Since Sunday we are now here on the east coast of Korsika, the campground La Vetta near Porto Vecchio to be precise. This area is in general a good starting point for various trips/hikes. It‘s not far from Bonifacio, close to the most famous and beautiful beaches of Corsica and also close to a lot of waterfalls and rock pools. The latter can be reached through various trails, but unfortunately it‘s a little bit to cold to swim in them by now as fall has now also reached Corsica. There‘s even fresh snow in the mountains.
The weather wasn‘t particularly nice on Monday but we used a short window of sunshine to visit the very popular beach Plage Palomaggia (also very popular with the Instagrammers). The turquoise water and the fine white sand have a very Caribbean feel – although this is of course still „just“ the Mediterranean. Right now, in the off-season, it‘s indeed very beautiful. But I don‘t want to know how full this beach is in the peak season. Parking was already a challenge now. For a few hours this beach is quite nice, but we surfers really prefer the west coast with it‘s waves.
Today we used the fall weather (only 68°F) for a hike to the waterfall Cascade d´Buja. It was only 1.24 miles but they came with 460ft of altitude – but not on a nice paved way, no, you had to almost climb up the mountain. Thanks to the heavy rains in the last few days we also had to get our feet wet while crossing the river – but that was not going to stop us. In total it took us 3 1/2 hours including a break at the waterfall. We met no one on the trail, only a few locals at the waterfall, but they left shortly after we arrived so we had the place to ourselves – very nice. We also finally got up close with the Corsican chestnut. A very prickly affair, especially compared to the German relative. Another fun fact: One prickly shell can house many chestnuts.
Tomorrow we‘re on the road yet again to our last campground, close to Bastia where we started our adventure. Shortly before we embarked on our journey we had scheduled our ferry back for tonight, as the information at this time was that the free COVID-19 tests would only be available until the end of September and that everyone who would arrive in October would have 5 days of mandatory quarantine before he/she could get a (probably not for-free) test. But thanks to the slow moving German bureaucracy (the first and likely only time we‘re thankful for that) this change in quarantine orders has been pushed back to the mid of October at the earliest, allowing us to stay here on Corsica as long as we originally planned.
