The ascend
On this hill there's a relay radio station of the fire brigade and the mountain rescue service. Such relays are not rare on Corsica; they are solar-powered and they're necessary to make radio communication possible on this hilly island.
After some time our shadow (the anglo-french group) catches up with us, and of course the blonde girl is waffling. I don't know exactly when we coined the nickname, but it was not later than this time when we started to call her "the radio". The blonde with the guitar was a bit in advance of his group; he was already taking his nap at the cross when we arrived. A couple from Berlin takes the obligatory photo of us with the peak cross in the background.
Markus, Christian and Thomas (left to right)
Thomas hoists up one of his T-shirts as a flag using the cross on the top as a flagpole. This is a symbolic act: it's a T-shirt that all the students of his geography class have been wearing (well, not this single one, of course) during an excursion (or booze-up trip) to Munich, and he wants to send the picture as a postcard and a quiz to his geography teacher to see if he finds out who took the photo and where it's been taken.
One and a half hours later we're descending on the other side of the Mount Incudine to the former (because destroyed to the foundation walls) Refuge Pedinielli at 1623m above sea level. The Velbinger says that the administration of the PNRC (Parc Naturel Régional de la Corse) decided not to rebuild the refuge because "certain sociological peculiarities of the surrounding population" would make this effort worthless. That is, it would be demolished again, why ever.
Right before...
... and right after ex-refuge Pedinielli: abrupt changes of the landscape
make Corsica so fascinating
Since the next source is some hundred meters away (and what's more it's about 50vm uphill) we decide to walk on for about half an hour, when we reach a suspension-bridge over a brook where someone has put up a small kiosk. Of course it's expensive and the sortiment is - carefully speaking - very limited. One hundred meters away we settle down, and the show begins.
Heaven knows what's so good about charcoal
We cook our meal (rice, of course), and just when we started to swallow it down a pack of twelve wild domestic pigs turns up. With their pens shaped like wall-sockets they sniff around and of course they're aware of the food on our plates. But it's fairly easy to keep these slightly shy animals at a distance; disappointed at our negative attitude they amuse themselves at the fireplace just some dozen feet away. You won't believe it: they're eating the charcoal! At some time they're fed up with it (in both senses) and trot to a swampy place about 50m away. Then they get lost - but not for long, because the tyke of the kiosk owner and two of his complices rout them out and drive them towards us again. This goes on for about four hours: the pigs get lost and the dogs bring them up again. By 18.00 we have enough of it; we go back to the former refuge Pedinielli (about 1.5km, 150vm) - just to come from the frying pan into the fire.
In the meantime about 50 teenagers (or even younger, they look like 11-15) have settled down here (seems to be one or two classes), and of course they occupy all good camp places! Feeling very annoyed, we put up our tent on a field-like (well, not totally plain) spot. An incoming Italian who's apparently not capable of speaking any foreign language seems to ask us for the solution of the dwarf problem; we send him to the pigs at the brook and we surely did him a favor. Markus and Thomas go to the source to get some water for the night.
Meanwhile I'm observing the oncoming wild animal feeding, and I have the doubtful pleasure (while I'm writing this) to listen to the shorties loudly discussing the world-shaking question whether you have to remove the milk from the stove in order to stir in the purée flakes or not. The "removers" win. I'm in suspense to see the waste lying all over tomorrow.
According to the fuss the dwarfs are making they've been walking for five kilometers at best today - in sneakers and with light baggage; that means the mountains of Corsica don't have to bear them for long. I feel a bit like Henry Wilt, the protagonist of my holiday book who fights the ignorance of the world in special and mankind in general, and with rather unusual means. I catch myself with the thought of how to give them hell the way they give it to us. The dwarf yelling resounds hundredfold with the surrounding mountains; you won't believe how much bawling seems to be necessary to get hold of a piece of chocolate.
When we arrived here Thomas said that all that's missing to make the day perfect would be a plane crash. At the moment a plane comes along, but it decides to rather stay with the clouds than with the dwarfs. I make my decision to travel to Mallorca next time; it's surely more peaceful there.
Please, dear reader, believe me that I'd rather written something about the magic of the surrounding mountains, about the fascination of the quickly changing landscape (from alpine to central-european with forest) and about this special rouge of the settling evening sun in the west, but I really don't feel like it today, and depressedly I put away my notebook.
Hah!! Just to take it out of my rucksack again by 20.30, because right now the shorties are starting to set Corsica on fire! Starting fires is strictly forbidden in the interior of the island, and for very good reasons, and they don't leave it at a camp fire, it has to be as tall as a man (not a dwarf)! I've just started to pray to God not to let them start to sing when they suddenly do. And they're putting on trunks that'll surely glow until tomorrow morning. Thomas and I agree that it's just the language barrier that keeps us from blowing up the dwarfs including snow-white (or what you might call the man in charge of them), but if you don't speak the language fluently you just make an ass of yourself if you try to rebuke a pack of teenagers (we've been young, too, and we know what we would have done). We talk to a french woman who's camping right next to us with her family, and she's as upset about it as we are. By virtue of french being her native language she takes the part of the swearer, and the fire really becomes smaller.