Golfo di Orosei and Baunei

The beach that everyone photographs today did not exist before 1962. That year, after some of the most intense rainfall ever recorded on the island, water seeping into the limestone carved through the mountain until an entire wall collapsed into the sea: from the disaster came the white pebbles of Cala Goloritzé, and a rock pinnacle around 143 metres tall was left standing — the Aguglia, Monte Caroddi — pointing skyward like a natural bell tower. Beside it, the stone arch is all that remains of a sunken sea cave.

Your tour lead tells you the story up there, on the path descending from the Altopiano del Golgo, before the first gozzo arrives along the coast. When you put your feet in the water and look up at the Aguglia, you understand something the postcards never say: this turquoise is young, the mountain drew it in a single night of rain, and that is precisely why it deserves to be treated with respect.

In the 1980s, alpinists Mario Verin and Peppino Cicalò had an almost audacious idea: to link the coast of the Golfo di Orosei on foot by following the passages that charcoal-burners and shepherds had opened through the cliffs. So was born the Selvaggio Blu, around fifty kilometres from Pedra Longa to Cala Sisine, with abseils, ledges exposed above sheer drops to the sea and more than three thousand metres of total elevation change. It is considered the most demanding trek in Italy: not a path, but a crossing earned step by step.

We do not propose it to everyone, and we say so honestly. But we take you through its most beautiful stretches, with those who know every rock by heart, down to a small cove that no road can reach. When you descend a rock face and then, suddenly, the turquoise sea opens beneath your feet, sheepfolds and unreachable coves cease to be words: they become the only thing that exists, there, in front of you.