Hiking trip to Corsica

Hello dear readers,

In this blog, I am going to talk about our recent adventures in Corsica. In December 2015, while I was walking towards Wageningen city center from my office, I saw a sticker on one of the traffic sign poles. It was a sticker from an organisation called Spring Reizen (or spring travel in English). It mentioned that they organize spring and summer hikes for young people aged between 25 and 40. Once I was back in office, I googled Spring Reizen and browsed their website (www.springreizen.nl/). They are a volunteer run organisation of outdoor enthusiasts and they organize short and long hiking trips in spring and summer. Most short hiking trips (weekend trips for example) are in Netherlands and Belgium and most long trips (ranging from 7 to 10 days) are in some beautiful corner of Europe. They are a dutch organisation and most people who travel with them are also dutch. When I was browsing the website in December, they had just put out an advertisement about a 10 day hiking trip to Corsica (on Mare e Monti trail) that they were planning in end of April 2016. The difficulty level of each hike was defined by number of shoes, 3 being the easiest and 5 being the toughest. The Corsica trip was a 4 shoe hike. So it was a difficult hike for a beginner like us. A maximum of 12 hikers and 2 tour guides will go on this trip. So just out of curiosity I registered myself and Sayantani for this hike and send organizers an email telling them about us and asking if we can join the hike. I myself had doubts about our fitness level for such a trip, so I wanted to discuss with them if they think we can finish a hike like this. I was also a bit nervous thinking that may be very fit people or professional athletes go on trips like these. Other than that, there was also a question of language. The main language of instruction and communication was to be Dutch. Though I can understand and speak dutch fairly well, Sayantani is still a beginner. So I was curious if going with a dutch group is a good idea. 

Us almost at the beginning of Mare e Monti trail :)

In a matter of few days, Maaike, one of the two guides of this trip called me to discuss all these issues. She wanted to know about our dutch skills and about our previous walking experience in the mountains. I told her the facts that I am an intermediate in Dutch and Shan is a beginner, and that both of us have been on some weekend hiking trips in Netherlands, Belgium and Germany but we don't have experience of long hiking trips in mountains. Also, on most of our hikes, we just had a small day backpack with us. We had no experience with large hiking backpacks. I also informed Maaike that we judge our fitness as average. We go to gym and we swim every week. We are friendly and open minded. Both of us have a lot of Dutch colleagues, so we are quite used to the dutch ways of life. Maaike said that she will talk to Anne-Marie, the 2nd tour guide of this Corsica trip and will get back to us. A couple of days later I got an email from the tour guides confirming that we can participate in the trip. They made it clear that most communication during the trip will be in Dutch (though we can ofcourse ask our doubts in English). Also they asked us to make sure that our condition is sufficient to walk with luggage (+/- 10 kg). We were advised to walk as regularly as possible and also make longer trips (more than 20 km on 1 day). Also training in the gym for the thighs, buttocks and calf muscles was recommended.

Breathtaking beauty of Corsica!!

The cost of booking this trip was 752 euros per person. This cost included accommodation for 9 nights in hiking huts and breakfast and dinner each day. The cost did not include lunch and our transportation to and from Corsica. It also did not include any equipment costs. We confirmed that we will participate in the trip by making the payment. Everybody participating in the trip was supposed to meet in L'Ile Rousse (a coastal town in north Corsica) on the morning of 23rd April 2016. We will finish our trip on 2nd May 2016 in Ota (another town in Corsica). With this information, we already made our travel arrangements in December 2015.

Spring magic ... natural beauty at it's best :)

Before I start describing the trip, let me tell you a bit about Corsica. Its a huge french island in the Mediterranean sea. Its situated just north of Sardinia, a famous Italian island. Napoleon was born in 1769 in the Corsican capital of Ajaccio. Corsica is also home to GR 20, one of the toughest long distance hiking trails in Europe, covering a distance of 180 km and 10 km of climbing and descent over rugged terrain. For more information about Corsica, you can refer to Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corsica or Wikitravel: http://wikitravel.org/en/Corsica.     

Location of Corsica, an island in Mediterranean sea belonging to France (pic taken from internet)

Moor's Head (symbolizing the head of an African male) is seen everywhere in Corsica

Many houses in Corsica have lemon and orange trees

Preparing for our hiking trip (shopping + training):

Our preparations for this trip started already in January. First thing we did was to buy good hiking shoes. Our guides suggested that its important to walk for few months in the shoes before using them on our trip. The next things we shopped for were 50 liter backpacks, good rain jackets and pants. These 3 are the most critical gear you need for a hiking trip and they are quite difficult to purchase for a beginner like us. There are so many options that we were extremely confused which one to buy. The best advice we got was that we should choose according to the number of hiking trips we expect to do per year. If you are really an outdoor enthusiast and spend a lot of time outside, shop for high end stuff (from shops like Beaver in Netherlands). A decent 50 liter backpack here will cost you 300 euros. But if you go for 1 holiday each year to the mountains, you can pick the mediocre brands. Places like ANWB and Decathlon are perfect in this case. We did most of our shopping from these 2 shops and we have no regrets. Our shoes (about 70 euros each) and rain gear (80 euros for jacket and pants combined) came from ANWB and our backpacks (80-90 euros each) came from Decathlon.

Me, Shan, Juilet and Mia posing during a lunch break

Once we had these things, we decided to prepare ourselves physically for the hike. We filled our backpacks with books, cushions, food and water and started going on day hikes on weekends. We would, for example, walk from Amersfoort to Zeist (15 km) or from Amersfoort to Hilversum (20 km) with 10 kg in our backpacks and then would take the train back. We also went for a weekend hiking trip to Manderscheid area in Germany where we walked almost 50 km in 2 days (with decent elevation change). When the weather was bad outside on the weekends, we would just take our backpacks and climb the stairs of our apartment building up and down many times. In the gym, we focused mainly on lower body exercises (running, stair climbers, lunges etc). We trained like this for almost 3 months. I can say with confidence that without this training, we would have not been able to complete the hikes in Corsica. 

The lush green mountains during spring in Corsica ...

In April, as our trip came closer, we shopped for a lot of other things that were required for the trip. A list of important items for hiking is easily available online. I will mention a few that sometimes people like me forget or don't know:

1.Travel and medical insurance: Most people going on trips like this take insurance but our guides recommended to include helicopter evacuation in case of emergency option in our insurance package. Could come handy when you are in danger! 

2.Synthetic underwear: If I would give one advice to anyone who is going hiking, it would be to not use your everyday cotton underwear. Specially when its hot, cotton underwear becomes wet with sweat and it starts to irritate your skin. Can be a nightmare on a long hiking trip like ours. I used synthetic underwear for the first time myself and loved it. No problem of sweating or itching at all. 

3.Hiking socks: Yes, there are special socks made for hiking. They reduce the chance of skin irritation and blisters.

4.Synthetic gym t-shirts: Use them for same reasons as using synthetic underwear.

5.Mouthpiece equipped hydration bladders (water bags): Makes life very easy on hot mountains where you need constant hydration. It can be annoying to get your water bottle out every time to have a sip of water just to make your mouth wet. It might sound unnecessary at first, as it did to us, but it made a lot of difference.

6.Music in mp3 player: We just took some music with us for fun but we realized its importance while hiking. Every time we were lacking motivation to climb higher, every time we were about to give up, music helped. After we turned on the music, climbing up became a bit more bearable. 

7.Plastic bags: Will come handy all the time for example for extra rain protection inside backpacks, collecting garbage, keeping wet clothes separate, taking your clothes/cosmetics with you while going for shower etc etc.  

Approaching a beautiful village during our hike ...

Before we actually left for the trip, our guides planned a preparation day. They wanted to check all the equipment that we have bought and they wanted all the participants to meet each other.

All the 11 participants with 2 tour guides on the bridge of Ponte Novu in Corsica

Transportation from Amsterdam to L'Ile Rousse:

On 22nd April 2016, we took a Easyjet flight from Amsterdam to Nice and then a connecting Air Corsica flight from Nice to Calvi. From Calvi airport, we took a taxi to Calvi city center in 20 euros. From Calvi train station, we took the train to L'Ile Rousse. We were in L'Ile Rousse on 22nd afternoon around 4 pm and we checked into Hôtel le Grillon. We were supposed to meet everyone in L'Ile Rousse on 23rd April morning. Most of the others went from Amsterdam to Marseilles by train on 22nd and then took the overnight ferry boat to reach L'Ile Rousse on 23rd morning. I wanted to avoid taking the risk of being tired on our first hiking day, so I and Shan reached L'Ile Rousse already on 22nd by flight. As we reached one day before, the hotel accommodation of 22nd night was on our own and was not included in the trip costs we paid to Spring Reizen.   

Our Air Corsica flight from Nice to Calvi

Our train from Calvi to L'Ile Rousse, really old and shabby, but it works

Direct Ferry boat between Marseilles and L'Ile Rousse (can be hard to sleep because of engine noise!)

Us in L'Ile Rousse

L'Ile Rousse is a very small town and as we were there in April, the tourist season had not started yet. So it was quite empty. Anyways we just had dinner and went to bed.

Description of our Mare e Monti itinerary: 

We met everyone on 23rd April morning at L'Ile Rousse train station. We took a train from L'Ile Rousse to St. Restitude (a small village between L'Ile Rousse and Calvi) from where our Mare e Monti hike started. The route we followed is given in the image below.

itinerary of our Mare e Monti hike

@St. Restitude, just before starting our hike

We walked every day between 4 and 6 hours. The elevation change varied from 400m to 1800m (plus and minus combined). First 2 days were short with less elevation change. But they were quite tough because our body was not warmed up yet and was still getting used to all the walking. From the third day, the body got used to the rhythm of walking but then the trail became longer and tougher. After 4 days of walking, we had a rest day in Galeria. 

We had lunch at a beach side restaurant in Galeria...

Everyone did their laundry here. In general synthetic clothes dry very quickly. So we could also wash a few clothes every night. This way, we could take less clothes with us. After the rest day, we hiked for another 4 days out of which 3 were quite difficult. Thankfully we had perfect weather most of the time. For hiking in mountains, 15-20°C and sunny is perfect weather. You start to feel very hot if temperature goes above 25°C.

Hiking with our group above Corsican mountains in misty forests... 

On most days we took three breaks for food and rest. We started our day at 9 am and our first break was around 11 am. This was usually a 30 minutes break. Then around 1 pm, we had a long lunch break of around 1 hour. On long hiking days, we took another 30 minutes break around 4 pm.

Shan thinking "I will cross you today, stop me if you can!" :P

The views along the hike were breathtaking. The best part was the mixture of the flora, fauna, mountains and the sea. It was all there. And we were in middle of it all. After 3-4 hours of continuous climb, we were often greeted by great views.  The video below gives an indication of the kind of views we had ... pure heaven!

View along our hike in Corsica (video might not work on mobile phones, watch it on your computer)

Accommodation during the Mare e Monti hike:

Mare e Monti is a standard hiking trail which people cover in 9 to 11 days. You hike for 4 to 6 hours every day to reach a new village and then stay overnight in that village. There are huts (or Gîtes d'Etape in french) available for hikers in these villages. These are basically dormitories with shared toilet and shower and a restaurant. Sometimes, there is no village. There is just a hut located at a suitable point along the route. Often these huts are located in very beautiful surroundings like lush green slopes of a mountain, on the bank of a river or just on the beach like a beach shack.   

Our hut in Bonifatu, the site is uninhabited except one stopover gîte 

Our hut in Girolata, next to the Mediterranean sea :)

Our hut in Serriera village

A typical view of our dormitory inside the huts 

The huts were basic but comfortable. All of them had blankets which was good enough for the spring weather. We did not take our sleeping bags with us and we did not had any problems at all. Might be different if you go there in colder months. The owners of the huts mostly only speak french. They are often quite friendly but language was always an issue. We had people in our group who spoke decent french, so we managed. 

Shan and Juliet, just outside our beach hut in Girolata :)

Food during the Mare e Monti hike:

This is an issue that I was very concerned about. Being a vegetarian, I have had bad experiences in France. From my experience, there are more options for vegetarians in Italy and Spain than in France. Also, the restaurants in France are often less accommodating to your special needs. But thankfully in our group of 13, five were vegetarians. So the guides had informed all the huts in advance about it and they all made special vegetarian meals for 5 of us.

Well, to start with, our huts were all booked half pension. That means that our breakfast and dinner was included in the booking price. Breakfast was almost always same in all the huts everyday. Typical breakfast menu is shown in the image below. There were no egg or meat served and the bread was always baguette.  

A typical breakfast for hikers in Corsica: 1 hot drink, 2 jam, 2 butter, 1 portion orange juice and bread 

Dinner at most of the huts was an amazing surprise. Almost every night, we had a four course menu. Starting with delicious soup and bread, then in main course it was mostly a pasta or rice based dish, after that some Corsican goat cheese with bread and finally some dessert.     

All ready to eat after a tiring day ...

Delicious bean soup with bread as first course

Amazing salad during one of the dinners

Potato and beans with rice as main course for vegetarians

Chicken, rice and salad as main course for meat eaters

Pizza as main course for vegetarians

Pasta with wild boar meat 

One night, they even served rice and fish as main dish. No one was happier than her :D

Overall, I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised by the food in Corsica. It was delicious, varied and filling. Even as a vegetarian, I thoroughly enjoyed the meals. But it might be different if you go individually or with a smaller group. May be they took extra effort because we had 5 vegetarians in our group. I am not sure about this. Only things I didn't like much was some of Corsican cheese that they served. It was most of the times too strong and smelly for my taste.

For lunch, every morning before leaving for our hike, we bought fresh bread and cheese from the village bakery (whenever there was a village bakery). We were also carrying a lot of food with us for lunch like nuts, chocolates, biscuits etc. Also, it was possible in most huts to buy simple packed lunch (bread and cheese, boiled eggs, apple etc). We were not sure if we will be able to arrange lunch locally there so our guides asked us to carry 5-6 days lunch with us in our backpacks. I think we carried a bit too much food which resulted in extra weight. A learning for next time. I would recommend to buy lunch locally to save on weight. 

Happy Shan ready for the next hike!

We were carrying 2 liters of water per person per day. This is minimum you must carry on mountains. I almost finished my water on hotter days.   

Transportation from Ota to Netherlands:

We reached Ota on 1st May evening. On 2nd May morning, we went to the airport in Ajaccio by our pre-booked minibus (2 hour road trip). The views along the road trip were extremely beautiful but very few people were able to enjoy it. The mountain roads of Corsica are winding left and right up and down so fiercely that almost everyone in the bus was feeling sick. Anyways we managed to reach airport and then took our easyjet flight from Ajaccio to Lyon and from Lyon to Amsterdam.   

Total cost of our trip:

The total cost per person for this 10 day trip was as follows:

1.Cost of the trip paid to Spring Reizen (half pension accommodation + local transport): 752 euros

2.Flights (Amsterdam-Nice-Calvi): 120 euros

3.Flights (Ajaccio-Lyon-Amsterdam): 90.5 euros

4.Our hotel in L'Ile Rousse: 50 euros

5.Lunch+drinks: 150 euros

6.Miscellaneous: 100 euros

Total cost = 1262.5 euros per person (excluding equipment and gear)

Other than this cost, we spent a lot of money in buying equipment for this trip. As we had never done something like this before, we had to buy almost everything new.

Summarizing:

We had a time of our life. We would like to thank Spring Reizen and both our tour guides Anne-Marie and Maaike for letting us go on this trip and for being so nice, cheerful and accommodating. Every other participant in this hiking group was amazing. Most of them were very experienced compared to us. So we learned a lot from them. Hopefully this trip was just a start! I hope that I find time and courage to go on more such trips. To say the truth, it was tough as well. Actually it was tougher than we expected. But we made it. All the training paid off in the end. And ofcourse all of us gave encouragement to each other. Music helped us a lot as well. Specially me and Shan were laughing our asses off all the time during the hikes. We would become so tired that we would just start making comments at each other to vent some frustration. The comments would often be so funny and we laughed so hard on them that we would suddenly burst into tears (for example Shan would often say 'if you wanted to do all these crazy adventures, you should have married a dutch girl, why did you married an Indian?')!! When we are subject to immense stress, we do weird things. That is why it is better to go on a hike like this with a group. Sometimes it helps if you don't have to decide if you have to turn right or left. Just put on your music and walk, walk, walk in a trance... till you are struck by another beauty of creation, by another magnificent view ...  then just stop ... soak it all in ... breath deep ... and live.

There is no place where I feel more alive than in the wild ...

See you guys again soon!

Yours,

Karan