Off-Season in Corsica: A Welcome Change of Pace and Price

BONIFACIO, Corsica -- Outside the Church of St. Dominique in this ancient cliff-top village, a burly cook is presiding over a grill laden with glistening sardines as fat as Cuban cigars. A sound system revs into gear, blasting folk music through the cool night air, and kids and dogs amble through the scene. The feast is in honor of local fishermen, the man says, beckoning passersby to join the celebration.

He might not have been as welcoming only weeks earlier, when this Mediterranean French island was besieged with sun-seeking tourists. But by mid-September, the visiting throngs have retreated. The residents are beginning to relax. The narrow byways are relatively traffic-free. Restaurant tables are available without reservations. Better yet, hotel prices have dropped by about 30%, helping relieve the sting of Europe's high prices.

Such are the benefits of late-season travel in the Mediterranean. The window is narrow — typically from mid-September to the end of October, when many resort-area hotels close until April or May — but savvy travelers know that the so-called shoulder seasons in popular tourist haunts also can be the most satisfying.

Regardless of season, Americans are just beginning to discover Corsica. It has long been adored by French mainlanders, Italians, Germans and Brits; of 2.5 million visitors in 2007 (most of them packed into July and August), only 6,000 or so were American. That may change, however, as tourism officials on this island of 260,000 begin their first promotional efforts in the USA next year in the hopes of attracting affluent culture-seeking, food-loving travelers.

"It's a little island with a lot of strong stories, good climate and good gastronomy," says Corsican Tourism's Marie Folacci.

Situated 105 miles off France's south coast and just 50 miles off Tuscany, L'Ile de Beauté, or Beautiful Island, as it's aptly called, Corsica may be part of France, but it maintains a distinct cultural identity. It is France without the attitude, layered with generous parts of Italian-style dolce vita. Though its coastal cities were invaded and colonized over the centuries mainly by Genoa and France, the ancient stone villages in its rugged interior retain an essentially Corsican character.

At 114 miles long by 50 miles wide, it is relatively compact, but distances are deceptive, thanks to white-knuckle driving conditions along cliffside coasts and over narrow mountain passes where guardrails often are an afterthought. Even the island's most developed enclaves maintain an unhurried pace.

"Being cut off from the industrialized mainland was always seen as a problem before. Now it's a blessing," says Folacci.

Only three communities — Ajaccio, Bastia and, to a lesser extent, Porto-Vecchio — have enough bustle (and gridlocked traffic) to qualify as cities. Ajaccio, on Corsica's west coast, is the birthplace of Napoleon, certainly the island's most famous son. (The island also lays claim to Christopher Columbus.)

Virtually all of the island's rugged mountainous interior, where peaks reach almost 9,000 feet, is protected and undeveloped. So are long swaths of its magnificent cliff-lined west coast, which includes a UNESCO World Heritage site on the Scandola peninsula. The eastern shoreline, marked by a wide coastal plain, is home to tourist hotels catering to the beach set. But here, as in other parts of the island, development maintains a low profile. The average hotel has only 35 rooms.

"It's really another reality from the French Riviera or Sardinia," says Gian Luca Bertilaccio, manager of Porto-Vecchio's ultra-posh Hotel Casadelmar. "If you want to be seen, you go to the French Riviera. If you want to be discreet, you come to Corsica. You can have a real life here."

Indeed, jet-setty Porto-Vecchio, on the island's southeastern edge, has become a haven for the paparazzi-averse. It boasts a boisterous nightlife, chic villas and breathtakingly pricey hotels (rooms at the 4-year-old Casadelmar, for instance, average $1,300 a night in high season). It also has white-sand beaches that some proclaim the best in the Mediterranean.

A short drive south on the southern tip of the island, Bonifacio offers some less exclusive (though not exactly budget) digs. The harbor is jammed with yachts, but the millionaire owners appear to be off enjoying life elsewhere. On this day, the scene is dominated by rival crews sailing wooden boats in a regatta that traverses an old smugglers' route between Corsica and Sardinia, whose shadowy bulk is visible 8 miles to the south.

For visitors itching to join them on the water, hawkers in kiosks lining the quay are willing to bargain on the price of hour-long boat tours that take in wind-carved sea caves and the best views of the citadel-protected village. Old Bonifacio teeters on a chalk-white limestone peninsula 230 feet above the turquoise-blue Mediterranean. Its foundations date to 828, and the buildings here are a miracle of construction, seeming to float on a skyscraper-high tufted mound of marshmallow cream.

The homes along the winding streets have a museum-like quality, but the scene is lively both night and day with shops, restaurants and multistory residences accessed by ladder-steep staircases. A windswept sea walk winding to the end of the peninsula is uncrowded. So is the 187-step Escalier du Roi d'Aragon, which, legend says, was carved into the cliff face on a single night in 1420 by the King of Aragon's troops thwarting an invasion.

On Corsica's opposite corner, the town of Calvi with its hilltop medieval citadel, is equally eye-popping. Steep mountains slide abruptly to the sea, and an unbroken 4-mile beach fronts a gentle bay. Development stops west of town, where Franck Maraninchi and his cousin François Acquaviva, are the proprietors of a snack stand on an otherwise commerce-free arc of sand with the rather unromantic sobriquet, Plage de l'Alga, or Algae Beach.

It's noon, but only a handful of sunbathers are in residence; several others laze in the still-warm Mediterranean. Like many seasonal businesses here, Maraninchi will close shop at the first of November, but the end-of-season pace gives him and his cousin the leisure to linger at the tables, dispensing advice to visitors.

"Have you visited the house of Christopher Columbus?" Maraninchi asks. "Americans are always interested. Who knows if it's really his (birthplace)? It's good for business."

Acquaviva follows with his own list of recommendations: the jagged, volcanic peaks of the Girolata Peninsula south of Calvi and accessible only by boat; the chestnut-tree shaded sparkling springs in the Fango Valley; the interior Castagniccia (Land of Chestnuts), where the mountainous, densely shrubbed landscape is crisscrossed with hiking paths. He trails off after naming half a dozen options.

"That's the problem with Corsica," he says. "There are so many places. I'm Corsican, and I've been all around the island, but I don't know it all. It's one of those places where you realize how small humans really are."