The pinnacle that rises 143 metres above Cala Goloritzè is younger than the beach it guards: the limestone spire, the Aguglia, was left standing when a landslide collapsed this stretch of the Supramonte in 1962, opening the cove that had until then been closed rock. Sardinia's most photographed beach is, geologically speaking, an accident barely older than the tourists who visit it. Cala Goloritzè sits within the territory of Baunei, on the southern arc of the Gulf of Orosei. The gulf runs roughly forty kilometres between Cala Gonone and Santa Maria Navarrese, and for most of that distance the Supramonte drops straight into the Tyrrhenian without room for a road. That absence of road is the whole story. Shepherds reached these coves by mule track from the Golgo plateau; everyone else came by keel. A cala gonone half day boat tour is not a convenience invented for visitors but the continuation of the only practical approach the coast has ever had. The cove was declared a Natural Monument of Italy in 1995 and enrolled in the wider UNESCO Global Geopark framework covering the Ogliastra karst. Protection here is unusually literal. Boats may not anchor in the bay; swimmers arrive from vessels moored offshore or on foot down the Bacu Golortize gorge from Località Su Porteddu, Golgo Plateau, 08040 Baunei NU, Italy. A conservation fee of 7 EUR per person, which includes parking at Su Porteddu, funds the wardens who count arrivals against a daily ceiling. The white shingle is not sand but eroded dolomite, which is why the water reads turquoise rather than blue — pale stone reflecting light back through shallow depth. The neighbouring coves complete the sequence. Cala Mariolu takes its name from the monk seal, once called the thief for stealing fish from nets, and its floor of rounded pink pebbles is a fragment of a different limestone bed. Cala Luna's caves shelter beneath a river mouth. Grotta del Bue Marino, the last known Mediterranean monk seal refuge in Italy, holds Neolithic petroglyphs on its walls. Gulf of Orosei cruises thread these landmarks in sequence, which is why the classic Cala Goloritzè boat tour follows an itinerary set less by preference than by geography. What draws attention now is scarcity. Few European coastlines of this length remain undeveloped, and fewer still are legally bound to stay that way. Each cala gonone half day boat tour operates inside that constraint, and the constraint is the reason the view survives.