Sardinia: Italy's Alabaster Isle

The Sloop is about 80 feet long, big for a single-masted yacht these days. Her hull is of amber mahogany, sleek and unscarred, with no name or home port inscribed on the transom to mar the glistening finish. The deck is teak, scrubbed white and evenly calked in long, perfectly contoured black lines; and the mainsail is neatly furled on the heavy boom. Up forward, in a navy-blue nylon bag, the big genoa jib awaits storage in the sail locker.

The owner of the yacht is in his mid-30s, sleek, polished and tanned, like his boat. A gold crucifix hangs on a chain around his neck and a thin, golden identification bracelet glitters on one wrist. He stands on the alterdeck, wearing bathing trunks and sipping a long drink from a frosty glass. Around him, half a dozen crewmen, clad in black T-shirts and white pants, handle the lenders and dock lines, gently maneuvering the big boat into her berth. Expensive cologne drifts across to some onlookers who stand on the quay, but the owner flicks his eyes away from this group--a couple of Sardinian families who have driven in from Olbia or perhaps Sassari for the day--and turns his attention elsewhere, calling a girl's name.

A tall, and emphatically shapely, brunette is sunning her back on the foredeck, (continued on page 299)Sardinia(continued from page) wearing sunglasses and the lower half of a bikini and reading a paperback. At the sound of the man's voice, she slips into the top half, glances without apparent interest at the Sards and the other sightseers on the quay and goes below, followed by the man in the swimsuit. The hatch is closed and an electric fan can be heard. A few minutes later, the crew walks softly down the rubber-carpeted gangway to the quay, leaving a sign stretched between the handrails that reads, in Italian, French and English, Do Not Disturb. It is a very hot, blue day in the yacht basin at Porto Cervo, capital of the Mediterranean's newest playground--the Costa Smeralda, a 35-mile-long stretch of beaches and bays in the northeast corner of the island of Sardinia. The Costa Smeralda was created by the Aga Khan. The millionaire members of the international jet set call it the last refuge.

To reach it, you should fly to either Milan or Rome, where you can get direct flights to Olbia, the largest town close to the Costa Smeralda and about a half-hour drive from Porto Cervo. The overnight flights from New York to Rome usually arrive soon after breakfast, while the hour's flight on to Olbia leaves in the early evening, a gap that affords a pretty full day of shopping and sight-seeing in Rome.

If you don't want to fly to Sardinia from the mainland, you can pick up a car at Rome Airport and drive about 50 miles to Civitavecchia, where you'll find a car ferry that plies between the mainland port and Olbia and Golfo de gli Aranci, another Sardinian port that is even closer to the Costa Smeralda. However, the ferry is an overnight trip and it is essential that you book a cabin weeks ahead; otherwise, you'll sleep on the open deck or, if you're lucky, across a couple of chairs in the bar.

Sardinia is an island about halfway between the mainlands of Africa and Italy. The Costa Smeralda--the name is taken from the emerald color of the sea in the area--is on roughly the same latitude as Naples, a position that gives it a warm, sunny climate from March until October, although the Costa Smeralda high season actually gets under way about the end of June and runs through early September.

Before 1963, when development began, the region was inhabited by farmers and a few herdsmen. There was no industry, communications or public services. Then the Aga Khan IV, Prince Karim, a direct descendant of Mohammed the prophet and spiritual patriarch of over 15,000,000 Moslems, formed a syndicate with a few friends and bought some 32,000 acres, which is roughly the size of Bermuda.

Today, there are six hotels and innumerable villas scattered along the 80-odd beaches and in the steep, rocky hills overlooking the sea. Property speculators have been discouraged by making it mandatory that all purchased land be built on within a specified time and, since this is coupled with the rule that all architectural designs must be submitted for approval by the syndicate (or the Consortium, which is the group's official designation), there has been and can be none of the maniacal exploitation that has in such a short time permanently defaced other parts of the resort world.

Privacy, imaginative architecture, clear water, white sand and sophisticated company are the keys to Costa Smeralda's success; and these are among the features that have attracted the Armstrong-Joneses, Rex Harrison. Brigitte Bardot, Stavros Niarchos, Rockefellers and Rothschilds and other accredited members of international royalty in all its many forms.

There are no skyscrapers--not even a modest high-rise--no neon signs, billboards, traffic lights or other jarring notes to disfigure this remarkably beautiful wilderness. The best hotel, the Cala di Volpe, is a collection of faded red-tile roofs, lichen-covered white walls, cool arcades and a squat, arched wooden bridge over a pellucid stream. It looks like a medieval village that took a thousand years to grow, yet its foundation was laid five years ago.

The hub of the Costa Smeralda is Porto Cervo, a cluster of shops, the Consortium offices, a hotel grouped around a wide, bricked piazza overlooking the harbor and equipped with an ice-cream parlor and a couple of outdoor terraces, where people stop around lunchtime or late afternoon for a glass of vernaccia (the local white wine) or just to watch the bikini parade. Occasionally, a stage is set up in the center, artificial laurel hedges are raised around several hundred folding chairs and the Aga Khan, wearing a blazer and white flannels instead of his usual Porto Cervo costume of Levis and T-shirt, will appear to award the trophies for winning one of the yacht regattas.

During the day, the piazza is all but deserted. The yachts leave early in the morning to cruise along the coast; and those who don't bring their own yachts must be content with renting a boat, making sure to order a hamper of food and wine from the hotel before setting out, as there are no restaurants tucked away on the many islands and beaches outside the harbor.

The most popular beach is Long Beach, a curving strip of white sand and dunes that can be approached only by sea or by a diabolical road. Even at the height of the season, it would be surprising to find more than a hundred people on this beach, many of whom observe the sensible custom of sunbathing in the nude.

Wheels are essential for this coast and, as with hotel accommodations, reservations must be made well in advance. If you want to pick up a car in Sardinia, rather than take one over on the ferry from the mainland, you can make arrangements for collection in Porto Cervo itself or in Olbia. Everything from minijeeps, open on all sides, to conventional sedans is available. Last time I went, I used a little Fiat 850, which, though it may have lacked the grandeur of the Ferraris and Lamborghinis that litter the area, made much more sense for negotiating the dirt roads and, in fact, was used with impunity on surfaces that would have given a Ferrari driver a mild thrombosis.

You won't find any evidence of organized activity on the Costa Smeralda--no moonlight cruises (though there is a schooner that tours the islands) and no get-acquainted dances at the hotels. The people who go to the Costa Smeralda don't want to get acquainted, at least not on those terms. They want to relax, swim, eat good food, ride horses, go spearfishing, sleep, sail and, to varying degrees, fornicate and get quietly stoned. It would, let us say, be the last place on earth to attract a convention of Shrincrs.

This sort of scene, freewheeling, informal and subtly hedonistic, quite naturally attracts some very beautiful girls, most of whom, unfortunately, are accompanied by men who are either exceptionally handsome or exceptionally rich and, in many instances, by men who are both. This can be disconcerting if you are neither and you have a personality to match. In these circumstances, you can spend a most depressing vacation on the Costa Smeralda, especially if you are traveling alone or with an equally tedious male companion. The answer is obvious: If you don't care to rely on your loot, luck and looks, take a girlfriend.

Since companionship of some kind, preferably female, is essential there, you should waste little time in just looking. On a given day, the best results might be obtained on Long Beach by setting up an elaborate gourmet picnic lunch in a prominent position and waiting for some hungry girls to join you; or you could, as some of the hipper visitors do, simply walk along the beach and wait for someone--or a couple or a group--to ask you to join in some activity. It does happen. Either way, the worst that can result is that you'll eat too much--or nothing will happen at all.

If the beach scheme doesn't work out, go to the piazza and sit at one of the tables. Or make the rounds of such casual gathering places as the post office, the bar of the Hotel Cervo, the ice-cream parlor, the Pizzeria or the yacht basin. After that, try the bars of the Luci di la Muntagna, the Hotel Liscia di Vacca or La Contra Restaurant, by which time either you will have succeeded in making contact or you will be thrown into jail for loitering with suspicious intent. These are the places you should try during the day. Just don't look too eager.

At night, the best spot to be, assuming you have now found company, is Pedro's. Pedro is Peter Rockwell Kent, a young American who came to the Costa Smeralda a few years ago, after running a similar place of the same name in Torremolinos on the Costa del Sol. Pedro's is a discothèque with a bar, a boutique set in a garden. It looks like a private house, which it is, because Kent and his wife and three sons live there, along with an odd-looking dog called Lambchop. A couple of very attractive British students who work there in the summer, a disc jockey and various other friends live in an adjoining wing.

All of this produces more of a private-party mood than that of a business operation, although it is one, and highly successful. Food is not served, but there are two excellent restaurants nearby (the Hotel Liscia di Vacca and La Contra) and a third, Chez Henry, located on the hill below Pedro's garden.

Pedro's is open seven nights a week and sometimes, when it gets too crowded, they charge a couple of dollars for admission. It's best to arrive around 10:30, when you can still find a comfortable sofa in the Kents' dining room and the evening rush is just beginning. Take a look at the clothes in the boutique--the designs and materials are unique, the inspiration is mostly North African and Indian, and all are largely handmade.

The rest of Costa Smeralda's night life is not too distinguished. There's the Inferru in Porto Cervo, a small dance floor and records at Tiffany's, the Kabuga Discothéque, and the Gamba di Legno in the Romazzino Hotel, where there's a band. On gala occasions, a big-name performer will appear on the piazza. Charles Aznavour gave a concert there last August.

All the hotels in the region serve excellent food, the Cala di Volpe and Pitrizza being the finest. If you are staying at either one of these and you want a change, try the grill of the Hotel Cervo, the Romazzino Hotel, Su Marineri (for seafood) and, for snacks, the Piazza Bistro and the Pizzeria. South of the Costa Smeralda, in Porto Rotondo, is the Sporting Club, an elegant terrace restaurant on the harbor that's well worth the hour's drive it takes to get there. There, as at the bigger restaurants on the Costa Smeralda, you should reserve a table, especially if you plan to dine around eight.

The Costa Smeralda is only a tiny sliver of Sardinia, which covers, in all, more than 9000 square miles and, after Sicily, is the largest island in the Mediterranean. Corsica is seven miles from the northernmost tip of land.

The landscape is mountainous and barren, a dry brown with a few patches of green when seen from the air in the summer; and the countryside is wide, hot and still. There are no large towns on the island and the total population is less than 2,000,000. If you have the time and are prepared to cope with the lack of touristamenities--and this means inadequate accommodations and nonexistence of the English language--you might want to explore some of the churches and villages that lie inland on this island of silence. A dependable network of roads connects the main towns, from Olbia, Sassari, Alghero and Nuoro in the north to Cagliari to the south. And a few English-speaking jokers sometimes make the arduous trip out to the southwest coast and have their photographs taken while they stand in front of a highway sign that announces the hamlet of Buggerru.

Sardinia is stark terrain, ferociously hot in the summer, gray and cold in the winter. It is difficult to imagine that it will ever become the fertile, industrious island that the Italian government once planned it to be. Its people have a long memory of bleakness and privation, both of which are as deeply rooted in their life as is the Mafia in the western towns and villages of Sicily. Change, if it ever comes, can be little more than negligible. Most tourists on Sardinia, even other Italians from the mainland, give the impression that they are glad to be tourists. On the Costa Smeralda, however, which exerts the peculiar magic that must have affected the first people to choose the Bahamas or Southern California for sybaritic retirement from civilization and its discontents, visitors have visions of a villa of their own, dominating a white beach and an emerald sea, warmed by the sun and cooled by amiable breezes. To these people, and to the growing numbers who will inevitably discover this coast over the coming years, the Costa Smeralda may well be the last resort, in both senses of both words--ultimate and only-remaining, pleasure spot and refuge.