Corsica on a Budget

firenze-livorno-bastia-saint florent-nonza-saint florent

I'll start by saying that the idea of spending a vacation in Corsica had never crossed my mind. In fact, my plans for July were to do Milan - Faro (Portugal) by plane and then go up to Oporto (along the coast by train stopping wherever possible) and then return to Bologna by plane (in a week). Unfortunately, due to small unforeseen problems of lack of cash at the time of booking, I had to give up Portugal, and thanks to my mania for travel websites I found a ticket for 55 euros round trip for two people plus car from Livorno to Bastia, so I start discovering on the web what there is of interest in Corsica..believe me, after opening the first page I immediately understood that Corsica is a earthly paradise..I talked about it with my girlfriend Barbara and went to the agency to book the ship.

I'm not a great expert at camping but the year before my girlfriend suggested the idea of camping and we stayed 5 days in northern Sardinia and I can't deny that I fell a bit in love with this form of travel with car and tent. So I equip myself with everything necessary or at least what I lacked the year before and finally July 17 arrives…the car is overloaded and we set off for Florence where my sister hosts us since the next morning the ship leaves from Livorno and I wanted to avoid the usual risks of crazy traffic on the Bologna-Florence route.

Awake at 6 and at 7:15 we're already at the port, the trip from Livorno lasts 4 hours or a little more, the fact is that by 13:00 we're already in Bastia…frankly, being summer, the urge was immediately to go to the sea so we escape from the centre of Bastia and go a bit further north, to Saint Florent where we immediately find the camping for 30 euros a day for 2 people. Tent set up, quick dash to the black beach of Nonza (naturally I already had an itinerary prepared since we have only about 5 days of vacation) even further north than Saint Florent (a good half hour). What can I say…it was 5 p.m. and the completely black beach with crystal-clear water was starting to empty until that paradise became all ours and naturally we enjoyed it until sunset.

We arrive at the campground around 9 p.m..shower and dinner (cooked by us) and then we immediately go out to the centre of Saint Florent which is a small town all concentrated around the port, full of restaurants and typical local places and with a beautiful seafront full of street artists and artisans offering the most absurd creations made from objects of every kind. We do a complete tour of the small centre and then stop at a bar on the main street to taste typical local wines, very good, and the fabulous Corsican beer ''Pietra'' which I can include among the best beers I've ever tasted.MUST TRY ABSOLUTELY.Shortly before 2 we return to the campground.

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Wake-up at 8:30 because the morning promises to be very tiring since we have to reach the beautiful beaches of Lodo and Saleccia (there's no road for normal cars from Saint Florent, either you go by jeep shuttle paying a lot or you take the boat from Saint Florent for less than 10 euros, to Lodo and then to Saleccia an hour's walk through Corsican nature). We take the boat from Saint Florent at 9:30 and at 10:10 we're at Lodo…naturally we immediately opt for Saleccia since this walk had to be done, thinking that afterwards we would be on the beach of Lodo with a bit more relaxation since the return boat always left from there.

The walk promises to be very tiring because it's hot but the particularity of the route makes it light…we equip ourselves with sticks like two good shepherds (since on the roads you can meet cows and oxen in the wild 'I think' because they had no markings) and we walk, walk and walk for more than an hour when suddenly it seems to us we're coming out of the jungle and have arrived on a Caribbean beach…a spectacle…crystal-clear water, few people and even some calves on the beach (calves??ahah the shortest cow was 2 metres tall), and it's here that you seriously realize that this place is, and will remain, exactly ''as mother made it''(in fact the Corsicans care a lot about keeping their land virgin from super-technology and unbridled tourism like Sardinia where there are few free beaches in tourist spots, here nature reigns).

A couple of hours at the beach and we return to Lodo facing the long walk again, much more tiring than the way there since it's 12:30, perfect peak time.Arrived at Lodo we relax for a couple of hours and at 3 we get back on the boat for Saint Florent.Campground shower and we set off for Calvi (northwest about 2 hours by car..20 km after Saint Florent we see on the road a rasta girl hitchhiking with a big suitcase, a backpack and a guitar..at first I went straight on since my car's trunk was crammed full and the back seats all messed up with stuff but immediately my girlfriend started insisting to give her a lift and naturally I didn't think twice about turning around and picking up that girl.

Nice to meet you, I'm Mariel, I'm from Marseille, I'm a reggae singer and I'm going to Calvi where tonight I'm playing at a venue…how could I not give her a lift since we were going the same way, there were more than 50 km left and I knew that no public transport passes through there…it's impossible for me who has hitchhiked many times everywhere..so I tidy up the car a bit and find a way to fit Mariel and her giant suitcases in.

We set off again and after about 20 min on the road, after getting to know each other quite well, she offers us a beer at a place she knew and I can tell you that when we left this place I told her a thousand times that it was the most particular bar I had ever been to..the fact is that this bar wasn't particular but of a unique simplicity considering that until 2 years before it was an abandoned observation point (it's on a promontory on a curve on the road, and if you go into the bar there's a terrace you would never expect could be there from which you can see the valley, the sea and the mountains we were crossing, an absurd panorama) renovated by Martin (the owner with whom I exchanged a few words to learn the story of his bar since he left me speechless) a 25-year-old guy naturally very proud of his brilliant and spectacular idea.

We set off again for Calvi and at 19:00 we're in the centre, we drop Mariel off at a friend's place and start visiting this beautiful little town on the sea with alleys full of typical shops and restaurants, and with a castle in the upper part of the city that can be visited and I can assure you it's worth it…we have dinner here naturally and then watch a bit of Mariel's show (right in the centre in the liveliest bar) since it's 10:30 p.m., we have almost 2 hours of driving to get back to the Saint Florent campground and the next day we have to get up early. Naturally we no sooner reached the tent than we were already asleep.

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If yesterday was a very stressful but fantastic day… today's will be even more so.Wake-up at 7, we take down the tent, load the car hoping to find a spot inside it for us and set off for Corte..(Corte is the former capital and is located in the heart of Corsica among the mountains and is about an hour or a little more from Saint Florent). On the way we pass through many small villages without ever getting out of the car due to time constraints and at 10 we're in Corte…what can I say, the town is very beautiful, almost all on a slope and really packed with gastronomy shops..ok we visited Corte in an hour and a half but the beauty of this area is the surroundings..and yes because Corte is located in the Restonica national park, where naturally we head.

Here we're right in the mountains, and to think that just 40 km away there are Caribbean beaches, this is the beauty of Corsica.Climbing ever higher toward the mountain along a road surrounded by an incredible landscape (fantastic woods and a river full of small waterfalls and pools of water that looked like so many swimming pools, and naturally there was no shortage of brave souls swimming in those freezing waters) at a certain point we start to realize that in a few hundred metres this little road will end, as we notice many people leaving their cars and continuing on foot, but I, being a good stubborn person, keep going up until the attendants make me park almost in the last highest parking lot (lucky).

We take some food (splendid Corsican baguettes filled self-service with very good Corsican cheeses and cured meats) backpack on our shoulders and the climb begins (the goal is to reach only the lake of Melo which is among the mountain peaks about 2 hours of walking according to the signs, since by evening we have to be in Bonifacio in the south more than 1 hour by car from Corte), the first ten minutes of walking are on paved road where there are still some parked cars, after which there's a bar all in stone (or rather a shepherd's residence turned into a bar since there it really felt like being a guest of someone and not in a public place) that acts as a check point' and 'doesn't let through anything that isn't typical of the place besides the tourists of course (there's no kind of novelty, everything in wood or stone and lots of animals like sheep, hens and baby goats going around you

BEAUTIFUL)… think that I asked the guy at the bar if I could use the bathroom and he made me understand with a tactical little smile that there are no bathrooms there because you're in the heart of nature and I can't deny that at that moment I thought I had really asked a very naive question.To get up you can choose several routes, we reach the lake of Melo in almost 2 hours, the climb wasn't difficult and neither dangerous but worthy of being called a climb, up there it really felt like being in paradise (the beauty of this place is inexplicable, imagine a small lake among the top of a mountain like the crater of a volcano), a few shots, a snack to recover energy and we set off again for the valley..We reach the car around six….

ah I forgot, all day I had the urge to swim in the small natural pools and under the small waterfalls of the river flowing down to the valley since I saw so many people doing it even though the water was freezing as I said before, the crazy thing is that I took courage in the only moment of the day when the sun disappeared to make way for some ugly drops of rain..simply because we were leaving and so I thought it was a must, so I threw myself into the water and I can describe it as a mix of suffering and pleasure but really a beautiful experience.

Once we reached the car, a little refreshment, another snack naturally and we set off for southern Corsica, arriving on the east coast in half an hour and then another scant hour to Bonifacio (mostly because of the small queues to cross the many coastal villages, we find a campground between Porto Vecchio and Bonifacio ('camping U stabiacciu' 2 km from Porto Vecchio and about 18 km from Bonifacio) again at 30 euros, we settle in again and prepare ourselves a nice dinner. In the evening we take a quiet stroll in the port of Bonifacio and that of Portovecchio (they're 20 km apart) and at midnight off to sleep.

portovecchio-bonifacio

Wake-up at 8, a good hearty breakfast and strictly savoury and off to the Caribbean beaches of southern Corsica.Until eleven we see first a couple of beaches whose names I don't remember and then the Bay of Santa Giulia but unfortunately we can't stop long in order to see as many things as possible (almost 1 hour at the beach).So we head to the centre of Bonifacio to do a panoramic boat tour and avoid the midday sun since the day was very hot… The boat skirts the splendid, very tall, particular and however many you can name Bocche di Bonifacio which are a World Heritage Site, goes into the splendid caves (in one, looking up, there's a slit with the shape of Corsica that makes the cave absurd and spectacular) and through a guide tells the story of all the wonders that our eyes can admire.

Around 14:00 we get off the boat (but unfortunately we didn't avoid turning into two shrimps because the day is outrageously hot) and for a couple of hours we wander around the enchanting Bonifacio starting from the port and going up to the old part of the city which seems to be built on a big cliff 'sheer over the sea' INDESCRIBABLE.After properly visiting Bonifacio we head toward Porto Vecchio (the campground 1 km from Porto Vecchio) passing through the two most beautiful beaches of the south (Palombaggia and Rondinara) which we enjoyed until sunset..This is the last evening, tomorrow we leave so we finally give ourselves over to excesses, we have dinner in a restaurant in the historic centre of Porto Vecchio (La Pergola…very good), we eat fish with white wine (I don't know what we drank but all I know is that when we got up from the table after drinking 1 bottle of 0.75 we weren't drun

k but stunned), we go around having a couple of cocktails in two of the many bars in the square of Porto Vecchio (Porto Vecchio is the chicest and most expensive city in Corsica) and then off to the Via Notte nightclub which is said to be among the largest in Europe in terms of outdoor rooms.The nightclub is really very very beautiful and there are also beautiful people there but the bar for our wallets is really inaccessible, everything over 10 euros to give you an idea. We stay until 3:00 dancing but then tiredness pushes us toward the campground, which luckily is only 1 km away and I want to return to Italy the next day with all the points on my licence (the law here is less strict than ours).

portovecchio - bastia-livorno

Departure for Livorno is scheduled for 14:00 from the port of Bastia, from Portovecchio to Bastia it takes a couple of hours so between taking down the tent and mentally preparing ourselves to leave this stupendous place we leave the campground around 10:00, we'll be well in advance since the ship leaves at 14:00 but naturally crazy queues make us take more than four hours, but all in all it went well anyway since in Bastia we even popped into a big shopping centre for half an hour in a very quick way to buy little gifts and typical Corsican products, and I'd say really at a very economical price compared to the prices of all the little shops that are in the various tourist towns we visited.

We arrive in Livorno around 18:30 only to set off immediately for home and that's where our short but very beautiful and fascinating vacation ends among the Caribbean beaches and the splendid mountains of this island fortunately still wild just the right amount.