Jacky's apartment belongs to an older divorcee from Paris, which is very cute, small, and looks out on an extremely corsican view: into other apartments with lots of hanging laundry. Corsica overall looks a lot like Southern California. There are lots of oak trees, olive trees and shrubby plants. There are also a ton of fig trees, which is very good for people like jacky and I, that can't get enough of them and get looks from the locals while scouting out good ones.
Since it is a holiday week in Corsica, called "Toussaints" or "All Saints" day, which is Monday, Jacky and another "assistant" at the Corsican school were amazing enough to arrange a 5 day hike across Corsica. We met up at with another assistant, Sara, at her apartment in Porto Vecchio, which is closer to the trailhead. The trail that we chose to do was the "Mare a Mare Sud" which is a pretty popular one, but mostly during the summer. Now that it is towards the end of the season for hiking, we had to make sure that all the "gites", or small hostel/hotels were open. The Mare a Mare Sud winds from gite to gite with about 5 to 6 hours of walking in between each day. Once at the gite, the four of us girls were given a dorm/hostel room, and then immediately after we would shower off all the dirt and then usually compare how smelly our clothes were. Then dinner was served family style to all the hikers at the gite, usually around 7:30 (all the gites seemed to agree on this point, for some reason). Some of the dinners were amazing, like Corsican ricotta stuffed eggplant, chevre pop-overs, and local salads. Two of us being vegetarian, it was never a problem, except one time we did have to enjoy a main course of plain buttered pasta...but usually the gite owners were more than happy to accommodate us, and we never went hungry (or thirsty, there was always plenty of Corsican table wine).
Each day's hike was very interesting in its own right. Some days, there were many steep, winding uphill trails that really challenged our athletic ability ("well I thought I was in shape!"). There were also times that challenged our determination, as on the third day it decided to rain on us for the last two hours of the hike, on the longest walking day of the trail. Arriving at the gite that night, we all looked something of a mess! But luckily that gite owner had an inviting fire going for all the hikers to dry their socks and boots, and also served some amazing broth-y vegetable soup before dinner to warm us all up. Other days, we saw a dead wild pig's head, severed cow's foot, a cow that followed us down a path, walnut trees, and about a million chestnuts (I will never buy them again, they're basically carpet in corsica).
Hiking in Corsica is definitely something that I would recommend, as you get to see some really interesting towns and a slice of Corsican life that you would miss out on if you just stuck to the bigger cities. You also get to experience some really corsican and delicious food. My favorite is a type of cheese here called "tomme". A few gites would serve it with dried fig or locally made fig-compote after the meal. Somehow, now matter how much we had eaten for dinner we were always ready to have more cheese (and bread). There are also many locally made aperitifs and liquors, which include corsican flavors such as chestnut, myrrh, and ambrose. When we asked what ambrose is at the farmer's market, the corsican liquor salesman replied, "well its a fruit, thats from here" (in french), which seems to happen a lot in Corsica. Things are just very traditional, and you don't really ask why. Another tradition in Corsica is that everything closes at lunchtime, even sometimes the cafes that sell lunch. Maybe its my American capitalist attitude, but I just keep thinking how someone could make a lot of money in Corsica with a grocery shop that is open between 12:30 and 3:30pm...
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