along the sea petered out, and my two sons and I found ourselves on a dirt path barely wide enough for our car.
The rocky Mediterranean coast, our only orientation point, disappeared; a dilapidated farmhouse was the only sign of human habitation. I plunged farther down the path, scraping the sides of the rented GM Aveo against a jungle of thorn bushes, spinning my tires over sand. I searched in vain for an outlet to turn around as the last light dribbled away. "It's going to be dark in about 10 minutes," my 8-year-old reminded me. "Do you have any idea where you are?"
"Max," I said, trying to conceal my nervousness, "don't worry. We're not lost."
In fact, it's hard to lose one's way for long on Sant'Antioco, a speck of an island connected to Sardinia's southwestern corner by a milelong causeway. Before darkness descended I managed to backtrack and rejoin the right tarmac road skirting the coast to our rented farmhouse. But the episode was a reminder of what had brought me to Sant'Antioco in the first place: its isolation, simplicity and wildness.
These days Sardinia may be best known as the site of Villa Certosa, Silvio Berlusconi's seaside palace, complete with fake volcano, where the Italian prime minister allegedly indulges in Bacchanalian revels with a bevy of very young women. Sant'Antioco is the antithesis of that celebrity playground: a tranquil backwater, with two quaint ports, a smattering of ruins dating back to pre-Roman times, sweeping Mediterranean savannah, the region's most unspoiled beaches, and little else.
Its spotty cellphone coverage and absence of English -- even the staff at the tourist information center in the main village, also named Sant'Antioco, could barely utter a word -- impart a pleasant feeling of detachment from our increasingly interconnected, homogenized and globalized world.
Sant'Antioco may be lacking in glamour, but it is rich with history. The island has been populated since prehistoric times, and, in the eighth century B.C., began to play a key role on Mediterranean trade routes developed by the Phoenicians. The Romans occupied the island in 238 B.C., and constructed temples, viaducts and an artificial isthmus linking Sant'Antioco -- then called Sulci -- to the mainland. Sant'Antioco reached its apogee in the early Christian era, when it became an Episcopal seat and a pilgrimage site for devotees of St. Antiochus, a Mauritanian-born Christian martyr who was condemned in the second century by the Romans to work the lead mines on the island that now bears his name, and who was executed in A.D. 127.
First Published March 27, 2010 2:01 am
