Our naturist road trip through France 2022 - Week 8

Two years ago, we had visited Corsica for only one week. It would only take minutes on the island to realise that this would definitely not be enough. So this year we came back for almost a month. But when the end date came approaching much quicker than we had hoped for, once again we figured that there was so much more on the island that we didn’t have the chance to explore. Don’t get us wrong, a month is a long time and we realise that most of you may not even have the opportunity to travel for such a period. But just like most others, we have to divide our time between work and vacation. The big advantage that we have, is that we get to work at vacation destinations. So when we close the computer or put the camera down, we can go on a hike, visit a town or have a skinny dip.

Content creators like ourselves are not the only ones who can benefit from this kind of job conditions. In fact, more and more people with many different professions are figuring out ways to work from different places. One day during our stay at Riva Bella, we started chatting up with Val. He’s a “mainlander”, who moved to Corsica 5 years ago to start working at the naturist resort. It was a good match, because his hobbies are traveling and camping. When he’s not behind the reception desk, you can probably find him somewhere in nature, climbing a hill, searching for a natural pool, or camping in the woods. Needless to say that Val knows much more of the island than most Corsicans do.

The Riva Bella resort is open year-round (although it becomes textile from November to April), so Val has a full-time job but in the low season he has much more free time on his hands. That’s why he decided to write a guide about things to do in Corsica, and more specifically in the region of Riva Bella. We had a couple of days left and were looking for one last “off the beaten track” experience, so we turned to Val for advice. And advice we got, together we made a one day itinerary that would take us to a secluded village, a waterfall, and a hot spring, where few tourists ever get to.

The village was one of those places that you tend to forget that they exist if you’ve been living too long in the “western world”. With only 200 or so inhabitants, there were much fewer people there than at Riva Bella. Yet it had its mountainous charm and the feeling that life had been standing still for quite a while. What we did find really interesting though was that at the time that the village was constructed, they built it in such a way that every house had the best possible view and the most natural light. Imagine that every architect would take those simple things into consideration. We wondered if we could ever live in a village like this. The simple life does have a strong attraction to us, but the fact that we couldn’t find a shop nor a bar made us decide that if the time comes to settle down, it will probably not be there.

We drove further on roads that could hardly be called “paved” and where we encountered more cows and wild boar than humans towards a spot where the trail to the waterfall would start. We found some old signs, put on our hiking shoes and started walking. The trail would take us through bushes full with horns and through a river. Only later we would find out that we had taken an old trail, and that now there’s a much better maintained one that keeps your body free of scratches and your shoes dry. But we made it, about an hour later we were standing in front of one of Corsica’s highest waterfalls and with not a single other person around us. This could have been the perfect time for a very idyllic skinny dip, if it wasn’t that dark clouds had followed us from the village and now started spitting their raindrops towards us. Lins wanted to give it a try nevertheless, but didn’t get much further than ankle deep before she decided that this was too cold, even for her.

A proper disappointment came at the last stop of our trip, when we found out that the hot spring was closed. Just at time when a warm bath had felt more than welcome. But well, it’s just all part of the experience, so we drove out of the mountains towards the coast again, where the temperatures would be significantly higher and where we could spend some more time without clothes.

And just like that, there it was. Our last day on Corsica. The sun was back so we decided to absorb as much as it as possible, take some more pictures, and then make our way towards Bastia, from where the ferry would take us back to mainland Europe. Just before we left, Riva Bella received a whole bunch of winter guests. Not in the form of humans though. A group of about 300 flamingoes also spends the winter months at Riva Bella, and the first ones arrived just at the time when we were waving goodbye.

As we’re writing this, we are almost back in Belgium. In case you missed our previous diaries, we have to spend some time in Belgium to get lots of paperwork in order before we can hit the road again. But we can already tell you that we have some amazing plans for the road ahead of us. The summer in Europe is done, but soon we will find ourselves once again at the start of another summer. We’re not going to tell you yet where that will be, but you can expect an announcement very soon!