The Green side of corfu
As you may by now expect after this photographer's preview of the Old Town of Corfu, there just had to be something atypical about the rest of the island as well. You know how when you see olive groves the trees are neatly organised, shortly trimmed, spaced out and with silhouettes groomed to the handpainted perfection we are used to seeing on the artwork of olive oil bottles? Not here. Fetch yourself a random road, drive a bit into the mountains and you will soon find yourself in a jungle of tall curly branches intertwined with the rest of the vegetation, reaching so high up you can no longer see the sky. A Corfu rookie, I initially thought those trees were some local cousins of olive trees - so different and luscious they were. It turned out the locals never really cut the olive trees to shape so some of those trees were close to 500 years old. This in itself lead to harvesting issues as the fruit is difficult to reach. Even with the harvesting season still far away, you can see collection nets under many olive trees. Between Google's less than perfect island road navigation and my natural affinity for chasing pictures of trees and flowers, I am surprised I made it out of the olive jungles at all. Paleokastritsa, Cape Drastis and the sunset staple Logas Beach made it into the itinerary eventually and were well worth the sometimes off-road detours.
Note to drivers - get comfortable driving in reverse. You'd think with this tight a space on the road there would be some thought-out way for two cars to pass each other in opposite directions - there isn't. Lay-bys are rare and the higher up you venture, the narrower the roads. At certain points the road barely fits a single car between the buildings or between the mountain slope and say, an abyss. Even out of season it's never really you and someone else on the road - more often than not you're in a queue of several cars each way, slowly reversing in a file and roaring back and forth until they find a way to squeeze through nearly touching mirrors. Manoeuvre like this a couple of times and suddenly you develop a profound and heartfelt understanding of the island's motorbike obsession. Maybe next time I'll try a Vespa tour...
