We were totally bushed after climbing all morning at the Villaggio Gallico crags, then a long hike down to Cala Goloritzè in the afternoon with a few pitches up the Aguglia before sunset forced us back up the trail. After nearly hitting a cow and a herd of goats on the small one lane road over the Golgo Plain, my attention began to wander to thoughts of an Ichnusa (the Sard beer) and some gulurgiones (a ravioli filled with potatos). We got on the main road and began our approach into the town of Baunèi when we saw a group of huge prickly pear cactus walking on the side of the road. It had been a long day, but I didn’t think it had been that long. Slowing to nearly a stop to allow them to pass, we realized they were merely cactus costumes. Kids these days, I swear.

Animated cactus or not, Sardegna often feels like a dream state. And no place is more dreamy than the Aguglia of Cala Goloritzè. Rising 800-plus-feet out of the turquoise sea below, the Aguglia looks like it belongs in Patagonia. It’s difficult to describe without falling into a hackneyed brand of magic realism. Climbing journalist and Sard guidebook author Maurizio Oviglia does his best, but even he concedes that words fail. 

“When talking of Cala Goloritzè,” he writes in Pietra di Luna, “the superlatives used to describe it are never sufficient. I have never come across a place as wild and beautiful, where the rock, perfect in every aspect, merges so marvelously with the deep blue of the sea and the green of the juniper. However it would be wrong to describe this place as the best of the best, even if classifications are the only means of comparison nowadays. Instead I would say that the Aguglia provides an emotion of its own, something that is different from what one experiences on a crag, something that is neither alpinism nor climbing, but that one must try.”

Well, we tried. We went up a pitch or two of Sole Incantore (6c), looked at the setting sun, looked up at the hard pitches above, and rapped off prudently. The easiest route up is a 6c, perhaps over our heads if we had all day. But we felt the emotion and like Maurizio we concurred that the Aguglia was yet another place that was the best in the world. And we’ll be back to finish it for sure.