Piscinas dunes, the Sardinian desert

There are landscapes that only Sardinia can have and, fortunately, they are still uncontaminated. District of Arbus (VS). West Sardinian coast. Here you can admire an out-and-out sand desert: Piscinas dunes.

This place is one of the most beautiful and charming spots of the whole Sardinia and the dunes represent one of the biggest wonders of the Mediterranean Sea. Piscinas is an out-and-out desert in miniature, composed by majestic golden dunes, high more than fifty meters, and they penetrate in the inland for two kilometers. 

The landscape shock that is produced lets the visitor out of breath. A fragment of Africa embellished by the peculiarity of the Sardinian scrub. A wonder of the nature and an unmissable destination if you decide to make a holiday in Sardinia. 

After having traversed dirt and sandy roads, along the road that from the village of Ingurtosu climbs down towards the sea, leaving behind the valley of Is Animas, with the ruins of the suggestive mining structures scattered in the countryside, you can come to the sea, through a fascinating path, where the mining history and nature meet each other. But before glimpsing the blue of the water, you bump into the dunes, feature of the whole Green Coast, that only in Piscinas reach the top of the beauty and of the majesty, creating an unique environment.

Gradually, the continual activity of the wind transported the sand continuously towards the inland, creating some sandy bumps higher. The prominence of the dunes, that gradually grew up about height and extension, strikes unbelievably. Here, vegetation, unlike big deserts, is not completely absent. On the contrary, in this environment the native Sardinian flora is adapted perfectly.

There is the juniper, the lentisk, the broom, the sea lily, the euphorbia, the spiny carrot, the oleaster, with the presence of wide sweeps of tamarisks and reeds near the short streams. 

In this beautiful eco system, fauna is characterized by the imposing presence of the Sardinian deer and of the sea turtle Caretta caretta, that, in this section of coast, finds an ideal place for laying eggs, in the first summer nights. The sand is very faint and it has various shades: white, near the dunes, and it becomes gradually more golden near the sea, in a game of bright colors just before a transparent water.

Piscinas incarnates perfectly the wild soul of Sardinia, that conciliates magically the desert with the Sardinian scrub; a place isolated enough that can be intact in its beauty. A chip of Africa and of ocean, but, with a stronger Sardinian perfume.