We had planned to spend one more day in Sagone, but we'd done everything we wanted to do, so we decided to pack up and head to Bonifacio because all the photos we've seen of it look amazing. Again we were up early and packed the campsite in very short time, but by our now quite exacting standards the job done on the tent was a bit below par, but it passed muster, as we were back in a tent again tonight. By this stage of the holidays, we are going to be about 50/50 between hotels and campgrounds, so we are looking forward to 2 or maybe 3 days in hotels before our final 4 days camping in Sardinia.
We pushed on early back past Ajaccio and on through a number of small towns before finally running out of steam and stopping at the picturesque town of Sartene for breakfast at about 11am. Sartene is set high in the mountains and to get up to the town we had to climb some very steep steps before arriving in yet another cobble-stoned ancient village square. Arriving back at the car an hour and a half later, the car indicated 45 degrees, which wasn't a true reading of the outside temperature, but a good indication of how hot it was inside the car. Fortunately we'd put towels over the dash, the steering wheel and the gear stick, so I was able to drive the car without getting blistered hands, but it still took about twenty minutes for the airconditioning to cool down the dash.
Our campground book warned us that tonights camp was down a narrow bumpy road, but after 2 ks of a tarsealed 4 wheeled drive track, I said to Anne, “I saw a 3 star campground 15ks back towards Bonifacio, so let's head there. To cut a long story short, campground self assessments are not an exercise in reality, so having rejected that one, we headed to another recommended campground further away from Bonifacio than the first two that we had rejected. The day was fast heading for toys out of the cot time, but fortunately when we got to the 3rd campground, it was brilliant so we chose a spot under a tree for one night and then headed into Bonifacio for lunch and some historic town site-seeing.
Wow, Bonifacio – what a find. A brilliant little town, much bigger than the others we've encountered in in Corsica and sort of a cross between Montipulciano and Dubrovnic. Montipulciano for the energy sapping hills you have to climb to get up to it and Dubrovnic for the walled city with lots of little streets and quiet piazzas. Bonifacio is a town built in two parts – the lower part, by the port with the usual wide range of boats, yachts and superyachts – and of course heaps of restaurants all around the marina..
There were two particularly large superyachts – Xanadu and Lady Sheridan. Xanadu left port late in the afternoon and then the following day, Anne read in the Daily Mail (that paragon of intellectual virtue) that Paris Hilton has flown into Figari Airport (which is just out of Bonifacio), got on a boat and headed to Sardinia, which is 25 miles away, so we suspect she might have been on Xanadu. I googled Xanadu superyacht (about 200 ft) and it is available for charter for between $Euro240,000 and $325,000 per week although in these troubled times, I suspect you could probably get it for $Euro200,000. You can rent boats around here on a daily rate – rigid inflatatbles from between 3,000 and 10,000 Euros per week. The big speed boats go for about 2000 Euros a day and burn 120 litres of fuel an hour – a beach towel, volley ball and a parir of swimming shoes will provide the same fun at a fraction of the cost.
Then there is the upper town, which after a long walk in very hot temperatures, which nearly spelt the end of us, is the really charming part of town. Narrow streets, tall buildings, little piazzas, shops with stuff we could buy (I'll come back to that when we get to Porto Vecchio – eh, Stella) and absolutely amazing view. The upper town is built at the top of white chalk cliffs which provides amazing views of the port and Marina and the white cliffs running down the coast towards Porto Vecchio.
We had Dinner in Bonifacio at a very nice restaurant that we've eaten at twice now. Each time we get given a nice table then get upgraded to a better one because a large “influential” group comes along that needs our wee table to make a table big enough for all of them, so we get upgraded to a marina side table. After dinner we drove the 30ks back to campground and headed to the bar to use their wifi, because I'd been off the air since Ajaccio. It all went very well until it hit 11pm, when they turned all the lights out and told us we were welcome to sit there for as long as we liked as long as we didn't make any noise.
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