Les Gorges de Piana!

The following day we headed out to what turned out to be the worst "goat track" of the whole trip. I remember in Mallorca our guide describing the mountainous road we'd just been over as the "Ay Maria" gorge because it was so bad - well frankly that had nothing on this! I'd guess we ended up covering about 50 km over fairly narrow roads over the Col de Vergjhu, through the Forest of Valdu'Niella and finally the Gorges de Spelunca - all very pretty and a bit hair-raising but definitely worth the trip. We eventually ended up at Porto, from where an even worse goat track was to take us up to the little mountain village of Piana - and this one was really nasty! The road was so narrow as to be unbelievable! In fact I couldn't see why they would ever allow tourist buses up there, but our guide explained that in high season they had people stationed at both ends of the pass alternating traffic. Trouble was, it wasn't yet high season, so we crawled up that thing at snail's pace - and even had to pass another bus coming the other way but which was thankfully able to pull over into a passing point!

These are not my photos, but I picked out this
google photo to show what it was like!

Our driver was wonderful but when I asked him if the guide had told him what he was in for he said she had explained it would be "interesting" (the understatement of the year)! We had lunch in the village of Piana, which was pretty enough, but no more so than many of the villages round here. I guess what made it "interesting" was the drive up there!

The village of Piana!

At lunch we sat with Mrs. "Saint Sixt" and her husband, Robert (who was great fun). They must have been mid-70s and had been travelling with this particular company for almost 20 years, with Robert himself organizing trips for their local old fogies association on many occasions (although I'm sure the proper name was probably something like "senior citizens association). Anyway, Mrs. Saint Sixt was exclaiming how she "only had to look at a slice of bread and she gained 2 kg" - and then went on to finish her husband's lunch, ate his cheese platter and finished his dessert! As I say they were pretty nice and I got a real kick out of both of them!

Unfortunately for us the only way out of Piana was to go back down the way we came up, so after another 45 minutes (where I had to desperately clutch the armrests to stay awake in case the driver needed me!), we made it back down to the town of Porto, where we were booked on short-ish boat trip to visit the Unesco heritage site of the Calanques de Piana!

Les Calanques de Piana

Also on the trip were a mother and daughter duo with mom being, I guess, in her 60s and the daughter, Mimi, being maybe around 35. Mimi wasn't her name - that's just an affectionate name for a young woman - but Mimi, sadly, was severely mentally handicapped and poor mom had one helluva time trying to cope with her throughout the whole trip. She was given to temper tantrums and in the hotel the staff had to follow her round in the dining room because she kept picking up food from the buffet, sniffing or licking it and putting it back!!! They also sat at the front of the bus and when it was time to get off, Mimi would make a big show of putting on her jacket, taking ages to do so, and holding up the entire bus! Mom said she did it deliberately and while mom was very, very good with her, you could see that she was very hard work! The husband had apparently done a runner shortly after Mimi was born leaving mom to raise their daughter. By this point Mimi lived in full-time residential care, with mom taking her out as and when she could, but even so it was quite obviously exhausting! People on the trip were very good with her though and even on the return ferry journey (where mom was seasick) two groups of two women took turns looking after Mimi so mom could rest. I sat with her for a while looking at pictures of jigsaw puzzles and in that short space of time I could only begin to appreciate just how challenging it must be for mom! 

As we were getting back to port, our driver asked us all to use the bathrooms in the port rather than the toilet on the bus if possible. So everybody did as asked except Mimi, who ran ahead, jumped into the bathroom locking herself in, and stayed in there for about 15 minutes. Without going into too graphic detail, she totally blocked the toilet, and then for good measure put an entire toilet roll down there as well! By this point people were getting very tired of Mimi (and somewhat vocal) and I get it to a certain extent. Everyone was very patient but then as they said, we're actually paying for this vacation too. I wonder if maybe mom will rethink next time! Still, if you've never walked in someone else's shoes ...! The net result of the blocked toilet was that our driver later pulled off the road at a scenic spot so that those that needed to could dash into the bushes for a widdle. Thankfully I managed to hang on, but given that much of Corsica's livestock is not fenced in, we were slowed down even more so on our route back as the driver had to keep stopping to avoid whichever animals were casually wandering along the roads!

Potty stop central!

As for the lady whose husband was in hospital, well she and her friend sat in front of us, so my friend and I got a play-by-play account of what was going on. I know you can't judge someone's outside against what might be going on inside but she seemed surprisingly un-hysterical about her husband (who ended up staying in hospital for a week and then being life-lighted back to Lyon)! Even as much as my husband and I were at each other's throats at the end, I would not have left him in hospital on his own "abroad". Hell I might have unplugged his life support to charge my phone (just kiddin') but I would not have left him there alone no matter what. As I said before, there's nowt so queer as folk, is there!