Part III - Isola di San Pietro - Carloforte

“I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself”

- Maya Angelou


We drank in the town of Carloforte like a cold beer on a hot day. It was amazingly beautiful and we knew we had to stay. Giddy with excitement, we skipped over to the tourist Information office and began our inquiry with a sentence involving, “Parla Inglese?”
“No,” the woman said, shaking her head, “Italiano”. We decided to take this as a good sign, and pressed on with, “We would like to rent a house or apartment in this city for one week or two week or many month. Yes? Where to go for this please?” She marked a spot on our map a few blocks away, and we walked along the main cobbled thoroughfare, Via Settembre, past lovely 2- and 3-story “mixed-use” pastel-colored buildings with shops on the ground floor and housing with shutters and wrought iron balconies above. We found the rental agency, which was also a combination phone store, lottery center and a few other services I didn’t understand. We were greeted by the proprietress, a cheerful, big boned woman with a great smile. She listened to us very patiently, as we sputtered and butchered one Italian sentence after another, using lots of hand gestures and pantomime, and frequently consulting our Italian dictionary. We were grateful for her calm demeanor and simple questions. As long as she spoke to us in very slow basic sentences, as one would to an imbecile, we managed to comprehend a fair amount of what she said. She then sat down and pecked at her computer for a few minutes, made some phone calls in typical rapid-fire Italian, and then finally managed to explain to us that only one place was available now. She pointed to a spot on the map, several kilometers from town. We were mildly disappointed, since we’d hoped to find an apartment in the centro, but it didn’t seem like we had much choice. She showed us some pictures of the rental on her computer (which unfortunately enhanced our disappointment) but she assured us it was “molto tranquillo” (very tranquil). We drove out to the place, expecting the worst, but were surprised when we drove up to a 2-story stand-alone house, much like a Mexican hacienda, with white washed walls, green shutters, terra cotta roof, and climbing, riotously pink bouganvilla.. If we stood on tiptoe, we could see a sliver of ocean from the wide, white-tiled drive-around patio in front. As we toured the large, fairly modern 4-bedroom house, we were happy to see there were also views of the ocean from an upstairs bedroom and the bathroom. We weren’t sure how we felt about being a car ride away from the “paese” (village of Carloforte), but we were relieved to finally have a kitchen and a place to unpack our suitcases. We paid for the week, stocked the house with food, and happily settled in. It wasn’t our dream house, as it had that annoying quality of being spacious yet feeling cramped, but over the next few days we came to appreciate the quiet freedom and privacy of living in a stand-alone house just outside the village. We could walk outside naked if we wanted to (and we did).
We made good use of the enormous patio with nightly games of World Cup-inspired soccer, and Jeff even took the opportunity to teach Jenna how to steer the car. I cut fresh herbs from the tiny garden to enhance our delicious dinners—hardy thyme, mint, fennel and rosemary. We even picked a few lemons from the lemon tree, though it may have “technically” been planted in the neighbor’s yard..
There was an outdoor kitchen/pizza oven where Jeff learned how to barbeque the Italian way: on a wobbly metal grate, under which he built a fire of brickettes and wood.
Speaking of lighting fires, one evening we lit some candles on the dining room table at dinnertime. We left them burning while we went out to the kitchen to clean up, and when we returned a few minutes later, the dining room table had somehow caught fire! We screamed and instantly doused it with water, but the fire had already burned a hole through the tablecloth, and left a black circle on the wood table. Mortified, embarrassed, having no way to fix it and no way to reach the owner, we later wrote a note and left a fair amount of money. I’d misplaced our Italian dictionary, so we kept the note pretty simple. It said: “Thank you for the house. We are sorry, VERY sorry with the table. We have a problem with hot. We would like to pay for this problem. Here is money. Telephone us for more money. Here is our phone numbers.”
Anyway, when we weren’t at the house, starting fires, walking around naked, teaching Jenna to drive or stealing lemons we explored the town of Carloforte and the island of Isola di San Pietro.. We’d travelled through so many new towns in the previous week, that for the first few days we kept asking each other, “What is the name of this place, again?”
On the east side of the island is the town of Carloforte, the only town on the island. On the south side are sandy beaches, rocky coves, and calm tourquoise water. The north and west sides are more dramatic, with bigger sea swells and ragged cliffs. The entire island is mountainous, but the terrain changes dramatically, looking one minute like a Sauvie Island field of dry grass, Queen Anne’s Lace and wild fennel, to a rich green Central Oregon pine grove with surrounding black rocky cliffs, to a desolate Arizona cactus grove, to a Mexican hillside with whitewashed cottages and palm trees.
We discovered that the island “Isola de San Pietro” was named after Saint Peter who, legend has it, was marooned here during a storm on the way to Karalis (now Cagliari).
The island has an interesting history. The king of Sardinia donated Isola di San Pietro to the people of Tabarka who lived on a tiny island near Algeria. Since the Tabarkans were originally from Genoa, they brought their Ligurian customs, traditions and speech when they colonized Isola di San Pietro and founded Carloforte in 1738. For years, the island was highly sought after (fishing, agriculture, climate, beauty—the works) and in 1798 a group of hoodlums came and carted off 800 residents as slaves, hoping to take over the island. Luckily, the slave people were returned in 1803 few years later (due to some serious pressure from Napolean) but the townspeople were freaked out, and convinced the king to build a wall for their protection. A wall was then built on a ridge above the sea, surrounding the entire village. By 1876, though, everyone had relaxed and decided it might be nice to live a little closer to the ocean, so they tore down half the wall and extended the village right up to the seafront. Half the wall is still visable today.
The village is designed well, with narrow alleys and an abundance of thriving shops and restaurants. We soon found a bookstore, a theater, pescherias (fish shops), macellerias (meat shops), pollerias (poultry shops), fresh pasta shops, pasticcerias (pastries), a beauty shop, a wine shop and several clothing stores. Jenna was especially excited to find the candy store, pet shop, toy store, DVD rental store and an abundance of gelatorias.
Several piazzas are scattered here and there, but the most central, pedestrian-only piazza has 4 enormous Ficus trees in each corner, with circular benches built around them to offer shade and a place to sit and talk, which is important because Italians LOVE to talk. Except during siesta, the piazza is generally lively, with adults sitting and talking and children running around in packs, yelling, kicking soccer balls, laughing and darting into the candy store for more fuel
Days passed in a lazy haze…I’d wake up, look outside at the robins egg blue sky, gaze out my bedroom window at the Sardinian sea, drink coffee, make Swedish pancakes for Jenna, pack a lunch, go to the beach, swim, read, explore the village, take Jenna out for gelato, pick up groceries, make dinner, listen to Jenna beg for more gelato, hang out, go to bed.
Despite the fact that the island is rather small (just 11K wide and 15K. long) and doesn’t offer the amazing plunging and summiting bike rides that Jeff had grown to love in Liguria, we all soon began to fall hard for Carloforte and decided to stay. We checked back at the rental office to inquire about longer term rentals (since we could only stay in the house we were in for a week), but after days of checking she told us the entire town was booked up in the month of August. She showed us pictures of a few small, expensive, dreary apartments that were available for other months, but nothing that we even liked.
Then, one day on a bike ride just outside of town, Jeff found an “affitasi” (for rent) sign beside an ancient stone house. He scribbled down the information, and later that day took Jenna and I to see it. Through the closed, sliding gate we could only see the back of the house, but it looked promising, and might even have a “vista mare” (sea view). We weren’t even sure if it was a stand-alone house, or shared and we had no idea how much it cost, but Jeff finally convinced me to call the phone number. Let’s just say that conversing in Italian is hard enough in person, but talking on the phone is MUCH harder. Talking on the phone is immediate and literal. At least in person, I can use hand gestures and hold up my fingers in a gesture of, “Okay, wait, wait while I think of a word”. (Plus, Jeff says that even in English, my communication skills require elaborate hand gestures). I stood in the middle of the quiet road, looked at the house, and dialed the numbers. A woman answered and I blurted out something in Italian like “My name is Tracie. I am American. I only speak a little Italian. I’m sorry. I see the for-rent house here. I am here. I like the for-rent house. Is house okay to rent for me and for my husband and for my little girl child please?” Again, I was amazed by her patience, and after stumbling around for several minutes, by some miracle we were able to communicate enough basic words to arrange a meeting at the house the following day at 11. At least that’s what I thought we’d agreed to, but I honestly couldn’t be sure.
The next morning, we drove out to the house and met Rafaella, her husband Salvatore and their 8-year old daughter Sara. We immediately fell in love with the house, its cool tile floor, exposed wood beam ceiling and stone walls. It’s called a “barraca” which is one of the typical, original stone structures built on the island. It’s tiny (about 14x16), but has been recently renovated and has a tight, efficient feel like a well-designed cabin. On the main floor is a combination kitchen, dining room and living room, as well as bathroom with shower, bidet and washing machine. Then up an open staircase is a comfortably-sized loft bedroom with old armoire and small casement window.
But the most wonderful thing of all about the house is the “vista mare”. From its position, up high on a bluff above the village, we looked out across the bamboo slat-covered front patio, past the daisies, rosemary, and outdoor “kitchen” with barbeque, past the field of scrub grass, and just beyond the ancient pine and olive trees and could see a large slice of the vast Sardinian sea. We wanted this place bad.
We asked if the house was available until November, and they explained that it was, except for the entire month of August. Oh well, we wanted it anyway. The next day, we met again and managed to work out a very reasonable rental arrangement.
We moved in a few days later and now proudly have a place to call home. Except for the month of August. Which we’ll figure out later.

NEXT UP: Life on a tiny island off the coast of Sardinia