The small harbour of Pianosa, abandoned and decadent like most of the architecture on Pianosa, immediately reveals straight away to visitors the surreal and mysterious soul of the island.
We get down to the beautiful beach of Cala Giovanna, point of departure and arrival of our excursion. Sea kayaks in the water and off we paddle northwards through the fantastic sea transparencies of Cala Giovanna, traveling up Pianosa eastern coast:
on our right the ruins of Villa Romana di Agrippa Postumo and its enclosed fish farming ponds; behind it, is the “Dalla Chiesa wall”, an unsettling evidence of the local one-time high security prison. We paddle over a shallow and rocky seabed, rich in marine life, flanking a low and clear coast, behind us a green scrubland covered mostly by Phoenician juniper and lentisk. Moving forward through the crystal clear water, we get close to small caves eroded by the sea, along Pianosa’s soft coast made up mainly of shell-sand conglomerate.
We push our kayaks between rocks and ravines up to rounding three small coves, the largest one named “Cala dell’Alga”, where dead leaves of Poseidonia lay deposited, we then reach “the flat white cliffs”, on them, during Gregale wind storms, dozens of trunks bleached by sun and wind have washed ashore and rest now helpless as skeletons of sea monsters emerged from imaginary worlds.
It’s been about forty minutes since set off and we are now at one of the most spectacular spots: Scoglio della Lancia, where the sea is particularly stunning, a seabed of thin white sand enhances the limpidity of the water, a light blue so incredibly intense and luminous to seem surreal.
The coastline is higher here: erosion has drawn some phantasmagorical shapes, inside which, spectacular caves full of stalactites and stalagmites can be found. Caves probably already inhabited during the Paleolithic and certainly in the Neolithic eras.
A few more paddles after rounding Cala Brisighelli, to get to another particularly impressive spot, Il Grottone, a large cave with a shallow and rocky seabed, where small shoals of sea breams and porgies and can be often seen.