First week on Corsica

      Mike and I planned to start hiking the GR20 ("the most difficult trail in Europe") the day after we arrived on Corsica, but a 40-70% chance of rain every day of the coming week made us think twice. The guidebook said some places were "inadvisable in wet weather." Mike said hiking in the rain day after day was not fun. I said I didn't like mountain thunderstorms. So we agreed to scratch the first week of the hike and pick up the trail at Vizzavona, a town at the halfway point on the GR20.

      Mike said he didn't know whether he were more relieved or more disappointed, but I was more disappointed and started talking immediately about coming back next year to do what we were missing this year.

      Once on the trail, though, we met a lot of people who had bailed on the first half of the trail and started again at Vizzavona, not because of rain (which generally held off till late afternoon) but because of the trail's difficulty and danger. One woman and her male companion had left the trail because he was woefully unprepared and was now licking his wounds on the beaches of Corsica while she hiked the second half. Many people sported bandaged knees and feet. One woman who left after three days said she had seen three helicopter rescues in one day. I stopped talking about coming back next year. I began to be more relieved than disappointed.

      Besides, now, for a week, we would be tourists and day hikers, instead of GR20 hardcore hikers. In the seaside town of Calvi, the mountain village of Lama, and the university town of Corte we could experience Corsican culture.

      At seaside towns we lay on the famous beaches and swam in the beautiful blue Mediterranean. We took a six-hour hike up the gorge of the Tavignanu River to swim in one of the most beautiful swimming holes ever.

 In Lama, we climbed Monti Astu, through gorgeous wildflower displays, to look down from its summit onto tiny-with-distance red-roofed villages, tucked into the valleys between rugged mountains with the sparkling blue sea stretching in the distance from land to sky. 

From Calvi we took a boat excursion to the tiny fishing village of Girolata, accessible only by boat or foot. The boat skirted deep red cliffs that dropped dramatically into the blue sea. After two hours it docked in Girolata, where we had lunch and I went for a swim. 

(Note the dark clouds over the mountains.)

Everywhere, we had a chance to eat typical Corsican food: a strong, distinctive goat cheese called brocciu; charcuterie of all sorts; a frothy fish soup; wild boar stew; and the island beer, Pietra. Breakfast: croissants and rolls. A tiny cup of espresso  after dinner. Chestnut flour was used in desserts, which were almost always custard-like: flan, creme brûlée, chocolate mousse. Bread was served without either butter or olive oil, even though the main agriculture is olive trees.

      It was our good luck to be in Corte on the summer solstice, which is celebrated all over France with a music festival. Early in the evening the main street was blocked to traffic. At the large plaza at the end of the street, electric bands played while people danced and children played chase. The street remained crowded for hours. Musicians played guitars and sang in cafes or set up in quartets and duos at various nooks along the street.  Townspeople flocked to the street, crowding the restaurants and cafes. Mike and I sat in one crowded cafe, next to a table of young men with guitars and beer who were singing traditional Corsican songs in the peculiar wavering style we had heard at an exhibit in the museum earlier in the day.

      Corsican pride was notable, not only in graffiti about "death to the French language," scrawled on the walls of a building in Corte, but in the frequent display of the Corsican flag, which is white with the image of a black head, in profile, with a white bandanna around its forehead. I asked the girl in Corte's Office of Tourism what it meant, but all she knew was that it depicted a moor. Wikipedia informed us that the flag dates from 1755 and was based on a traditional flag used previously, though in that flag the bandanna covered the eyes of the moor. Pasquale di Paoli, a sort of George Washington of Corsica, unblindfolded the moor to symbolize Corsica's liberation from Genoese rule. But why it pictures a moor I don't know. We saw few black people in Corsica. It seemed to have a connection with a saying I saw on a post card: Corsica – souvent conquis, jamais soumis (often conquered, never subdued).

     I enjoyed being in a French-speaking country again. I did passably well with my French. If I was sometimes complimented, I also had comeuppance enough when, for instance, a waiter answered my French with his English. French is the official language, but all road signs use both French and Corsican, and although I'm not sure what language the construction workers at the Matalza Refuge were speaking, it wasn't French or Italian or any other language I could recognize, so, because it sounded vaguely related to those languages, I think maybe it was Corsican.

      I enjoyed my week of being a tourist on Corsica. If we had followed the original plan, we wouldn't have had a chance to experience Corsica's beautiful beaches or swim in the Mediterranean. We wouldn't have heard traditional Corsican music or eaten the good food. The hikes up Monti Astu and the gorge of the River Tavignanu kept us ready for the exertions of the week to come. But by the end of the week, I was eager for the more rugged stuff of the GR20.