Pigs, Sheep and Cougars. Oh My!

700 photos and 2 days later we returned from yet another amazing weekend trip into the countryside. We left for a 3 hour bus ride to the east-central part of the Sardegna where we stopped in the town of Nuoro to visit a traditional clothing museum. Due to the remoteness of the region the villages maintained much of their cultural traditions as compared to other areas of the island where you can see much more foreign influence from past invaders. They said that the shepherd communities of the area tended to have a much more self-sufficient mentality than many other areas of Sardegna and that it has traditionally always been more matriarchal due to the men always being out with the herds. 

We then went to the outskirts of the neighboring town, Orgosolo where we ate lunch with "shepherds.” They shared smoked meat and cheese with us in addition to sheep potatoes and roasted pork. We noticed that they were very generous when pouring wine which got the large group of elderly Italians very excited to meet us. The shepherds then sang to us with their throat singing quartet and had most of us dancing. We then went into the town of Orgosolo where people come from all over to paint political graffiti all over the place. 

The class loaded back onto the bus to make the last leg of the trip to our resting place for the night at Hotel Enis Monte Maccione in Oliena. It is a bed and breakfast halfway up a mountain with a driveway consisting of 18 switchbacks. When we arrived there was an hour and a half until dinner would be ready so we decided to burn off our lunch and go for a hike up to a promontory on the side of the mountain. It ended up being a 3 mile round trip hike with an approximate and eight hundred foot climb. We took some amazing photos of the countryside below us and then managed to make it back in time for dinner. This time sheep and rabbit was on the menu for dinner and I discovered that I really like rabbit meat. A group of us then woke up at 5 AM the next morning to do the same hike again in hopes of catching the sunrise where we once again got excellent photos of the valley below. 

After breakfast we drove out of the mountains to the Gulf of Orosei. We went on a boat ride down the coast to visit some of the natural caves that were produced from the groundwater running through the limestone. One of the caves we were in stretched for 8km and we walked on path for a kilometer into it to see the interface where the freshwater meets the saltwater. The boat then took us further down the coast to two different beaches that could only be accessed from the coast. We were able to relax and enjoy our lunch while we lounged on the white pebble beaches. We truly live a very tough life down here on our beautiful island!