Vendettas, nuraghi and the marches: Oh dear, Tharros!

Sardinia is not yet ready for the summer tourists. It is June, and summer doesn't really translate into money for Sardinia, until about the middle of July. August is the big season, and, really, it is all over by the end of September. Pretty much the same as in Greece. As a result, anything remotely tourist-oriented has yet to be cleaned up in Sardinia.

In some campgrounds, a few, lucky for us, cleanup has actually started. Workers are beginning to tame the 8 months of undergrowth from sites that have not been used at all in that time. Some amenities blocks we have not bothered with as winter plant debris is growing rampant out of some of the loos and washbasins. Yet, even now, we are charged the equivalent of high season rates one would expect to pay in Australia. But, come high season, if we were still here then, and we couldn't be, as you need to have booked at least twelve months in advance to stay, many campgrounds will ask nearly $A100 for a party like ours to park for just one night, including power and a shower.

And it is not just the campsites that are not ready. Archaeology sites, including Tharros, are the same. Yet they are the reason tourists come to Sardinia. Though, increasingly, it is becoming more apparent that most tourists come for the sun, sand and beaches and don't really notice the proliferation of archaeology that abounds in Sardinia.

Tharros is nowhere near ready for the invasion of summer tourists. Yet it has been one of the top Phoenician-Roman ruins along Sardinia's west coast, and was one of the most important ports of ancient Sardinia.

As yet, there are no guides for Tharros, no tours, no maps, no English translations for any part of the site. Interestingly, there are no longer even any Italian clarifications, and that is because the old signposts pocked beside a dozen or so portions of this site attempting to identify different parts as Thermae or Temple, and so on -- have been bleached blank from too many years of inattention, lack of care, or lack of funds. There is just is no information offered to tourists that describes this extensive site.

So, what should be one of the major attractions along the west coast of Sardinia, somewhat like the beautifully kept Nora ruins, tho' not as elegant, is essentially just a pile of hard to differentiate old rocks, set in an extraordinarily beautiful blue harbour with wild yellow daisies taking firm root in the decaying rock of the ruins.

A single ticket seller stands in a lone booth on the site. He almost apologises for charging the entrance fee. There are no other staff, no archeologists and not one obvious person hired to clean up the site for a summer invasion. I fear for Tharros. I think Tharros may well be on the way to being forgotten again. As it was after the Moorish pirates looted it one too many times, and all the Roman inhabitants scrambled inland for the last time, to seek shelter in Oristano.

Oristano suffers problems similar to Cagliari. Graffiti gremlins have been on the rampage, as have ranging dogs and litterbugs. This pleasant enough historic downtown, with streets radiating out from the central hub of Piazza Roma, and a couple of worthwhile ancient belltowers and buildings, is simply too dowdy and dirty to warrant spending much time there. How long till those tenacious yellow daisies take root in the cracks of the streets of Oristano?

oooOOOooo