Porto Vecchio

Ross watching as we head into Porto Vecchio harbour.

A short hop from the Golfe de Pinarellu is the city of Porto Vecchio. A pretty good sized marina (that wouldn't take us when we called a couple of nights before) sits at the end of a very long bay. We powered up the bay and through the progressively narrower marker buoys and then did a hard right turn and anchored in 4 meters of water. It was blowing pretty hard and originally I had opted to stay with the boat, but the need for reliable internet drove me to head to shore with everyone.We had 6 of us in Bonnie Blue -- our little RIB with a 5 horse engine on the back nearly submerged with our weight of our crew, our garbage and recyclables.

Entrance to the Old Town

We came in through the entrance of the harbour at the same time as a 30 meter yacht, scooted around him and tied up on the dock and piled out. Marina went to the port office and got a map, we sorted the recycling from the trash and then made our way up the hill towards the old walled city of Porto Vecchio.

From up the hill outside the entrance with a view
to the harbour below.

It is quite scenic and reminiscent of many old European villages. It is teeming with bars, restaurants, small pensions and clothing stores.



A Patisserie in the Old Town.



We divided up -- using our small walkee talkee's and went our separate ways -- the girls looking at bracelets and clothing, the boys looking for a shop that sells SFR Internet certificates, and for the younger boys...food.



Cool art in the old town.


 After a successful search for all of us and an hour or two in the town, we headed downslope to look for a grocery store -- and find one we did.


What more do you need?

 Eight bags of groceries, and nearly 300 Euros later we left the store ... with 14 beer, 6 bottles of wine, a bottle of rum, a bottle of Mojito mix and some type of Tequila drink -- oh yeah, chicken, burgers, sausages, mounds of cold cuts, milk, juice, water, 3 or 4 kilos of different cheeses, cereals, bread, fruit and vegetables -- liters of olive oil and vinegar too.



...a lot more actually!

 You get the picture -- not quite a Costco run but perhaps the European equivalent. So what do you do when you have 8 bags of groceries to walk a mile back to your dinghy? You walk the cart back with you ... just like homeless people (or Yaletown residents) do in Vancouver.

Now to see if it will all fit in Bonnie Blue...

Come on Marina...we can DO this!

Somehow we piled all this stuff and the six of us into the dinghy and powered back to Tara and put all the groceries away, then made our way to Rondinara -- that was the busiest anchorage we'd seen in quite some time.