Upon
arriving in port in Ajaccio, on the island of Corsica, we boarded our coach for
our tour leading us to the mountainous forest region of Vizzavona. Our tour guide was a little crusty and didn’t
share an extensive amount of information, but we all managed to make the best
of it.
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| The Bocognano village fountain on the way to Vizzavona. |
There
are pigs everywhere on the island, but also wild boar up in the high
lands. The people are allowed to hunt
the wild boar because it has no natural predators on the island. There are also plenty of goats that provide
them with the needed milk for some of their cheeses as there are no dairy cows
on the island.
Hostels
are located just about anywhere on the island, and it seemed that once we got
into the mountains, there were hikers and bikers everywhere. The GR20 is a hiking trail that covers
approximately 180 kilometers all over Corsica; however, if you were to hike any
part of the GR20, you would need to have extensive hiking experience, knowledge
of the tides, etc. It is the toughest long distance trail in Europe. It reminded us of the
West Coast Trail on Vancouver Island.
There are several guiding and tour opportunities for those who don’t
want to go it alone, and these include cycling tours and zip-lining.
At
the Vizzavona train station, we were treated to a snack of wine, and local
cheeses and salami. We were under
pressure to leave by 4:00pm, but some of the passengers managed to delay our
leaving time so that we could see the train come in to the station. This is a narrow gauge passenger train with
several stops on one line.
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| A little café is inside the train station where we had a light snack of wine, local cheeses and salami. |
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| The narrow gauge train. |
We
did meet a lovely 85 year old lady from Queensland, Australia, who was on the cruise by herself and will be
continuing on to the Baltic cruise as well.
Just by chatting with Joan, we could tell she was feisty and not willing
to let life slow her down. To quote her,
“I’ve got a tongue in my head and I know how to use it. That’s all you need to know when you are
travelling - ask questions when you need to.”
This evening, we made dinner reservations for Sabatinni's restaurant on the ship. Here were some of the temptations! Thanks to Magdelana for making this dining experience so memorable.