Corsica in Summer (June 2018)

 

For a long time friends kept telling us to visit Corsica and as we didn’t have any plans for this summer we decided to go there spontaneously. We chose to go to Corsica with our car by ferry. On our way south to Livorno we stopped for one night close to Lucca and visited the city.

Lucca

We left Livorno with one of the morning ferries and arrived in the early afternoon in Bastia – welcomed by the first rain and thunderstorm. Our first destination was a very nice camping place near the Bavella mountains – “U Ponte grossu“. To our own surprise we stayed there for 8 nights!
It was so nice and quiet there, we had the river with natural swimming pools about 50m away from our tent and there was a lot to do in this area. After one more day of rain and thunderstorms the weather got much better and also much hotter.
We did two hikes up at the Bavella Mountains and we also did some small “canyoning” down mountain rivers. One of them was “Fiumicelli” where you follow the river downstream for almost 3 hours. On this hike you definitely get wet 🙂

hiking in the Bavella mountains
following Fiumicelli downstream

After 8 days in the southeast of Corsica we decided to move to another location. We drove across the island via Corte to the west coast near Porto.
It took quite some time to cross the island because as soon as you leave the main road the roads get very narrow and curvy. The landscape is very beautiful and there are many rivers right next to the road in which you can swim.

Corte

We chose our second camping spot because of the location but unfortunately it was not as nice as the first one…our tent spot itself was very nice but the camping ground was way bigger with much more entertainment program which obviously is not our taste.

our second camp ground near Porto

We did some short hiking there as well, either early in the morning or before sunset. Because it was so hot we also spent a considerable amount of time on the beach. Luckily we bought a parasol before 😉

sunset on the beach at Porto

NOTES & ANECDOTES

we loved the possibility to order fresh Baguette and Croissants on the camp ground for breakfast

we went into the water at least 4-5 times a day

it was hotter than we had hoped. But without the heat the canyoning tours would not have been possible

don’t go to Bonifacio during the day – go there either super early or in the evening

we have this thing who says “Quak” faster whenever we see a Nissan Juke (we think this car looks like a frog). On Corsica we said “Quak” 61 times

the most used car gears on Corsica (not a surprise) were gears 2 and 3

there is a first for everything: we stopped our car to take a photo. After continuing driving for 2km we were wondering where the strange noise came from. Turned out we were driving with an open luggage compartment… (German: offene Kofferraumklappe)