STRANGE CONTINENT

HERMIT GIVES UP

Sometimes, adventures are right on your doorstep – as in the story of the modern Robinson Crusoe who lived on a deserted Italian island. In 1989, Mauro Morandi set sail from Italy in a catamaran to live in the Pacific Ocean, but his journey brought him only as far as Budelli, an island famous for its pink beaches, part of the Maddalena archipelago in the northeast of Sardinia. He decided to stay there, explaining: “I never was a Robinson Crusoe. Crusoe wanted to return to civilisation; I just wanted to stay away from it.” He got a job as the caretaker of the island, but soon ran into trouble with local authorities as he kept enlarging his house without permission. Now, after 32 years, the 82-year-old, originally from the northern Italian city of Modena, has decided to quit his self-imposed solitude. He will return to a small flat in Modena, where his children live, and the tiny island will be turned into a research centre. Die Rheinpfalz,