Lost in the sauce of Sardinia

Sheep. Humid and cold. Cliffs. Highliners & Hippies. Ghost towns. Sardines for lunch in a plastic bowl with olive oil. White sand beaches. Uncomfyness. Sleep? No. Quiet roads. Colourful towns. Rainbows and flamingos. You guessed it, Sardinia!

The night before I left for my biketrip, my friends and I met at Drummond beach on Saltspring and had a campfire. We threw freshly fallen leaves into the flames and set intentions for the upcoming winter. Everyone said “calm, quiet, peaceful, stillness.”  I hucked three in and asked for adventure, movement and chaos. I love my friends and I hope their fire wishes are coming true because mine sure are. 

Sardinia was like an acid trip. The first half dreamy and sweet and the second half a tensioned nightmare. Sometimes you can really feel when you are on an island, especially if you are “stuck” on one (I only found after arriving the next ferry to leave was in three weeks.) But It’s not Sardinia’s fault. I kept getting lost in the sauce. I was challenged not by biking (I’m getting stronger!) but by the people I was meeting and my capacity to stay in tune with myself and my heart. (More on this L8r). 

At this time of year Sardenia is quiet roads without cars passing or honking, towns so dead there’s not even a bar with a cappuccino to be found - which is unheard of for Italy. But a sardenian is quick to tell you: it’s not Italy. And really I agree, it feels like a different country. With their own langauge: “Sarde” and own sets of laws and governing. In the last election the rest of Italy went right, and sardenia chose far left.  It doesn’t feel like every square inch is inhabited, and many people choose seclusion to their farmlands. For example, an older man asked my friend what the next town 15 minutes away was like…he’d never been. There are more sheep than people, and when we rode by they ran away screaming, followed by protective white dogs lunging towards us through the fence. 

My greatest longing on my trip so far has been to find fellow bikepackers. my prayers were answered on the ferry over! I was no longer an “i” and became a “We”. Team Fumé we called ourselves, along with 3 kind and silly French bikepackers. Khloe (Nante) who has dedicated the last seven years of her life to activism, and on our trip out of the goodness of her heart, was often taking phone calls with a young man from Africa who’s trying to get his work visa papers in order and kloe is helping him figure it all out/translating. Echnico (og from Basque Country) was in a rap group and trip DJ. He lives in an anarchist makeshift community in France where he grows vegetables and is a very genuine person. Robin (Clermont-Ferrand). Robin is also 29, our birthdays are one month apart and we left on our bike trips on the same day. I often felt like we were mirroring each other when we swapped stories while biking side by side. Both of us perhaps trying figure out the same thing: how to trust ourselves. Echnico and Kloe have been biking for 7 months and taught me so much. Like how to handle the dogs who are actually more scared of you, get tall and big on your bike and stop if they don’t stop, it’s the movement thats freaking them out. (Worked every time). They taught me to be more prepared and plan. Everyday before meeting them the sun would be quickly dying and I’d be just figuring out where to sleep, waiting for the supermarket to open back up and trying to find water. They bought their dinner needs in the AM and filled their waters up before they totally ran out and taught me through action how to find wild camping spots and how to have campfires. (Plus honestly a million other little things everyday). I felt a little chaotic in comparison, similar to how I felt at 18 on my first trip, like who let this child lose out in the world? Me. It was me. 

We all couldnt believe how easy It felt to travel together, like ducks in a row through hibernating towns with street art depicting farming scenes. Stopping at bars when the rain poured extra hard. I think we were an equal amount of chill, not worried so much about stopping and starting and changing up our routines. We talked while we rode had fires when we stopped and took turns cooking for eachother and navigating and choosing sites to see. Like waterfalls, lakes, castles and flamingos! Most have migrated south to Africa at this time (I can see why- I was freezing the entire time) but some stayed, and they moved like small ostriches in the water and wow’d me when they opened their wings and showed off their hot pink feathers like cool Avril Lavigne loving punk rock birds. Now thats a pack I’d like to join, if I wasn’t already apart of team fumee. 

(Bathroom at Conad) 

I really can’t stress enough how much I underestimated Camping in Europe in December and how cold it’s been. It’s a wet cold that I feel through my -6 sleep bag at night. We hit much rain, where my amigos adorned themselves with the right gear from booties to rain mitts, rain slacks and jackets. They all looked at me shocked when all I had was my new rain coat and holes in my shoes. 

I found it really comical how every time we showed up to a spot we instantly exploded there. Our gear laid out everywhere, like our tents and towels jackets and tarps, all out within moments in small towns with men smoking and nursing their morning beers with a sparkle in their crinkled eyes at the sight of us. We were changing clothes outside grocery stores, speaking French, Italian, and Spanish, playing music from a passed around speaker and joking all day long. It was only together that made the rain, what we deemed “Robin roads” (fallen apart roads scaling up mountains that meant pushing bikes) (after he navigated us down one too many), the cold weather, it was all doable and even fun because we were adventuring together. 

After a few days we ended up in a fishing village with wind blowing so hard it was comical. We exploded into the house we rented trying desperately to dry every single thing we owned. Robin played the guitar with my Crayola pencil and hair tie as a capo, I told him about singing Bohemian Rapsody with Brando on a stage at Mount Versuvius and he strummed the cords telling me to sing  “this ones for you!”. The house had no heat and we were all bundled up. After playing some card games, I asked everyone what is your most ridiculous item was? Enicho and kloe made us laugh hard after pulling item after item of ridiculousness from their bags, a collection of dead bugs, a karaoke microphone, a tambourine, a clarinet (which kloe played Emilien Veret and wow’d my soaking wet socks off) a feather bowa, five books, a whole pharmacy and basically a bike shop from their bags, PLUS Knick knacks and gifts from the people they met along their journey from France to Greece. 

The next day the rain stopped and we decided to ride into the wind, so far Sardenia had been flat point and we took to the mountains, into brilliant cliffs and luscious rolling hills of wild horses and donkeys. Night was falling, the sun dying, the humidity climbing with us, and the rian decided to join in and my hands were almost as pink as the flamingos and my body shook. So when a 70 year old man in a pickup stopped and told us we could sleep at his house, we were in, down for an experience of staying with a local. We threw two of our bikes in the cab and the other two held onto the back as Mickey drove us to the his farm in middle of nowhere. As he drove us I noticed stickers along his dash depicting rock climbing and highlining. I met a girl in Sicily who told me that if I went to Sardinia I had to find this famous community of highliners and I had asked a kloe on the ferry over if she knew about it and she had to google what highlining even was. We arrived in the dark to his home, where his headlights illuminated the mix of mud and farm poo his little home and a barn full of 20 highliners from around the world who call his place “bounce land” and work all summer in order to spend their winters there. We had found the highlining oasis after all. 

Completely unexpected and random, for us and for them, they kept being confused as to why we didn’t want to highline, why wouldn’t you want to dangle in a grotto in front of some of the world’s best?! (its basically impossible to stand your first times and takes a lot of practice).They kept telling us biking is more dangerous (probably true) and that they were impressed by our strength. Watching them was like going to the circus, every person in their happy place and personal styles on the line with a giant boombox that flowed music into the valley of a stunning backdrop of cliffed rolling hills. “Van life” stoners, kind hippies, digital nomads, half of them from Italy, all of them stoked on highlining, it felt like they were pedalling a religion each day pressing us, “tomorrow you will try. Just sign the waiver!” I feel bad almost to admit that I wasn’t enjoying being there. The first night we arrive we slept in the mechanical shop on the concrete floor, out of the rain, but the mud-poo was on over my clothes and now my tent, the cats kept eating my small supply of food, and Mickey the old man told everyone I was his Canadian girlfriend and kept grabbing my waist and kissing me 3x on the cheek every morning, to which often I’d go the wrong direction and be full on kissing the guy all before 7 am. I found later i was the only person he was letting use his bathroom and shower, I had no idea tbere were separate ones outdoors we were meant to use…Donkeys, pigs and chickens and dogs called out all night long. Everyone was kind but also hard to connect to fully, I got tired after the first two hours of being there of talking about highlining. Which was too bad for me because almost all conversational routes led there. There was an indoor area with a fire and old blankets hung up to makeshift a warm box but it too was dirty and mud-poo covered, the place just felt really gross and my comfort levels again were tested. 

Robin left to head to Corsica and back to France to suprise a friend for their birthday and we stayed because there was a pizza party. (The best homemade pizza ive ever had made by a German named Yoshi). At the party they pushed, why were we leaving? Many any of them expressing they were sad we were leaving and I kept questioning  why I was even there in the first place? Especially after hearing about it so many times…what did it all mean? (I was re-reading the alchemist and re-learning of looking out for omens along the journey). I never really found an answer or maybe didn’t stick around long enough to find it, the next morning I powered up and out of there, waving goodbye to everyone having breakfast in the mud and we headed to some natural hotsprings where I dunked my tent and psyche in the warm waters rinsing the strange few days off. 

It was at the hotsprings where another French man came over and broke the news to me about there only being a ferry either the next day (the 10th) or in 10 days time (the 19th) I felt panicked… was this another omen?! Here he was telling me, with a ride if I needed it! I thought no, I hadn’t seen anything I had wanted too yet and leaving tomorrow felt too fast. Then in came my logical brain persisting, but you only have less than a month to make it to Morroco if you don’t go now! Logic warned. Kloe gave me a coin to flip. The French man had a whole day and a half to make the 30 minute drive to Porto Torres, yet he impationantly sat there, tapping his foot, waiting for me, not saying to take a minute or give me some space and it was actually him who made my decision, I didn’t want to spend 12 hours on a ferry with this guy and after all that I returned to what I had always known and said finally” Thanks but I’m staying.” Proudly. I had made a decision. 

“Ok, bye.” He said and 180’d quick and left. 

I am terrible at making decisions. I take a long time and worry i’m making the wrong choice. I often think I don’t know what I want but I’m learning I do know, I just don’t trust the knowing yet.  I think thats what this journey, specially this Sardenian leg was here to show me, either way things continued downhill for me from there. 

I was answering the question every morning to my friends as they scrambled eggs and I made coffee, “did you sleep well?”, “No.” Day after day. Too cold to sleep. 

“Find a wind down routine!” A friend suggested from back home but it’s hard to wind down when you are in survival mode, when the sun sets at 4 and by 7 it’s too cold to be out of a sleeping bag, and the days started to have a monotony of survival to them. Eat. pack up tent, bike, find water, shelter, courage, food, eat, set up tent, sleep. 

We decided it was time to “vamos a la playa” and we biked our way to the coast, through steep kilometers  of “Robin roads” with cows who’s sweet eyes bulged when they saw us despite being 4 x our size. I finally saw thick trees, the first real forests i had seen in all of Italy (“not Italy”) and we ended up in the charming town of Bosa, with colourful winding streets, long stretches of beach and natural swimming pools in the sea and mountains to climb. By this point I wasn’t feeling like myself, I felt wavy and scattered and was losing things, including the pad of my thumb, which got pinched off when I used my hand to put down my kickstand on a beautiful cliffs edge. If I knew how to cry (another thing I’m working on) I would have but I was so shocked I didn’t made a sound. Eniko told me my reaction was so weird and used a rolling paper as a tensor bandage and it worked like a charm, he told me the closest hospital was 50k’s away and that he felt it was a good idea I bike ahead and check if I need stitches. So we parted ways and I powered up the mountains faster than I thought I knew how to. The ride was the most beautiful bike ride of my life. Magical with red rock to my right and green little hills that stopped abruptly and turned into white rocked cliffs hovering above the turquoise sea all along a 

 paved road to all to myself. I arrived to Alghero, a bigger city than I thought and quite shocking after being so rural for so long and in the end I didnt need stitches, it was wide but not deep. I chose a beach just outside the city to sleep at *never a good call on the weekend* and tucked myself into a little cave. At midnight three men in their van parked right on top of my cave, smoking and yapping so loudly their voices became distinct and separate and I pictured them smoking in their steaming van, with paperboycaps on, these three stooges having a wild Saturday night until finally I heard them start their van, or try too, the battery had died and it was now 4 am and another night passed where myself and the stooges went unslept. 

More rain was set to come and Kloe found us a Warmshowers near Porto Torres the port town where we needed to be to catch our long awaited ferry. This was where we had planned to meet back up as they expressed they wanted some alone time. I felt sad at first, alone for the first time in awhile, but I pulled myself up by my brand new waterproof shoes and had an incredible day, riding around Capo Caccia, a famous cliff with a church on top that reminded me of Percé Rock in Gaspésie. It was a hard bike ride up a hill that when I got to the top found out it’s not a church but a military base that you can’t actually access… Zuut Alors! Luckily the panoramic spot a ways down was very cool and made up for it. 

(A google image to show the cliff I tried cycling up and was denied access) 

After that I rode to some eligible camp spots, determined to find a good one and make my team proud and thats when I rode into Davide. A strikingly beautiful Italian boy. He had just bought a bike on marketplace for 50 euros, strapped all his heavy bags to it and was biking to Olbia, on the opposite north east side of the island so he could get back to Abruzzo for Christmas. When I found him he was talking to a man in a grey van, and Davide left to go get something he had forgetton and the man asked me if I wanted some free milk, I said sure and he said told I was “super warm” and I said “no, no pretty cold!” He repeated himself, “super…warm…” I shivered and demonstrated I was cold and finally realized he was telling me “superwoman.” Davide came back and the man clapped him on the shoulder, my bambini! Said his father. We all smiled at eachother in the setting sun and Davide said he was just starting to bike now and asked if I wanted to join. I asked where he was planning on going and he said 3 hours away, despite night falling, and he didn’t have food, other than lentils, or water. 

We ended up going down a broken path in the dark to the beach, one you could actually see from the cliff we met on but was challenging to get too. We had the beach to ourselves and explored the leftover Spanish castles, talking about art and you’ll never guess what else…high-lining. Davide also partakes and studied circus’ing in Spain. It felt really good to be breaking my nightly routine. We made lentils and cooked some veggies and I I told him about “Art for Action” a group I started with my friend Kassia on Saltspring, a place for artists to work on projects in a collaborative space while discussing climate change and how art can be in protest. But he didn’t respond, he shut down and stopped talking, I asked if he was okay, and he said “I’m just coming back to the present moment” and without another word went to bed. I felt confused and went for a walk on the soft beach. Where several shooting stars shot passed, so large they looked like cars overtaking along the Milky Way. 

The next day the thunderstorms were rolling in and I asked our Warmshowers host if Davide could join us. Davide and I had a slow morning, the weirdness from last night gone with the sun and we sat in his tent looking at one another’s sketch books. Before we left I took a “bath” in the ocean, and Davide dry shaved half his beard on the beach without a mirror or water and could only get  half the job done. 

We biked towards La Cote and the silver van pulled out from a driveway, Davides father was waiting and they spoke in Italian, I can’t speak the language but I can definitely read body language and it was tense. His dad looked at me at the end like I was a wild woman stealing his son away and he gestured with an arm towards the road saying, “okay.” We biked the next hour in silence, fast. Eventually Davide said his dad was anxious and concerned about him, and in a way I was beginning to see why, especially after he told me he didn’t have a tent until his dad went and bought him one. 

We got to Christians (the warmshower) and it was four trailers scattered along a rolling hill with an outdoor kitchen surrounded by glass with a white rocked floor. There was a park with jagged cliff peaks and a waterfall right next door. A fire was roaring when we showed up next to a pizza oven. Christian showed me to a trailer with a single cot he said we could share, there was an outdoor shower with no water at this time of year, and the compost toilet. Christian was around 50 years old, an argentian with a big personality who smoked a lot of weed. He had biked from Ushuaia to Seattle and told a story long and slow, taking up space and setting a pace that made you listen. It was clear he immediately did not like Davide, taking in his half shaved face and bike set up and it was clear Davide immediately felt uncomfortable around Christian. Davide’s whole personality began to concave into itself but despite that he asked if we could have a pizza night. Christian slowly said “Yes, okay… but it takes 3 hours to fire the oven. I have a gluten allergy so I will not be partaking and please, be very careful.” Christian and I talked a lot and he said he wasn’t happy here anymore and was waiting for the journey to move him along. He had some wild stories from his biking days and he too asked what ridiculous items we carried around, and which were the most useful. I said mine was my journal, irreplaceable and the thing I use the most. We ate the pizza at 11 pm, somehow the guy had pulled it all together, despite not knowing how to start a fire, and we all went to bed planning to do a deeper clean in the morning when we could see. That night we slept cuddled up on the cot, he was a physically affectionate person from the first moment I met him, touching my hair and putting his arm around my shoulder at the top of the castle, his face very close to mine and I wasn’t sure what the vibe was so I asked “are you trying to kiss me?” And he just looked at me and said, I kid you not said, “My body is a playground.” You can’t make this stuff up. I had no idea what that meant but it was the first time in weeks I felt warm at night and fell asleep beside him. 

I awoke the next morning covered in bed bug bites. Covered. I had slept with my lilac sleeping bag open and in a tank top and the bugs had a buffet along my stomach. I was so grossed out and so itchy. Davide packed up to leave, many kilometers to ride, and we fist pumped and said goodbye and I went for a hike up to the waterfall. When I came back I was confused, he was still there and said he wasn’t sure if he should leave or not. He explained that so many times in life he tried to decide between the road or the people. I wish I could show you a montage of this kid making decisions and it made me realize maybe I’m not as bad as I think, or maybe it was so confronting because it was like a mirror. He sat in weird positions and moved around to different places just staring off into the distance, like the answer was slowing blowing in on a distant cloud. Christian showed up during all this and said “Hey. Had a good sleep? *didn’t wait for a response* “Great. good.” And began to lecture Davide that he disrespected his space. Despite it actually being Kloe, Echnico him and myself who all made pizza. Davides lip curled as Christian told him he left flour everywhere after he explicitly told him not too. That he used his cutting board. “That was me actually, sorry.” I said and he looked at me appalled and went and had a fire in the corner of the property with his back turned to us. And after all of that, Davide said “I choose people” and stayed. He then grabbed his black sleeping bag, pulled down his black hood over his black curls and light eyes, slumped into a chair and didn’t move for the rest of the day. We all checked on him, asking him if he was okay, and he said “yup.” He just shut down, it reminded me of somebody in my life who does the same thing when they are overhwlemed and I felt empathy for his way of coping, he too is just a child let lose in the world. 

But At this point I felt really stuck in the middle and unwelcome, it was stormy and I didn’t want to move to my tent because I didn’t want to contaminate my home with bedbugs. I spent the rest of the day sitting in the pasture feeling unwelcome and weird and considered flying home. At this point I hadn’t slept in what felt like a month. I was so sick of being uncomfortable, of feeling like I wanted to crawl out of my own body, I felt the tension of every person around me, I was feeling sad about spending Christmas alone and i was daydreaming about taking a hot bath in front of a fire in my grandmas living room. I went to bed, putting a plastic sheet down on the mattress and Davide came in around 11, crawling in beside me, sleeping with his feet near my head. And again I was comforted to not be there alone. The next day we all woke early and I went into the kitchen and Christian came in immediately, almost as if he had a trip wire set up now as protection. When he walked in I had a knife in my hand “It wasn’t me!” He said, his hands up, “why do you have my knife?” 

“I found it outside” I said and he looked at me

 “you need to learn to have better judgment with people… especially before you bring them to somebody’s house.” 

“I’m Sorry if I brought somebody that made you uncomfortable in your own home, but I think you would have done the same if you met a fellow biker before a thunderstorm.” 

“He knows what he’s doing and used you… I hope you learn from this.”

“I think we are always learning.” Was all I could think to say to his lecture and he just looked at me as he rolled a spliff and I walked out to my bike. 

Davide finally left and I watched him ride away until I couldn’t see him anymore, flooded with a sense of relief. Until 10 minutes later, when he biked back up the hill. 

I groaned. “What now?!” 

“My bike got too relaxed.” He said. 

Ehniko, kloe, Christian and I all tried to help fix his bike and then I realized, I can leave! And I said my goodbyes, and got on my stead, and rode as fast and as hard as I could to Porto Torres, to a laundrymat to wash everything I own, to a hotel where I washed myself for an hour, Davide texted me and told me he had been left with Christian to help him, and in the end his bike was kaput and he was now walking to Porto Torres. It was almost funny by this point, to picture them together trying to fix the bike, and as I tell you this story, I realize this was my version of how everything went and I almost wish I could read their versions of all that happened. After I finished my chores I was walking around town, on the phone with my little sister telling her every detail of what happened, and I saw Davide’s father, standing in front of his silver van by the port, waiting for his son, he called out to me but I walked quickly in the opposite direction. 

In my hotel room finally alone, I cried. Feeling everything I had saved up to feel. I had also between the lines of all that happened in Sardinia broke up with somebody who i shared a lot of my harder parts of myself with and to let that person go in a romantic way, was also so uncomfortable. I felt really lost in time and space, like a floating being within the star blanket of life, untethered. Everything hit me like a truck and I wondered how “normal” people feel less? I am a sensitive girl who pretends often that I’m not and I want to honour that blessing/curse more tenderly. 

I guess this is where I get really honest and share that for me when life gets too extreme, it’s when eating dirsoder comes in to help me cope. My ED takes many shapes, a hungry mother, an evil witch, a crying child, a mirror temptress, whatever the flavour, Ive  spent the last few years healing this loud part of myself. It’s hard for me to talk about, but good for me to talk about it. I was thinking of this bike trip for years and for years I told myself I couldn’t leave on it until I felt healthy enough, if I had gone when the idea was first planted, when I met my friend Kassia in Mexico who had courageously biked form Saltspring to Chiapas, I would not have had fun, I would have been pretty hard on myself, I would have eaten myself alive (pun intended?) so leaving on the trip felt triumphant in itself, I was ready! The work that took to get there was almost as great already as the journey itself. 

I bring this up now because it’s something that comes up a lot on the trip, making sure im eating enough and not worrying about eating “too much” that I’m being kind to myself and compassionate(an intention i didn’t throw into the fire but wrote down as 1# before going) i’m alone on this journey and want to be somebody I’m having fun travelling along with! 

It’s taken me a long time to write this blog post… is this the place to share this? Isn’t this supposed to be about travelling? But my reality is that this is a big part of travelling for me. I suppose this is my truth, and a part of that truth is the shameful parts, the crunchy parts, the dark moment before the sun comes up and teaches me of resiliency as it rises each day again and again. 

If you answer the call of adventure or rather place the call yourself, you have to be willing to let it all the way in, and change, is really uncomfortable. I am learning what I want, or rather learning about who I am. In Sardinia i was confronted by myself and my ways, my old ways of coping, of not hearing my own heart and how that effects myself and my relationships. I have had a few nights of sleep and im feeling a bit better but also, I feel pretty defeated. Unsure of how or where to proceed, maybe still searching for outer answers instead of listening inwards. The call to Africa feels faint right now, and the idea of Spain is a question mark. Talking with friends and family this week was what got me through, Including Kloe and Enicko and Robin, who knowingly and unknowingly at times helped me so much just by being themselves. My plan to ride some big days down to the south of Spain in hopes of finding the sun, maybe my heart is hiding down there too, and I have given myself full permission to end the journey here for now if that’s what I need, I have nothing to prove, I just want to have fun. 

Here is one of my favourite parts of The Alchemist: 

"My heart is afraid that it will have to suffer," the boy told the alchemist one night as they looked up at the moonless sky.

"Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself.

And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second's encounter with God and with eternity."

"Every second of the search is an encounter with God," the boy told his heart.

My request for Christmas is that you send me a letter! Written and photographed, emailed, in voice note form, whatever works for you, but I would love to read what’s happening in your world, if you have the time! 

Thanks for your love and all my love back, I am so thankful for your support, Hannah ❤️