well.... Ia belle corsica anyway.... corsicans consider themselves CORSICAN.... then perhaps, if the world insists, French. but, they certainly do live on a beautiful island, and speak a language that i can communicate in.... i hope that's not making me prejudiced against italy (the fact that i can't speak their language). Yummmy food too: The soupe de poisson (fish) is devine; the ragout is delicious, and of course the universal food, pizza, is actually better than what we had in sardinia. i think we have to go out for dinner again tonight.

If you look at your atlas, you'll notice that Corsica is just about 10 miles across the straits of Bonitacio from north sardinia, so, we just hopped over to Bonifacio a few days ago and have been really enjoying this town, it's a town that caters to cruisers. for example, it's the first town we've been in in a long time that actually has laundromats! Ever since mainland Spain, where almost all the marinas had laundromats, i've had to do our laundry by hand. Today i used a machine, and it was THRILLING.

Our arrival in Bonifacio was very exciting.... the kind of excitement we can both do without. It's a VERY NARROW harbour, and we made the mistake of arriving at about 5pm on the first day after several days of high winds, so LOTS of boats were on the move. when we arrived, there were literally 20 boats hovering about in a space ot about 100 yards by 300 yards waiting to be told where to tie up. there was one marina guy running around in his dinghy looking for spaces and directing boats to them. As we have probably mentioned before, Chali Ventures' underbody design and lack of a bowthruster renders her difficult and unpredictable to maneuver in tight spaces, and certainly it we have to go backwards. Reverse Control is an oxymoron with our boat. Needless to say it was very stressful. We were happy to get a temporary one-night-only spot.... ANYTHING, just to get settled. It's the first time we ever had to med-moor our boat without assistance. gulp. but we did it. AND.... ChaliVentures is no worse for the wear. The next morning after lots of transients left, we moved to another berth on the town side of the harbour. And for those Homer scholars among you, you'll be interested to know that most historians agree that this is the place that Odysseus got stoned by the cannibalistic Laestrygonians. And you should see these limestone cliffs. The old city, including a citadel and mlutistoried buildings are on top, but erosion has taken its toll on the bottom, so to look at them, you think the buildings are going to topple into the sea anyminute. One of these days i'll update our photo website, so you can see for yourselves.

Yesterday, we rented a car (a 2-door Renault that's about 80% the size of a VW bug for... .96 euros/day or about $1 20!!!'-insane'). that's the highest we've had to pay anyway, yet. But, we had a great zig-zaggy drive through spectacular mountains and forests and stopped in several towns and cities, including Ajaccio of course, birthplace of Napoleon.

so, i believe weather conditions are such that we'll be able to leave tomorrow. We've just decided to go up the west coast of corsica, stopping in maybe 3-4 places including anchorages.... and THEN we might hop over to mainland France. our itinerary changes daily though. so who knows WHERE the next Chali-Comm will come from.

Au Revoir for now!


alison & chuck & zoey of course