Ruggedly Handsome

Sometimes it takes years of dreaming before a trip becomes a reality. I first saw Corsica from the Italian island of Sardinia more than a dozen years ago. Sitting 112 miles from the coast of France in the western Mediterranean, the island the Greeks called Kalliste, or “most beautiful,” appeared as a blurred watercolor of blues and smoky grays. I knew it was French. I’d heard the landscape was wilder and more mountainous than that of Sardinia. And brin d’amour, the Corsican sheep’s milk cheese with a shaggy coating of herbs, had been a favorite of mine since I first discovered it years ago at a cheese shop in Paris. They’ve got wines, too. All those attributes, and the lure of the island’s incomparable turquoise and cobalt sea, increased my longing to see Corsica.

A decade passed before I finally had the chance to satisfy my curiosity about the enigmatic island. It all came together when I was able to rent a family friend’s summer house on Corsica for two weeks last October. After a stopover in Paris, three of us took the hour or so flight to Bastia airport on the northern side of the island. It was a clear, glorious morning, and from the plane we could see mountain peaks swathed in cloud, emerald patches of forest, and the blue, blue sea. At the small, efficient airport, my husband, my friend Mary and I picked up a rental car, bought Michelin map #90: Corse and set off by a somewhat circuitous route for the house on the southern tip of the island.

The third-largest island in the western Mediterranean, Corsica lies in the Tyrrhenian Sea and is roughly 115 miles long and 52 miles across. It has about 600 miles of gorgeous rocky coastline, much of it undeveloped and stoutly protected by the Conservertoire du Littoral. That’s not saying much until you understand the unique topography of the island, which sometimes is called the mountain in the sea. I’m not talking baby peaks, but something akin to the Alps, with a number of peaks higher than 6,500 feet and the highest, Monte Cinto, soaring to 8,800 feet.

In 1870, painter and limerick writer Edward Lear published a series of etchings of Corsica in which the landscape looks as forbidding and fantastical as that of Afghanistan. Much of the interior is still accessible only by foot, which is why Corsica is such a paradise for hikers. It’s crisscrossed with more than 600 miles of marked trails, the most arduous of which is the famous 125-mile-long GR20, a hike of 12 days or more that crosses the island diagonally from the northwest to southeast, or the extraordinary Mare e Monti, a 10-day itinerary dotted, like the GR20, with refuge and shelters.

Because of the topography, navigating Corsica is deceptive. Drives can take far longer than it would appear by looking at the map; you have to learn to think in terms of time, not miles. Except for a straight stretch along the east coast, roads are narrow and full of dizzying hairpin turns liberally bordered in green on the Michelin map to indicate that they are picturesque.

Before I left I went over the map of Corsica with my friend Michael (whose mother’s house we would be renting) and he pointed out beautiful drives.

“How far from Bonifacio to Ajaccio,” I asked, pointing at the southwest corner of the island.

“Six-and-half hours,” he said, without hesitating.

Knowing that he’s a fearless driver, I added an hour or two onto the figure. The roads were better than I imagined, though, well-maintained and well-marked, a pleasure to drive as long as you’re cautious going around blind curves. (That 6 1/2-hour drive turned out to be only four, since the roads--and cars--were much improved since Michael last drove them.) It turned out that despite the occasional hair-raising near-collision with kamikaze drivers, I loved driving in Corsica. But those looking for a different experience might consider the small-gauge train called the Trinighellu that makes a spectacular journey over the mountains from Corte down to Ajaccio on the west coast of the island.

My constant companion throughout the trip was “Granite Island: A Portrait of Corsica” (Penguin, 1984), a book by British historian and social anthropologist Dorothy Carrington. Out of print in this country, I’d finally found it online through a British retailer. (It’s also available at bookstores in Corsica.) Marvelously written, insightful and moving, it’s indispensable to understanding Corsica’s insular culture, complicated history and mysterious prehistory. From the first paragraph, I fell in love with the island through Carrington’s eyes as she discovered it in the late 1940s.

If Americans have heard of Corsica at all, it’s probably in news reports over the years of kidnappings and bombings in the long Corsican separatists’ struggle against French authorities. That said, Corsica is a safe place to visit. Thousands of European sun-seekers flock to the island in the summer, swelling its population from 250,000 to more than 2 million, and in recent years it has become trendy with the French as well. Violence is usually directed at someone or something specific rather than foreigners or tourists in public places. But you will see signs with bullet holes through the French words and graffiti calling for independence.

We spent our first night in a 19th century inn in the middle of the Vizzavona forest, in the very heart of the island, an easy drive from Bastia via Corte, the home of Corsican nationalism, where Pascal Paoli formed the island’s first democratic government in the 18th century. The modest Hotel Monte d’Oro is run by a welcoming Corsican mother and daughter, and the guests, at least last October, were mostly Austrians, Italians and Germans in sturdy hiking boots. For hiking wimps like us, there’s a lovely 1 1/2-hour walk down to a waterfall, La Cascade des Anglais, so named because it was a popular spot with Victorian-era travelers.

The modest inn was a great place to get over jet lag. We slept with the windows open to let in the mountain air. Dinner served in the inn’s dining room was rustic Corsican fare: soupe Corse laced with vegetables and beans, a plate of artisanal charcuterie, and tender local veal with olives or rabbit braised with wild mushrooms.

The next day we left for the house we were renting on the southern tip of the island, looking across toward Sardinia, the reverse of the view I’d had 12 years before. It was part of a small complex of vacation houses just outside Bonifacio that had been inspired by Sea Ranch on the Sonoma Coast. Built 30 years before, the weathered wooden house sat on a bluff looking onto the Mediterranean.

A steep footpath led to a small swimming cove, where the water was an indescribable turquoise with deeper cobalt patches, crystal clear, and warm enough for swimming even in early October. I bobbed around in the water in the late afternoon, watching the light change on the limestone and granite rocks and the uninhabited Ile Lavezzi between Corsica and Sardinia. Sometimes we’d clamber over the rocks and along a path to a larger sandy beach that was almost empty that time of year.

The maquis--the scrubby undergrowth of oak, myrtle, wild bay and rosemary that covers the hillsides--has an intoxicating scent. It’s so dense that Corsicans on the run can reputedly disappear into the maquis for years without anyone finding them. Maquis was, in fact, a code name for the French Resistance during World War II. Suddenly I realized why the heady scent of the maquis’ wild herbs seemed so familiar: It’s the shaggy coating on the outside of the cheese brin d’amour.

At the house, the days unfurled one after another, slow and lazy. Sometimes we’d walk from the nearby lighthouse into the old Genoese town of Bonifacio along white limestone cliffs carved by the wind. The town itself is high on a promontory, and the cobblestone streets are closely packed with tall, narrow houses with stairs cut as steeply as ladders. Some scholars believe Bonifacio could have been the town where Odysseus encountered the barbaric Laestrygonians. The views from the haute ville (upper town) are worth the hike, but the town itself doesn’t have much to offer visitors other than the odd ice cream or coffee and a handful of tourist shops.

The tiny, picturesque harbor below--lined with cafes and restaurants--has more life. Our favorite stop was the Kissing Pigs, a year-old wine bar run by an English/Corsican couple, where visitors can taste all the best Corsican wines along with superb homemade charcuterie or a pretty omelette made with mint and brocciu, fresh sheep’s milk cheese. We went into town almost every day for lunch at a table at the edge of the water and watched the boats go in and out of the minuscule harbor.

The rest of the time we cooked. For me, that was the vacation, since as a restaurant critic I normally eat out five or six nights a week. This late in the season, though, just one outdoor vegetable stand was still open near our rented house. The quickest route to the stand was down a daunting lane bordered by eight-foot-high walls, a marvel of dry stonework but nervous-making if you met a car coming in the other direction.

Porto-Vecchio, a larger, more sophisticated town about a half-hour north, offers better shopping, including a couple of good bakeries for crusty bread and artichoke or olive focaccia cooked in a wood-burning oven, and a great fishmonger near the harbor.

Except for the Kissing Pigs wine bar, we never went to restaurants. It was great fun to pick up a whole dorade and roast it under heaps of sea salt, or saute some fresh calamari with cherry tomatoes. We found a shop in Porto-Vecchio with a good selection of charcuterie, cheeses, local jams and honeys and other artisanal food products. We were all captivated by canestrelli, which are hard cookies similar to biscotti and laced with anise seeds.

We also picked up some hard-to-find bottles from the island’s top wine producers. The whites from the Cap Corse area to the north are especially good. The aperitif hour was a daily pleasure, spent sipping yet another Corsican Vermentino with wonderful local olives and taking in the spectacular sunsets. We’d planned things to do near Bonifacio--visit the prehistoric sites at Filitosa, have lunch at a rustic restaurant deep in the countryside, visit wine producers, hike through the fragrant F0ret de L’Osepedale, a pine forest near Porto-Vecchio--but we never got around to any of it. We never wanted to stray far from the house and the sea.

A day or so after we arrived I called Alice Waters--not at her renowned Berkeley restaurant, Chez Panisse, but at a manor house that she was renting in Corsica, coincidentally during the same period we were there. Her doctor had told her she needed three months on an island. Her friend, wine importer Kermit Lynch, suggested Corsica.

She agreed--it’s French, it’s the Mediterranean, voila!--but would go only if she found a wonderful house. She had something Napoleonic in mind. (Bonaparte was born on the island at Ajaccio in 1769, the year the French took over Corsica from the Genoese.) Waters found her house, Le Manoir, through a friend of a friend. It belongs to several Corsican artists who now live in the States and use it in the summer for painting workshops. It was at least a five-hour drive from us, in Bastelica, a town famous for its charcuterie.

When I first called her and asked how she was finding the accommodations, she said, “We’re out here pruning, working on the garden.” Her voice was cautious, a little flat. I think I know why: Corsica wasn’t turning out to be as rich a culinary destination as either of us expected. There aren’t many restaurants, and most serve either a generic Continental cuisine, which doesn’t interest either of us, or a very small repertoire of Corsican dishes. I suspect, like most places that aren’t restaurant cultures, you find the best food in people’s homes.

When I checked in a week later, her voice was buoyant. She’d settled in. She’d been taking long walks. Friends were constantly coming and going. She had at least six bedrooms, after all. If we wanted to head that way at the end of our stay, she offered us “a room with a broom.”

None of us wanted to leave our little haven, but we did want to see more of Corsica. So we locked up the house and set off in our rented Peugeot for Ajaccio, the capital city and seat of the regional government.

The west side of the island features miles of incredibly beautiful, undeveloped coastline. An expatriate told me part of this is because of the way land is inherited in Corsica. The men always got the usable land, the women the “useless” pieces along the coast.

The road to Ajaccio is a good one, if a bit slow because of the curves. In the city we came across a farmer’s market under the trees in the central square. It was just about to close. Racing around, we tried some wonderful little savory pies filled with cheese and some beguiling honey cookies, and just stared at all the sausages and hams, vegetables and fruit, wishing we could stay.

But Bastelica beckoned. Set on the slopes of Mt. Renoso, surrounded by mountains and dense forests, it’s the birthplace of Sampiero Corso, a 16th century freedom fighter called “the most Corsican of Corsicans.” My guidebook described Bastelica as “a stark and unusually unprepossessing spot with a few rows of granite houses and an ugly modern church.” I was thinking about this as we dodged loose pigs and cows during the winding 45-minute drive east. The town wouldn’t number among the prettier villages of France, but Waters’ house was a romantic’s dream.

We explored the house from top to bottom, unpacking in one of the antiques-furnished bedrooms with a view of the hillsides, then set off on a walk. Seven or eight of us were strung out along the road in various groupings, talking and stuffing our pockets with chestnuts. At one point Waters said, “See that mountain up there? I hiked up it one afternoon. I was practically crawling at the end, but I made it!”

On our way back we passed two elderly ladies chatting on a bench in front of the church. When they saw Waters carrying some chestnuts, curiosity got the better of them. “How are you going to cook them?” they inquired of the town’s new American resident. Waters’ idea of boiling them in milk was new to them, and you could see the two women storing the idea away--like squirrels with a chestnut.

The entire town seemed interested in what was going on at Le Manoir. The garden’s caretaker, a bachelor in his 70s, was thrilled with all the young women coming and going. He proposed mushroom hunting--by night--to every new arrival.

That night we all pitched in to make dinner, peeling chestnuts, paring carrots, washing greens in the big country kitchen. One of Waters’ house guests had cleaned out and fired up the bread oven in back, which was once used to bake for the entire town. A magnificent pork roast stuck with bay leaves and herbs went into it. Meanwhile Waters grilled some of Bastelica’s renowned charcuterie over the fire. We tried several kinds of figatellu, or pork-liver sausages. Some were more like blood sausages, and delicious. We drank Vermentino from Conte Peraldi, one of Kermit Lynch’s Corsican producers.

Waters also fried up some tiny rouget, or red mullet, filets and served them on bruschetta. Someone else was sauteeing wild mushrooms the caretaker had brought. We made a salad with lettuces from the garden and tried an array of local cheeses. It was a wonderful, festive meal that came together easily.

The next morning we drove Waters to the Ajaccio airport for a short trip to London, and then we were off to explore the rest of Corsica. We took a couple of days to make a circuit up the west coast to Calvi and L’Ile Rousse and then across the mountains to Corte. Final destination: Bastia airport, and a flight for Paris.

The highlight of those days was the red granite Calanche de Piana (from the Corsican word for creek or inlet) on the Gulf of Porto, a mesmirizing landscape of sheer cliffs, some 1,000 feet tall, and fantastically contorted rock formations in every shade of rose, orange and vermilion. It’s so remarkable that the landscape is classified as a UNESCO World Heritage site.

The narrow road between Piana and Porto was barely wide enough for two cars to pass, but had occasional spaces where you could pull off the road for a minute to admire the dizzying view with the sea beyond. If you stay nearby, there are some lovely paths through this sur- real landscape.

After the season ends Oct. 1, hotel prices drop precipitously. So the 1910 hotel Les Roches Rouges, in Piana at the southern end of the spectacular red cliffs, was just $50 a night. Its frescoed restaurant, which has the same dramatic view, sadly, is well-intentioned, but not very good. Next time I’ll eat elsewhere.

The road north was spectacular, too. We wanted to linger, but we also wanted to get to L’Ile Rousse in the northwest before dark. Its main square, Place Paoli, is lined with plane trees and palms. With cafe tables set out under their shade, L’Ile Rousse reminded me of Cannes and other towns along the French Riviera. We had a date to meet a Monsieur Mimi, the owner of the historic Cafe des Platanes, which takes up most of the square. “Oh you should see it in the summertime,” he said, “we’re open all night.” The island’s population swells in July and August, he told us, but it was hard to imagine because it seemed so sleepy then. But from the number of Web sites I’ve found extolling the virtues of Corsica, I’m sure it’s true. Americans are about the only people who don’t know about it yet.

In the morning, after a night at another $50 hotel right on the water, we lingered over our cafes au lait and croissant before setting off, reluctantly, for the airport at Bastia. We left knowing there was much of Corsica still to discover.

GUIDEBOOK: Coursing Through Corsica

Telephone numbers and prices: The country code for Corsica is 33, followed by the regional code, which is 4. All prices are approximate and computed at a rate of 1.2 Euros to the dollar. Room rates are for a double for one night. Meal prices are for two, food only. Getting there: From LAX, Air France flies nonstop to Paris, with connecting service to Ajaccio and Bastia airports.

Where to stay: Hotel Monte d’Oro, near Vizzavona in tiny hamlet of La Foce; 9547-2106, fax 9547-2205. Rates: $32 to $58. Open May through December. Genovese, Citadelle quarter, Bonifacio; 9573-1234, fax 9573-0903). Rates: $108 to $225. Open all year.

Santa Teresa, St.-Francois quarter, Bonifacio; 9573-1132, fax 33-4-9573-1599. Basic hotel in modern building at top of Bonifacio. Rates: $77 to $97. Open April through October.

Hotel Belvedere, Route de Palombaggia (about three miles outside town on the road to Palombaggia beach), near Porto-Vecchio; 9570-5413, fax 9570-4263. Luxury hotel with restaurant, pool and garden. Rates: $79 to $316. Open March through mid-January. Le Syracuse, Route de Palombaggia (about four miles outside town on the road to Palombaggia beach), Porto-Vecchio; 9570-5363, fax 9570-2897, www.corse-hotelsyracuse.com/english/home.html. Rates: $82 to $186. Open April through mid-October. La Villa, Chemin de Notre- Dame-de-la-Serra, Calvi; 9565-1010, fax 9565-1050. Modern structure facing the sea with luxurious rooms. Rates: $150 to $460. Open April through December.

Magnolia, Rue Alasce Loraine, Place du Marche, Calvi; 9565-1916, fax 9565-3452. Nineteenth century manor house with Belle Epoque decor and garden patio--and a magnolia tree. Rates: $46 to $105. Open March through December. Getting around: Avis, (800) 331-1084 or www.avis.com; Europcar, (877) 940-6900 or www.europcar.com; Hertz, (800) 654-3001 or www2.hertz.com; Europe by Car, (800) 223-1516 or www.europebycar.com.

For more information: There are tourist offices in Ajaccio, 9551-5303, fax 9551-5301; Bonifacio, 9573-1188, fax 9573-1497; Calvi, 9565-1667, fax 9565-1409; L’Ile Rousse, 9560-0435, fax 9560-2474; and Porto-Vecchio, 9570-0958, fax 9570-0372. Web sites: www.corsica-isula.com; www.visit-corsica.com; www.all-corsica.com; www.enjoycorsica.com/scripts/en/.

French Government Tourist Office, 9454 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 715, Beverly Hills, 90212-2967; (310) 271-6665 or (410) 286-8310 (France-on-Call hotline), fax (310) 276-2835, www.francetourism.com.

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S. Irene Virbila is The Times’ restaurant critic.