I’m already behind and we’re just on our second full day of
the cruise. That’s what happens
when you have an all-day tour and a late dinner. Well as I wait to go ashore here in Livorno I’ll try to get
some of this written.
Corsica is an island south of the French coast and west of
the Italian peninsula. The nearest
land mass is the island of Sardinia just nine miles to the south. Through the millennia Corsica has been
inhabited and under many different groups’ ownership. A female skeleton dated to be 7000 years old was found near
one of the little towns (Levie) which we passed through on our tour. The Greeks and Romans were here
naturally. Later Corsica belonged
to the Republic of Pisa, then the Republic of Genoa, and after passing back and
forth a few times came under the ownership of France. For us in the USA perhaps her most famous son is Napoleon
Bonaparte who was born here in 1769.
The island is covered with a long string of mountains rising
to a couple of thousand feet. We
anchored off Bonifacio which is the southernmost city. The city is perched on massive
limestone cliffs rising a couple of hundred feet high. Fortunately we tendered in to a
sheltered little harbor with a
dock. We boarded a bus and headed
inland to the Alta Roca (high rock).
On our way we had some stunning views of the Porto Vecchio, one of
Corsica’s most beautiful bays. As
we climbed into the mountains we passed a number of little villages and we
drove through lots of forests of pine and sweet (edible) chestnut trees. Our destination was a place called
Zonza where we had a nice lunch at a mountain resort. It was a warm and lovely day but just two weeks ago they had
snow up in the mountains!
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| Bonifacio perched atop the limestone cliffs |
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| The diagonal line is a staircase from the sea level to the top! I'm so glad we didn't have to try that. |
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| A beautiful lake near the Alta Roca |
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| Alta Roca |
Corsica appears to have no industry that we could see and is
completely reliant on tourism and the support from France. Our guide told us that there was at one
time an independence movement.
Frankly, we couldn’t figure out how that would have made any economic
sense for the Corsicans so it’s probably good that the movement died away.
A word about the chestnuts here. Every part of the tree is used. The chestnuts are made into flour; they are roasted and
stewed. The wood is used for
furniture and building and is a very strong wood. Unfortunately, during WWII when US GI’s were on the island
they brought via their wooden ammunition boxes a parasite which attacks chestnut
trees. Of course the soldiers had
no idea the boxes had this pest.
It sounds like the same one which decimated the American chestnut
trees. The good news is that
scientists are now working on a cure.
I hope they find one.
Anyway, we tendered back to the Seabourn Quest and sailed
away with the coast of Corsica off our port side most of the evening. After a lovely dinner with the Guest
Services manager we called it a night since we had a long day ahead of us in
Livorno.
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