It has been a few years since I have carried a back pack, but when my friend, Rene, invited me to join him and a few of his friends on their yearly trek in Corsica, well, how could I say no? 8 to 12 kilos on my back for 8 days, climbing up into the Corsican mountains travelling from village to village staying in dormitory style hostels with 4 to 6 hour hikes a day hey sounds great!

Here is the tale of my Corsican adventure May 2009:

The 7th of May 2009, we left for the docks of Marseille and the boat to Bastia Corsica, Rene having told us that the boat leaves at 9 pm We thought we had all the time in the world. We braved the rush hour traffic of Marseille around 6pm. (whew and you have to be brave to drive through downtown Marseille at this time of the day)

Arriving at the port area we discovered that all the usual passages were closed off to cars and pedestrians due to road work, we had Paulette (our friend who agreed to drive us to the docks) pull over so that we could asses the situation umm, 6:50 with a 7pm boarding time at that point my cell phone rang, Brigitte with a slight tone of panic in her voice said into the phone, where are you?

I casually replied that we were almost there and that she shouldn't worry, it was just that we couldn't figure out how to get across to the dock side of the road yetBrigitte cut me off

Maya, the boat, the boat it leaves at 7pm

What? I looked over to Rene and Benji.

Come quickly, you must come quickly she said again with the urgency finally coming through on the line.

We ran up the ramp, over the cars, down the other side, along a long pedestrian corridor, up another stair way and down again, the walk way to the loading area seemed never ending

Brigitte sees us her face is taunt quickly, quickly.

We follow her to a navette (mini van) with a driver waiting just for us the driver shook her head as we climbed in and whisked us away to join the boat and it was then that the three of us realized that we were not supposed to board at 7pm but that the boat leaves at 7pm! As we ran up the ramp to board it slowly started to close behind us and the boat left the dock as we climbed the stairs to rejoin the main cabins and find our sleeping quarters.

Looking at each other with sweat running down our brows we understood that if Brigitte had not been waiting, the boat would have left at least 15 minutes before. We all now have this perfect vision of Brigitte with one arm back holding the boat

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