The boat tour takes you to the islands and leave you there to walk around and enjoy the beaches and the deserted island. To me, the beautiful blue water sounded like the best part.
It seemed silly to take both boat tours for a grand total of 52 euros. Fortunately I found a way to get to the Iles Lavezzi practically for free. Well, Dana actually found it. It turns out Dana was planning on doing a dive with a local dive shop at the Iles Lavezzi and I was welcome to come along for free and I could use their snorkeling equipment for free as well. Done. I had actually contemplated bringing a cheap mask and snorkel set that I had bought in Turkey but decided it was just too much to carry. Turns out I didn't need it.
We met up with the other divers at the Barakouda Dive shop. From there we drove to Piantarella Beach to meet up with our boat. Then we were out on the splendid Mediterranean.
It was a perfect day with clear blue skies, warm sun and calm waves. As the boat made its way toward Lavezzi we got farther and farther from the Corsican coast and you could see the immense beauty of the island with the beach and lower island giving way to the imposing peaks of the Alta Rocca (pretty much the High Rocks) and the clouds that were
almost always surrounding their summits.
In the distance you could easily make out the coast line of Sardinia the Italian controlled sister island to Corsica. We then passed Ile Cavallo, a private island only open to French and Italian billionaires or Bond villains (or both in the case of Silvio Berlusconi).
Upon arrival at Lavezzi, we dropped anchor in a cove on the back side of one of the islands. The experienced divers, including Dana, took off while the first time divers were doing a safety runthrough. I already did a first time dive several years ago inside a gorgeous coral reef in Belize so there's no way this dive would measure up.
I quickly grabbed my gear (mask, snorkel and fins) and jumped in the beautiful blue water. I'd paid 5 Euros for a wet suit but the water was far too warm for that.
I spent the next hour or so swimming around the cove checking out the different underwater formations and some of the fish, which included some large groupers. After that I just swam around for a little while. It was incredibly relaxing. Hopefully some of the pictures I took with my underwater camera will look good. For now you'll just have to make do with the descriptions.
I thought about going onto the island itself but most of the rocks which I would have had to climb on to get ashore had sharp shells or edges and I decided it wasn't worth the risk. Fortunately after the dive was over the captain took our boat all around the islands so we could see all the unique rock formations, including the elusive Lavezzi Elephant (photos taken with a different camera, sorry).
This one looks a little like a tortoise.
This one looks more like Picasso
The boat brought us back at around 530 and on our drive back to Bonifacio we were treated to the most dramatic view yet. The cliffs of Bonifacio and the mountains of the Alta Rocca all visible at the same time jn our windshield. We went back the next morning to take some pictures but it just wasn't the same in the different light.
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