Porto Vecchio, and Baguettes

We are now in Porto Vecchio.  We left Ajaccio after visiting the market, and the Fesch Museum.  The Fesch Museum is mostly an art gallery with a lot of important Italian paintings, including a lovely Madonna and child piece by Boticelli.  Here is a poster advertising the museum, with a portion of that painting included

Corsica is a mountainous area - from some of the exhibits we saw it appears that the range of mountains was somehow part of the Alps.  so you can imagine that driving from one part of corsica to the other is driving on the sides of very steep mountains, with a sharp drop off on one side and an unforgiving solid rock on the other.  and still they manage to establish towns along the way.  nice view for the passengers, but Clark could not take his eyes off the road for a moment - the road is two lane, and narrower than we are used to, and we were travelling on the main highway.

Our accommodations in Porto Vecchio are in a resort, but aside from a few feral cats we are the only inhabitants.  It has lovely grounds, with palm trees swimming pool, and tennis court, but it is not really the right weather for either the pool or the tennis court - a little chilly, and quite windy.  we do have a good view of the ocean, and the town, and are close to a gas station, the grocery store, and a very famous beach.  As in Ajaccio we have kitchen, washer, dishwasher, and crib etc for Juniper.

Yesterday we drove in to the mountains to an archeological site, and visited a small but lovely museum in Levie.  it showed the remains found in these hills of the Dame de Bonifacio - a 10,000 year old skeleton , and several other ancient artifacts unearthed in these parts.  The walk to the archaeological site was through gnarly woods, periodically coming upon rocks which had been eroded in strange ways .

Today we went to the beach at Palombaggio  - the one they show the pictures of in the tourist brochures. We were not the only people on the beach, but we were the only ones that got our feet wet.  The water was warm enough for swimming, but the wind was a little cold, even for us.

Now about the food here.  We do not often eat in restaurants, because they are either closed for the season, or only open at hours that are inconvenient for us with a little one.  We will try one of the local eateries tonite.  But in the meantime we have been having our fill of baguettes, and croissants, and lovely produce, and chicken.  The fish here is very pretty to look at , but quite expensive.  I have not seen anything that is what we would consider reasonably priced.  but you have to love a country that although its fish is expensive, its chocolate and patisseries are not.  

Sunday and Monday

Sunday was our first full day in Corsica. By then we knew how beautiful it was, and how magical the sea and sun can be, especially at this time of year for Canadians.

We were invited to have lunch with Carolina - our landlady. She also runs the esso near the airport, and she and her friends always have lunch at this little seaside cafe near her gas station. we arrived before they did, and went walking on the beach. the water is mediterranean warm, and the sun was high and air temperature warm. it was a delightful place to walk and gaze.

Carolina and her friends arrived, and all sat at outdoor bistro tables, drank wine or beer, and ate french fries. Juniper really thought that was a good way to do lunch. only french fries, fresh from the fryer. She eventually decided it was time to go back to the beach and meet a little guy down there who would have been about 3. His father yelled at him from the cafe - in french - get her phone number, get her address, learn to chop wood ( all in what he called a Montreal accent).

we sat down at the tables for eating and ordered fish, caught by the owner earlier in the day, and squid. It was very tasty.

Then we headed south to Porticcio to see the beach there, and then north to les sanguineres, a road that took us to a Genoese tower high on the promontory. Many many of the locals were walking that trek that day. A surprising number of the smoke. Its quite a trek for those who are smokers I would think. Bob and I stayed behind, still a bit jet lagged from the trip.

on Monday we took the drive from hell to see les callanches - geologic formations which are unusual enough to warrant a UNESCO designation as a world heritage site. the road travelled along the edge of very steep inclines, was barely wide enough for two vehicles, and guard rails for the most part consisted of a single brick. The switch backs were scary - you were never sure if there was someone coming towards you. Clark did the driving, thank goodness. But the Callanches themselves were truly spectacular, and the sun angle on them was just right.

After that we traveled back roads to a secluded beach. and we all got our feet wet in the Mediterranean again. This time although the water was warm, the air temperature and wind force us to wear something warmer. But it was a delightful experience.

Not so delightful was the end of our drive home. the streets of Ajaccio were built long before cars were invented, and are very narrow. we arrived at rush hour, and the street to our apartment was blocked by a tow truck at the top, and we were stuck in stalled traffic for almost an hour, with cars squeezing past one another with just centimeters to spare.

On Tuesday we have our last day in Ajaccio before heading to Porto Vecchio on the east coast. More on that later

Lovely Corsica

Corsica is a lovely French Island just north of Sardinia. Our first stop is in Ajaccio, on the west coast. The apartment has a view of the mountains and the sea, and the sunrises and sunsets are spectacular. Juniper is a good little traveller, no matter what her parents say, and she makes a point of including everyone in everything. internet has been spotty, but seems to be okay now. our landlady has been outstanding in going out of her way to accommodate the various needs that we have. weather is like late august in Fredericton - warm, sunny, but not hot.

Here are some photos from our first day.

award for Mum on Mar 8, 2010

Last Day in Nepal

Well today is my last day here. My plane leaves tomorrow morning at 9, and the journey takes me to Doha, London, Montreal and home. I am happy to be going home, but pleased as well that I had the opportunity to work here on this project. There are some things that I will miss – the exotic flavour of the city, the very pleasant staff, the ready access to inexpensive restaurants. There are other things that I won’t miss a bit – the bad air quality, the noise of the traffic, the care you have to take with food and water, the coldness of the apartment, and mostly, the being away from everyone at home.
Today was kind of a busy day, with everyone scrambling to complete their portions of the final report. We have started having lunch now, realizing that eliminating lunch was not good health-wise. Lunch today was apple slices spread with peanut butter. Rumo, the tea lady, brought me a box of red and gold bangles to wear with my Kurta. She is very sweet. She keeps trying to show me how to wear a scarf, but it is hopeless.

Yesterday when we arrived at the office there was a pigeon flying around. The windows are left open in these buildings, and the pigeon had come in by mistake and trying desperately to get out. On the way to work today there were long long lines of people waiting for gasoline for their vehicles. One line up I saw must have been 2 miles long.

Did I mention that a surprising number of men have red hair? It appears to be compliments of a strange dye job rather than the natural colour. Kind of strange.

Last night we ate at a pizza place in Thamel. It was particularly nice – called Fire and Ice, frequented mostly by foreigners, and a little bit expensive (about $18.00). The pizza was big enough that there were leftovers for breakfast. The coffee there is really the only good coffee I’ve had since arriving.

Tonite the whole team is going to have supper at a nice restaurant called Dhulikels. The owner salvaged a lot of the Newari carvings from buildings being demolished, and incorporated them into the décor for the hotel. Rooms there are very expensive, like over $100, which is really high for Nepal.

So unless something really interesting happens on my journey home, this will be the last entry on my blog. Until the next time I go someplace exciting.

The second focus group

Today’s crowd was not as big as yesterday’s. Yesterday were the survey types. Today were the land records types - those who work in the land registry offices. Some I had met before in the field visits. Others were new.

Nepali men wear their hats to meetings – indoors or out. Mostly they are the typical Nepali caps, others wear baseball caps. The other dress was either western garb, or a nepali suit with a suit jacket over the top. There were some unexpected visitors invited by the joint secretary. One was from FAO – the food and agriculture organization based in Rome, that promotes agriculture in developing countries, and is often a donor agency for projects. The others were from the Asia disaster relief organisation – three earnest Japanese who did not stay long.

I wore my new vest and looked stunning.

As per the agenda of yesterday, after an introduction, a local consultant spoke about the Business Process Re-engineering exercise that had been done for the project. He spoke in Nepali, and there were lots of questions. I spoke next, in English, and there were some questions from those who felt comfortable enough in English to ask them. It seemed to go well. You never know…..

I know you are waiting to hear what was on the menu – rice pilau, and several salads, and naan and roti, and a dahl, and several Chinese dishes, and a lamb meatbally kind of thing. All very tasty. Gulab jamon ( which I do NOT like) black forest cake and a halwah were for dessert. I may have eaten too much.

Afterwards we met to discuss the content of the final report, and then back to the apartment. I will wear my new Kurta tomorrow to work. It is red.

Focus group sessions

Well today was the first of the two focus workshops. This one was on survey and cadastre. Tomorrow’s (mine) will be on land records. To those of you not in the business I suppose you are wondering what is the difference. No need to go into that now.

The sessions are held in the Everest Hotel, a quite nice hotel on a very busy street. The lobby is grand, with some wonderful Newari carvings above the reception desk, and others on walls and posts around. The room for us is very similar to ones at the Delta, the staff as usual are pleasant and helpful. There were presentations and discussions in the morning, and then about 1:30 we broke for lunch. There were about 15 dishes you chose from buffet style. 2 kinds of dahl, a rice pilau, naan, roti, fish deep fried, lamb in a stew, paneer, papadums, 4 types of salad, and three desserts. The meal will be different tomorrow. I can’t think of anything they did not have today, so I’ll be interested to see what it is. However, for a nice hotel the bathrooms leave a bit to be desired.

The sessions seemed to go well. There was lots of participation from the group, and they had been brought in from across the country. No one seemed to think that it was a good idea to turn off their cell phones for the event, so there was a fair bit of ringing during the morning. One guy has a really nice Buddhist chant for his ring tone. Another person’s ring tone has a bit of music, and then someone yelling Hello, hello. Bizarre.

One of the local consultants told us a disturbing story. The land records here are really in a sorry state, and for any number of reasons they are easy to tamper with. So Mr. A sells a property to Mr. B. a very expensive property – several million US dollars. Only Mr A does not own the property. He takes the money and disappears. Mr. B is left with no money, and no property. It is clear that in order for the transaction to have been finalized someone had tampered with the records. And three low level clerks were implicated. As a result, one of them committed suicide. This happened in June.