Type of excursion: archaeological – botany – naturalistic
Difference in altitude: 300 metres
Meeting in Monte Maccione, packed lunch provided. Departure in a Land Rover.
After having passed the Su Gologone spring, proceed in the direction of the Lanaitto valley and, after arriving at the base of Mount Tiscali, walk along an old coal merchant’s path for about sixty minutes.
Once on top of the mountain, the landscape becomes unique and original. The scenery seems almost unreal, dominating the Lanaitto valley from above, placidly lying at the foot of the mountain and nestled between the limestone walls that drop to the peak until they disappear under the Mediterranean scrub woods.
From here you cross a natural cleft that allows you to reach the village entrance in a few minutes. You enter the sinkhole that has housed the village of Tiscali for hundreds of years.
The latter is the only settlement in Sardinia built inside a cave, where millions of years ago due to a settling of the earth, the vault collapsed, giving life to a large and enormous crater that man used as a refuge, building inside it small houses of stone and mud, covered with logs.
On the opposite side of the entrance, a large window, formed with the collapse of a stone from the wall, allows all visitors to enjoy a unique and rare landscape, dominating all the valleys and mountains from inside the cave.
After visiting the village, go back along the same path which, crossing a beautiful wood of holm oaks, strawberry trees and centuries-old junipers, allows you to reach the off-road vehicle, where lovely encounters with wild animals such as mouflons, eagles and wild boars are not unlikely.
The Lanaitto valley, rich in endemic flora, caves, Nuragic villages and shepherds’ sheep pens, where encounters with wild animals such as mouflons, wild boars, buzzards and golden eagles are not unlikely. The valley is one of the most famous in the history of Sardinia, as, among the many archaeological sites it holds, it includes the famous Corbeddu cave where human bones dating back to the Upper Paleolithic (13,500 years BC) have been found.
We visit “Sedda Sos Carros”, an important Nuragic settlement, inside which a sacred circular source with nine ram heads carved on stone was discovered, one-of-a-kind across the whole Mediterranean basin.
With a short walk you can then reach the cave of “Sa Ohe”, from inside which, in the event of heavy rain, an underground river gushes forth, preceded by a deafening roar, “the voice” in fact, as if to warn the inhabitants of the area of an impending flood. This too, like Su Gologone, acts as a relief valve to the karst waters present within the Supramonte.
At the end of the excursion we visit Su Gologone, the most important karst spring on the island, from which crystal clear waters flow from a ravine more than one hundred metres deep, with a minimum flow rate of three hundred litres per second in the low water period, increasing excessively on occasion of heavy rains. The source is the escape valve of a rich karst system, not fully explored, existing within the limestone mountains.
