The past few days have been full of ups and downs. Literally. On Tuesday, having briefly forgotten the "one hand for the boat" rule, I had a dramatic fall down the companionway steps. As a result, a foot-long section of my back is the colour of those ugly red and purple jellyfish that float around the wharf at Kelly's Cove. Apparently, scrubbing the steps had made them a bit slippery. (Don't worry Mom, I'm perfectly fine now.) The mishap and the strong winds threw us a bit off schedule, so it was Thursday before we rented a car to do some inland touring. The drive through the mountains confirmed what was already obvious from the water- Corsica is a spectacularly beautiful island.

Our first stop was Sartene, where the old town of granite buildings looks out on magnificent mountain peaks. If we had visited Sartene on Good Friday, we might have seen the "Catenacciu" procession, in which a red-hooded penitent citizen re-enacts Christ's walk to Calvary carrying a heavy cross, with feet wrapped in chains. But in early July the streets were quiet, so we had a slow meander through the old town and shared a plate of Corsican meats and cheeses and a delicious "daube" in a small sidewalk restaurant. Next, we drove northwest to Levie and Zonza, climbing along narrow roads bordered by pine forests or by open air and vertiginous drops. Most sections had no guardrails. It was a slow trip. I don't even want to think about what it would be like to drive that route in winter. The switchbacks in this part of the world have such tight angles that "Tom Tom", our portable car GPS, became hopelessly confused and repeatedly told us to "turn around when possible". In Corsica, distance is apparently measured in time rather than kilometers, as there are so many twists and turns.

In Levie, we made a brief stop at the Poste to mail our postcards. The lone postmistress carefully looked up the cost of mailing the cards to Canada, removed the appropriate stamps from a large cabinet at the back of the room, then hand-stamped every postcard with a flourish. What a satisfying job! In Zonza, we stopped for coffee, something we haven't done much lately, because the "cremes" served in French cafés are not nearly as addictive as the Spanish café con lechés. The coffee in Zonza was wonderful- and suddenly we realized we were getting close to Italy, the land of cappuccino!

In Zonza's tourist bureau, the agent's body language as she described the "Col de Bavella" (with a Gallic rolling of the eyes and puffing of the lips that seems to translate to "unbelievable") left no doubt that we should continue a little further north. The Col is a spectacular viewpoint surrounded by dramatic spiky mountain peaks, looked over by a statue of "Notre Dame des Neiges". This obviously beloved Madonna was surrounded by candles and plaques of thanks, with pools and rivulets of dark candle wax staining the surrounding rocks. We drive back to Bonifacio via Porto Vecchio, by which time we were too tired to cook and walked along the waterfront to the "Kissing Pigs" wine bar for dinner.

The restaurant deserved its Routard recommendation, but the best part of the night was our conversation with the owner. A look-alike for Roberto Benigni ("A Beautiful Life") he was friendly, talkative and happy to give us his viewpoint on many things, including the relationship between France and Corsica, the FLNC (still active, and still occasionally violent) and the Corsican language (closer to the ancient Roman language than to modern day Italian). His daughter's dog wandered freely from table to table looking for handouts, but the food was too good to share.

The next day, we had intended to sail to the Lavezi islands near Bonifacio, but the wind came up a little sooner than expected and there seemed to be a lot of masts in the anchorage. After some debate, we decided to head to Porto Cervo, Sardinia. We'd been told that the cost of a night in the marina for a boat our size was roughly 180 euros, but the Imray pilot said we could anchor. We arrived around noon and anchored just outside the mooring field, but our stay was short-lived. In late afternoon, the padron of the mooring field dropped by to tell us that anchoring is no longer allowed anywhere in the harbour. He offered us a special rate on a mooring buoy- 100 euros PLUS a 50 euro one-time registration fee! This is the land of movie stars and mega-yachts. Obviously, they do not want our kind. We weren't fully sure whether to believe him when he told us that the navy could give us a 500 euro fine for anchoring, but decided we'd better not risk it. So, at 5 p.m., we had to pull up the anchor and head back into the channel, dead into 25 knots of wind, to get to the anchorage at Golfo Delle Saline about six miles to the west. The combination of the wind and the big waves, very close together, were almost too much even for our new 75 hp engine. At times we were only making three knots and we wondered if we were dragging a fishnet, but things flattened out nicely when we turned the corner into the Golfe. We were happy that the anchor had dug in well when we got a weather forecast calling for Force 8 winds in the strait the next day. This was our third gale or near gale in two weeks, twice at anchor and once in the marina at Bonafacio.

Friday was a windy but uneventful day in a pleasant anchorage, until we got a phone call from Christopher telling us that Rick's mother, contrary to being on the road to recovery as we had thought, had taken a turn for the worse and would probably be having surgery. We managed to reach her by phone just minutes before she was taken to the operating room. As always, she sounded cheerful and optimistic, but it was obviously very bad news. Late that night, Rick's brother Al called to say that the surgery had been successful, but we were still very worried. In the morning we set sail for Olbia (the closet place with both a marina and an airport) while we waited for more news from home.

This coast is called the Costa Smeralda and we have never seen so many large power boats in one area. They zip to and fro, creating massive waves to the point where the rolling makes it impossible to keep the sails full. The 110 footers are starting to look small- we even saw a RIB go by that must have been 60 feet long! The coast line is rugged with steep cliffs and large bays. The water is a beautiful deep blue in colour, similar to what you see when you cross the Gulf Stream in the Atlantic. Over the sand, the water is a brilliant turquoise.

We anchored in the harbour at Olbia, launched the dinghy and went ashore to try to negotiate a berth at the marina. Instant culture shock! We suddenly realized how easy our lives had been while we were in France. I've spent hours listening to Italian lessons on my new ipod shuffle during the past month, but my vocabulary certainly wasn't up to the challenge of negotiating the price of a berth. (Unlike Spain and France, where the price is the price, we've been told that in Italy we should negotiate). Fortunately, the marina manager spoke a little French, so we coped. We found an internet café, checked on possibilities for flights home and then stopped in a piazza downtown for a birra (beer). The place was a bustle of activity and a great place to people-watch and listen to the melodious Italian conversations around us.

The dramatic cultural differences between areas that are geographically so close continue to astonish us. In Canada, you can travel two thousand miles from the Maritimes to the prairies and arrive in a town that feels exactly like home. The multi-cultural populations of the major Canadian cities allow us to taste food from Greece, India, Pakistan or Lebanon but it is still Canada. You can cross the border, drive for a hundred miles into the United States and not realize you are in a different country until you ask someone his opinion on gun control. You can drive to Quebec and . OK, maybe Quebec is a little different. But here, although France is only eleven miles away, the language, architecture, food, wine and culture are completely different. You need only to observe the young men in the piazza to understand this absolutely.

We are still at anchor, but the Club Nautica will allow us to stay there for a couple of weeks (50 euros a night) if we need to go home. Based on the latest update from Rick's sister, Lyn, things are going well, so we will wait to see what tomorrow brings. If all is well, we will make our way down the west coast of Sardinia to avoid the August vacationers, then onward to Sicily and the Aeolian islands.

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