June 2007 - State Road 125, Sardinia - Driving to the East Coast

This wonderful drive on the Orientale Sarda Road, running down the whole east coast of Sardinia, through exotic landscape may have been our most unique experience in Sardinia. The 39 mile drive winds on a road carved out of the rock by coal miners in the 1800s.First, the gray, granite mountains jut out of an arid, almost desert landscape that is covered in a dark green bush and dusty, clay soil.
Sharp granite rocks protrude from the mountainside and from a distance, clusters of these rocks look like small towns in the valley.
Behind us, you can see the eastern peaks of the Gennargentu National Park and the Flumineddu river valley.
Second, the roads are mainly deserted and thus under the dominion of farm animals. We could not believe how often we had to stop to let cows, sheep, goats and even pigs cross the street.

This young bull was not so thrilled that we were crossing through "his" property. His aggressive walk scared us a bit since we were in a tiny little car nicknamed Smurfette (as you may remember from previous blog entries).

The oddest of our animal experiences occurred as a mother pig brought her 3 piglets across the street. We noticed that this was a rather dangerous stretch of road and the little ones were not in a hurry to get across. So we stopped and scared them across.