Don’t mess with Corsica

Calvi, Corsica, August 2003. I almost ran right by ‘Little Joe’ as I
made my way across the port of Calvi on an early morning jog. But the
sight of an enormous blue eye staring up at me from the dock stopped me
dead in my tracks. The giant eye belonged to a swordfish’s severed gray
head, and Little Joe was busy slicing thick filet slabs from its body
before weighing and dispensing them to a small crowd of customers who
had gathered around him. I lingered to watch the lively scene before
continuing on a run that took me along a winding cliff road with
plunging views of the Mediterranean Sea.
 
Back at my hotel I found out that ‘Petit Joe Rico’ was famous for his catch not just in Calvi, but all over Corsica.

Called
Kalliste, meaning beauty, by the ancient Greeks, the island of Corsica
lies in the Mediterranean Sea between France and Italy. Balzac
described Corsica as “a French island basking in the Italian sun.” But
the island has a character all its own. French for only the last 250
years of its 4,000-year-existence, Corsica has been the conquered by
the Romans, Goths, Vandals, and Moors and spent five centuries under
Genovese rule. For a brief interlude in the mid 18th century Corsica
was even an independent nation. This lingering spirit and a rebellious
nature are at the heart of the Corsican character today. T-shirts sport
the slogan “Often conquered, never subjugated” and figure the
bandana-wearing head of the Muslim infidel (symbol of Corsica since the
16th century), next to the bandana-wearing head of Cuba’s Che Guevara.

The
Corsican landscape, like its people, is isolated, rugged and proud. A
mix of mer and montagnes, Corsica is an island of dramatic contrasts.
Saint-Exupéry once said “When the sun made love to the sea Corsica was
born.” Corsica’s 600 miles of coastline (no part of the island is more
than 25 miles from the sea) include dramatic cliffs, intimate inlets
and dream beaches. Its mountainous interior, without which the sea
would not be as blue or as troublingly abrupt, features a myriad of
natural parks and nature reserves, glacier lakes, deep forests and lost
valleys. Corsica is at once rugged and voluptuous, austere and
perfumed.

I arrived in Corsica by ferry from
the city of Nice in the south of France. On previous trips to Nice I
had watched the ferries to Corsica steal out of the port toward their
mystical destination with a twinge of longing. This time I was on board.
 
Three
hours later I watched Corsica and the town of Calvi approach: 
first the mountains, then the Genovese citadel and old city on its
promontory rock. Calvi lies in a spectacular natural bay where mountain
peaks soar above boat masts in a setting so beautiful it takes your
breath away. The ferry docks right at the foot of the citadel, where
you cross the gangplank into another world. Calvi’s bustling
marina–filled with fishing boats and yachts–lies under the watchful eye
of its austere fortress, today home to the legendary French Foreign
Legion. Calvi is also the birthplace of one particularly famous
Genovese sailor, Christopher Columbus.

Although
Calvi’s long, sandy beach is depicted in romantic early-century travel
posters, we decided to explore more isolated swimming options just
outside of town, where endless secluded coves and the cover of large
rocks make skinny dipping, even in the tourist month of August,
irresistible.

With its clear waters and
legendary shipwrecks, Corsica is a mecca for divers. Some great wreck
dives lie off the Bay of Calvi, where a whole aquatic universe is
asleep, nourished by stories of failed military campaigns and
overturned cargos with forgotten treasures. In the latter part of World
War II Corsica served as a base for allied bombing runs over the south
of Italy. Consequently, just a few kilometers from Corsica’s coast are
numerous sunken boats and planes, their tranquility disturbed only by
curious divers. One such witness of the past is a B-17 bomber attacked
February 14, 1944 and lying just off Calvi’s citadel in 90 feet of
water.

A few years ago, 71-year-old Corsican
Jean Santonini was so moved by the sight of a similar plane sunk off
his family beach near Calvi that he wrote down the tail number and
contacted the American army archives. Santonini eventually found the
pilot, Lieutenant Donohue, whose plane had sunk in the battle of
Cassino on April 4th, 1944. Santonini got in touch with Donohue and
invited him to Corsica.

“When we brought up
the joy stick from the sea to give it to him, he was in tears,”
recounts Santonini. Although Lieutenant Donohue has since died,
Santonini was named a life-long pilot of honor in the US Air Force.

Between
Ajaccio, south of Calvi on Corsica’s west coast, and Bonifacio, at
Corsica’s southernmost tip, lies the mountainside town of Sartenes,
described by 19th century novelist Prosper Merimée as ”the most
Corsican of Corsican villages.” Fortified against barbarian attack by
the Genovese in the 16th century, Sartene’s tall stone facades,
bleached by the incessant sun, look down from their mountainside perch.
A warren of narrow streets, staircases and noblemen’s houses greet you,
and the village square teems with children until well after midnight.
Despite its buttressing, Sartene was taken by Hassan Pacha, King of
Algiers in the 1580s and four hundred of Sartene’s residents were
enslaved.

A sense of honor is an important
legacy of Corsica’s turbulent past and persists in the island’s
character today. Although vendettas no longer exist, during the 17th
century an estimated 900 Corsicans lost their lives each year as a
result of them, and whole families were sometimes exterminated. In the
19th century Sartene was known for its vendettas between noble
families. The conflict caused so many deaths that a general peace
treaty was signed between the feuding families in 1834. Nevertheless, a
traveler in Sartene a century later remarked that “the houses were
shuttered and several armed men were posted around the city.”

You
can contemplate Sartene’s tumultuous history from La Villa Piana’s
poolside as you watch the late afternoon sun set the town’s stones
afire. La Villa Piana is a charming auberge built around an old, stone
shepherd’s house, with a view of Sartene spilling down the
mountainside. An immaculate little inn of stone and tile, La Villa
Piana has the outdoorsy, pampered feel of a western U.S. spa, but at
the price of a roadside motel. Its pièce de résistance is a luxurious
swimming pool ensconced in olive trees, with a panoramic view of the
surrounding mountains disappearing in the distance in layer upon layer
of blue waves.

About an hour’s drive from
Sartene, on a windy road that descends the mountainside and gives
stunning views of the sea, lies the seafaring town of Bonifacio. Known
as the Pearl of the South, Bonifacio was a fabled port of call for
Odysseus. Here, another spectacular Genovese walled fortress and old
city crowns the cliff, while a cozy port that looks as though  it
were made for toy boats lies in a natural inlet below. 

Bonifacio,
named a UNESCO World Heritage site, gives the feel of two contrasting
towns. One, perched high above with narrow streets and cramped facades,
stands as a fortress against the perils of the sea. The other,
sheltered naturally below, lies in open welcome to fishermen, yachts,
and all the sea’s pleasures.  
 
From
Bonifacio’s cliffs you can see Corsica’s Italian sister island of
Sardinia, only 12 miles away. During WWII the Germans dug a tunnel
through the cliff top down to the sea, through which they brought up
armaments for use in patrolling the strategic straights between the two
islands. If you descend the moist, stepped tunnel you can see the
massive, rusting gears and machinery that were once part of the axis
war machine. Several German bunkers also remain in the striations of
the cliffs.
 
Also atop Bonifacio’s cliffs is a cemetery
cluttered with hundreds of whitewashed mausoleums. A look inside the
mausoleums’ cool, dark interiors reveals the names, inscriptions and
photos that bear witness to generations of Bonifacio families.

But
by far the most spectacular way to appreciate Bonifacio is to see her
from the sea, via an hour-long boat trip that takes you around the tip
of Bonifacio. You will not be disappointed by this wild ride through
the choppy blue waters, allowing you to view Bonifacio as centuries of
sailors did: her old-city houses towering at the edge of the cliff,
looking as though they could break off and tumble into the water at any
minute. The boat also ventures into some natural caves, taking you
through passageways that seem unimaginably narrow until you are within
them.

Press Officer for the United Nations Mission in Kosovo.