Tom's big day out - June 12, 2025

Scott Farnsworth
Jun 11
6 min read

Updated: Jun 18

SUMMARY A day of mind boggling beauty! Rented a zodiac boat to cruise the Gulf of Orosei with birthday boy Tom serving as captain. Stunning coastline with many beautiful beaches in front of enormous cliffs. Lots of opportunities to anchor for a swim and picnic lunch. Very brisk, super clear water to swim in. Excellent dinner at Duepi. - Karen

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DETAIL We wake up today excited. It’s Tom’s Birthday! Today he turns XXXXX [redacted by authorities]. Despite it being Tom’s special day, he is the one who makes breakfast. We’re having scrambled eggs and cheese, Yum! Made with 12 eggs for the four of us, decadent and tasty. (Plus toast and fruit). After breakfast we get ready for our big day out boating. Tom will be captaining a rented boat.

We drive down and look for parking. We park illegally at first. Someone stops to ask if it’s OK that we park here. We say we don’t know but we don’t think so. Legal parking is identified by white paint outline (free) or blue paint outline (paid). We have neither, plus the X sign that means “No parking here!” So we’re pretty sure we’re illegally parked. We parked here because there are a dozen other illegally parked cars.

We’re not up for getting a ticket so we leave Tom and Cindy with our food and wine, towels and clothes. They hobble over to meet the guy from which they’re renting the boat. We drive off looking for parking. We see two ladies in slinky evening gowns (a bit odd for 10 am) and they’re lugging big suitcases to a car. It looks promising. Karen asks. No, they’re not leaving. We drive on.

Where the legal parking ends there’s some motorcycle parking, that has lots of room. We park there, well off the road. We’re illegal, but not THAT illegal. The car parked in front of us is really illegally parked. We’ll see. We go to meet back up with Tom and Cindy and shrug noncommittally when they ask if we found a good, legal parking spot.

Where we do the paperwork and money exchange for the boat is a big square with wooden booths all around the edges. It’s a great day with warm weather, light winds, and little surf, so perfect day for a boat ride. There’s a ton of places renting boats and many tons more people there to rent them. Tom researched this and picked the company with the nicer, slightly longer boats.

The lady behind the counter goes a mile a minute, in heavily accented English, tellings us what to do, what not to do, where to go, when to go, and when to be back. There’s 100 things to know and remember. A big marker for where we can go or can’t are the boo-yeahs. She keeps talking about boo-yeahs and I don’t follow her, until I gather she’s saying “bouys”.

We’re guided to our boat by the boss-man, a young, tan, tatted guy, who shows Tom all the dos and don’t for operating the boat. There’s lots of repetition. Tom probably didn’t need all this information, but it’s good. Finally we motor out, our guide drives our boat to where his boat is tied up, and he’s in his boat.

Free at last we motor down the coast, to the far end, maybe an hour away. Along the way we pass this beach (known as a cala here) or that point. They all have names and characteristics. This is a UNESCO world heritage site and understandably. There are tall cliffs of rocks rising out of the water pretty much the whole way. The come and go, but behind them are always more mountains and cliffs. In Yosemite these would be revered, like Half Dome or El Capitan, but here they’re just rock cliffs, but they have beautiful, clear water at their base.

We could motor ashore but it’s a hassle and we’re find anchoring and swimming. We don’t do that until we’re at the very far end of the series of beaches. Everywhere there are other boats anchored or arriving or leaving. We have an anchor, too, and we use it. It’s all manual. You lower it hand over hand and later raise it back up using the same technique. We’re not supposed to drop the anchor anywhere but into sand. If we drop it into rocks it may get wedged and stuck, and then we’d be out the cost of an anchor and rope.

Where we swim the water is nice and cool but not cold. We dive in or slink in down the impossibly narrow ladder. We each have a life preserver which we use as a float. After some dives and some pictures we settle in. The pink wine is broken out and Tom and Cindy toast Tom’s birthday today, bobbing in the water. The girls had made sandwiches earlier in the day and we devoured those, and our chips, with gusto.

The rest of the day is spent swimming or motoring around. It’s relaxing and fun. Having motored to the end of the series of beaches we work our way, slowly, back to our village and pier. In all we’re out there five or six hours and we keep ourselves in the shade or covered in safe sun screen. By the end of the day we’re beat but Tom’s able to get the boat back just outside the marina where we’re met by the owner. He knows when his boats are heading home and gets ferried out to meet them. He gets them refueled (with us onboard and paying for that) and he inspects the boat. No missing cushions or broken bambini cover. Alls good and he lets us off. We schlep our stuff back to the car and are delighted to find no one, including us, got a parking ticket.

We head for home when Tom declares “crap, I didn’t pay for the boat… they still have my deposit!” We head back and get that resolved and THEN we again head for home. Back where we’re staying we all shower and soap off the salty ocean water that’s dried on our skin and in our hair. Cleaned up we to the daily happy hour ritual, though this time with champagne, in honor of Tom’s birthday.

Since the free shuttle only runs til 8 we end up walking down town for dinner. It being a special occasion we splurge and go to Due Pi, which is a Pizzeria Restaurante, as they all are. This one’s more fancy. We have a half carafe of both red and pink wine (2/3’rds of a regular bottle), and a pizza or pasta or salad for each of us. That plus the Copper (cost just to sit that you always pay) and the water comes out to 27 euros per person. Ridiculously cheap.

Again we walk the twenty plus minutes walk uphill to our home for the night. We all agree it has been a very good, if tiring, day.

Photos

12 egg omelet, er scramble with cheese. Also fruit, bread, juice, coffee.

We did find parking, albeit illegal. It's for motorcycles and we're a car, and we're into the street, but we have our fingers crossed. So many illegally parked cars in town.

So many places renting boats, we're thinking that the water's going to be busy.

Finally on the water. Moving quickly we have to have to cover (bimini) down. You can tell it's not a huge boat. Cindy's up front and Karen and I are in the back.

But we're happy to be out on the water, in the sunshine, with the wind blowing through what hair I still have.

So many rules we have to follow. We have to stay 100 meters from the shore, and for sure no venturing into the grottos. Here one boat just checked out this grotto and another is about to.

There are lots of boats our size and smaller. And many big party boats, ferrying people to the various beaches. It's a good day to be out.

Besides the beauty of the water and beaches (and grottos) there's just the massive rock cliffs rising up out of the sea.

Captain Tom dutifuly checks out the water temperature and deems it perfect for swimming. We doff our outter wear and jump in. He's right.

It being Tom's birthday we toast with pink wine. Tom and Cindy are already in the water so that's where the wine is delivered.

After a long four or more hours we head back to the marina. The boat owner meets us in open water and takes over piloting the craft back in to the gas station.