Corsica day 5: Porto

Thursday, April 30, 2015

After yesterday’s long hike, we decided to take it easy. We spent the morning on the beach at Porto.

Eric went spearfishing and caught another araignée de mer. This time it was a male, and even larger than the first one he found.

He was very happy because you can’t fish them during the month of May. He had to borrow a large pot (marmite) in order to cook it.

The kids were fascinated with the crab. At one point it wiggled so much in the bag we'd put it in that it toppled off the countertop, landing upside down on the kitchen floor. Much hilarity ensured. Eric cleaned it outside in the garden and said that it seemed to die as soon as he placed it in a bucket of fresh water.

Zari was very upset about killing the crab. She insisted we say a prayer of thankgiving and sorrow, like Native Americans used to do when they hunted animals. She was much calmer after we offered our thanks to the crab for giving its life so we could eat.

Cooked and ready to eat

Yet again Ivy wouldn’t go down for a nap. All this week she’s either missed or refused to nap. It’s nice, actually, because she goes down very easily in the evenings.

After lunch we went to Porto again to see the chateau. Well, it’s more of a fortified tower, one of the many built all around the island several centuries ago as part of a large military fortification.

Inga sometimes gets this stubborn, defiant, Inga sometimes gets this stubborn, defiant, independent streak. She’ll go off by herself, against our wishes, and hide or climb or do something otherwise to show she’s her own self.  streak. She’ll go off by herself, against our wishes, and hide or climb or do something otherwise to show she’s her own self.

While we were all on the rooftop, Inga went down and hid herself. I couldn’t find her at all and sent Zari running down the path to see if she’d started hiking back down. Eric found her secreted inside a deep window well…with no window, just a hole with a deadly dropoff on the other side.

She also started climbing up some steep rocks after we’d exited the tower. She fell after I told her to come back down and got scratched up in the brambles of the maquis.

I made dinner while Eric went spearfishing one last time, to the Bussaglia beach just a few kms away. He was thrilled when he came home with a large sar, the largest fish he’s caught so far this year. So between the crab for lunch and the fish for dinner, he feasted today.