Corsica....!!!!!

Ajaccio is a big sprawling port, filled with Napoleon Bonaparte memorabilia...statues, museums, his birthplace and the place he enjoyed the first nine formative years of his life....a remarkable art gallery and markets!! Before heading off to Algajola which was our ultimate destination we bought Olives, cheese, wine, strawberries, baguettes and tepanade for our picnic lunch. We inquired like good tourists of the best, nay easiest route and were told "flip a coin" or the Corsican equivalent...we decided this meant that all ways were easy...ha ha ha....small error of judgement or so we found out after some time traversing all routes...but in this moment we decided we were take the route of the scenic Calanques or Calanches in Corsican.....we figured the Pyrenees and tiny cobbled village streets had us well prepared for anything....ha ha ha again! The western coastal road up Corsica is a treacherous four hours of cliff clawing roads filled with switch back turns, falling rock face debris, breathe in stretches where two cars do not fit and one has to precariously back up....plus crazy motor cyclists practicing I am sure for some grand prix and Corsicans who have nooo, I mean noooo fear! There are also many cyclists here as a part of this is a notorious stretch of the Tour de France.....( filmed only by helicopter....) The breath taking views and death defying driving make this an adrenalin rush like nothing I have ever experienced before.....and just when you think you have it sussed up rear the Calanches!!! OMG............gigantic cliff faces that rub the sides of your car as you inch through and drops of over 2 1/2 kms down....my ears popped and I was deaf, terrified and awed by the beauty...... Mike was driving peppered by swearing and hysterical laughter and I was holding so tight to the car door I forgot to film the most gory parts!! Well we did it! So of course feeling indestructible we decided to take the 81b stretch of original old road from here on in to Algaljola as oppsoed to the rest of the highway 81 which now began to wind inland. May as well follow the coast we decided.....after a few minutes of broken road tinier than the last ( was this possible) and bath sized potholes I was unsure..."is this a road still ...maybe we can turn back????? I asked. Oh there is another car behind us Mike said....must be ok......so onward we climbed up and up with the deep azure blue of the Mediterranean looming ever further away below us beyond the cliff face a millimeter off the edge of the car.......was the car still behind us I asked??? No said mike he must have edged back.....( or gone off the edge??) I clung tighter to the door handle....but we continued on and found the odd intrepid cyclist as we did so and were sooo well rewarded with exaltation at pour prowess and the views that were ( maybe too literally) to die for...nothing we had done until now matched this...we laughed off all other scary roads with a shrug...and then looming with quiet pristine welcome was Algajola...a movie pretty village with cobbled streets, a castle, a divine long sandy plage and clear as clear water...for the next three and half days we gorged on rustic good cheap Corsican food at the many local restaurants, floated in the Mediterranean and lay in the sun...we took walks that were too surreal and beautiful to describe and loved our hosts, our little room overlooking the sea, the dogs and turtles and sooo many cats that we shared this little place with and the wonderfully indulgent, loud happy Corsicans!

Then we Drove the easier  (so we assumed) way back to Ajaccio...hmmmm...a slightly bigger road awaited us but filled with more windy bits, faster locals, snow capped peaks we were soo high up at times and more door handle gripping.....but yes also more vistas of extreme beauty that I have no more words for...they can just never be enough....in Ajaccio we did some more site seeing...bought some souvenirs and ate Bocciu cheese ice cream....and got a call from the ferry saying it wasn't going from Ajaccio due to technical difficuties and now we had to leave from Bastia....you guessed it back up the windy inner road of this giant rock of an island and then some again on the east coast.....arghhhhh so we hopped to it and booked a last minute hotel in Bastia for the night and drove....all good now we were prepared and well...everything is better the second time round.

Bastia is big gentle city and we had a grand night watching a free concert of hearty Corsican singing and wonderful guitar playing in the square...we ate enormous Pizzas, drank tooo much wine and clapped and stomped along with the merry merry crowd....we had surprising conversations with some salt of the earth old guys and somehow understood enough!! It was the best best best night and a great way to leave Corsica...I am in love with this crazy, extreme place!!