Carloforte escape

One of the best things about swimming in the ocean is that you sleep like a log that night, even if the mattress sucks.
One of the worst things about getting old is that you never get enough sleep, now I always wake up wanting to sleep at least 2 more hours.

We had to leave the room by 10, and as I said goodbye to the hotel owner, an old lady with huge teeth, she said to me: You know, you don’t look Spanish, you look Mexican. Whatever that means, what does a Mexican look like?

To her surprise, I am Mexican, she smiled. I have to show you something, come look at my bathroom, and in less than 2 minutes we were inside her bathroom while she pointed to all the things she brought from my country when she visited the Yucatan peninsula and Chiapas.

I smiled diplomatically trying my best to flash her a very authentic Mexican smile before leaving the BNB to have breakfast.
It’s tough to find a parking spot at the Carloforte pier but not impossible, if you’re patient. We always parked on the same spot, and this last time, a policeman was in front of us as we left the car. I told Dani that she should ask him if it was OK to park here, his answer? It’s not but it’s the summer and it doesn’t matter because people do whatever they want to in summer. Win!
We walked around Carloforte, finally seeing the town with sunlight, it was nice. I come from a beach town then city called Cancun, so, I know what it’s like to grow up in a tourist destination.
But Carloforte has its own flow, even though you can totally see who’s from there and who isn’t. Maybe it’s because the tourists were mostly Italian, but you could see the locals hanging out where the tourists were, and that was weird and comforting at the same time.
While I was having coffee, I told Dani that I wanted to eat cascà before I left.
Since Carloforte once was a part of Tunisia, there is a lot of Northern African influence in its food. Basically, cascà is like couscous, they even sound alike, but one has meat and the other one doesn't.
Yesterday I asked Giuseppe, the boat captain, where was the best place to eat it and he suggested a small restaurant called A Guaccia, but first we needed to know at what time we were gonna leave the island.
We bought our ferry tickets; Dani even took a picture of the boat schedule and we headed for some food after waiting at the caffe we were at for 90 minutes.

The cascá was amazing, simple food makes me happy, chlorophyll infusions with lemon scent are great but give me street food anytime. We were ready to go now that I had a full stomach only to find out that the boat was even more ready than we were, it was gone.
We have to wait 90 minutes for the next boat, Dani exclaimed with both surprise and anguish. Couldn't blame her because it was HOT, and this time we didn't have a boat to defy the sun. So, we came up with a plan B, drive around the island until it was time to leave.
The drive was quite nice, and we ended up passing some nice spots, nothing wrong with driving with the aircon on.
Had another coffee on the boat and soon we were up and running again. The plan was to go to a mine in Porto Flavia and then go back to Cagliari. The road to get there is full of curves that force you to drive carefully, but the views are outstanding.
This is really a beautiful island, and you realize it with your feet touching the sand or on a dangerous curve soaking up the views before focusing again on not killing yourself in one of those narrow lanes.
The mine visit also had killer views as well as horrible mannequins holding weird tools. The tour guide loved my shirt and had a Let it Go tattoo, so, she’s cool in my book.

To be honest, all mine tours are the same, they take you through a badly lit tunnel, tell you all the minerals they dug from there, tell you who had the idea to open the mine, when it closed and if there were any creepy accidents they let you know and suddenly everyone pays attention again. She hit all those topics.

In case you were wondering, only one human died in this mine, 1959, she even knew the name.

After the mine we drove back to Cagliari, the mini break was over, but I am sure as hell happy I asked for this time off work.Read more