Le Bassin d'Arcachon, etc.

I met Mélanie and Natacha at a tram stop this morning and we drove to Arcachon, a seaside town on the southwest coast. This was wondrous for a few reasons. The first and simplest was that I hadn't been in a car in a long, long time, and the sensation of highway driving was pretty excellent.

After that, the wonders got more legitimate. The first stop was at the Dune de Pyla, which is a pretty gigantic sand dune by the water. Every year, after Easter, they put a temporary plastic stair case on the side of the dune, though since, as you might imagine, the dune's shape is rather mutable, they have to adjust it often.

We trooped to the top. I avoided dying from asthma. Everything smelled like salt and pine needles. It was windy at the top. Kind of unpleasantly windy, in the way that makes you think you should cover your ears, lest you get sick. And in the way that makes one yearn for something to tie one's exceedingly long hair back (seriously, if I weren't so terrified of having a conversation about hair in French this wouldn't be a problem). I don't know who this couple is, in the photo, but they were posted so nicely, looking at that paraglider that I couldn't resist.

The paragliders were out in force. There were lots of them jumping off the dune, but several of them would fly for a few seconds and end up touching back down again.

There was forest on one side of the dune, and sea on the other. The contrast was nice. The combined smell of the pine and the seawater made the view better.

There were quite a few people up there, though that was mostly due to the group of 1,000 people who were there on a company trip. It was ridiculous. This is what a thousand union workers look like on top of a giant sand dune, if you were ever curious. They followed us around all day, evidently, because when we went into town we ran into them again. I can only imagine where their 20+ tour buses stop to feed the locusts. They got a helicopter to take their group photo, which was kind of cool. There was the occasional Cessna flying over the dune, too. It would have been a really nice flight to take. Although, at this point, any flight would be really nice.

We descended by running down the slope rather than the stairs, which seems to be what most people do, judging by all the tracks down the dunes (visible in the first photo). With every step, your feet slide several feet, so that rather than running you're controlling your fall down a pretty steep slope. I was surprised by the ages of people I was seeing doing this, because it struck me as a pretty silly idea -- however soft the sand, I was at least going to end up rolling end over end and crushing my camera somewhere along the way. I did manage to avoid disaster, though, and by the end I had what seemed like the whole dune in my shoes. We stopped to empty them out, but I think I'll be finding sand in my shoes for weeks.

Next, we went into town to get some lunch. We stopped at a cafeteria where I had some pizza. I was struck again by how many French people drink wine with lunch.

We took a walk along the beach in Arcachon, where there were some brave kiteboarders in the water. They were managing the wind with varying degrees of success in what looked to be very shallow water. There were also a gaggle of sailboats, all milling around in a confined area. Apparently in the area we were looking at, one side was reserved for motor boats and the other side for sailboats. The motor boat side was nearly empty, containing just three stationary boats to compete with the teeming sail boat end. One of these days,  I need to learn to sail.


The area we were in was very nice for several reasons. There were plenty of trees for shade, if one should desire it. There were bike paths and walking paths (awesome for those who wish to see the sand but to walk in it, i.e., those whose shoes are newly de-sanded), children's playgrounds and a skate park.

We headed to a more central location, for walking around downtown. There was a guy who'd been making these awesome, colored sand sculptures, which I first mistook for permanent pieces for a children's play area, and was therefore alarmed by the sight of his tent beside them.

We had some gelato on the waterfront, which we ate out of waffle cones with tiny plastic spoons. This baffled me, but it probably shouldn't have, after having seen French people eating hamburgers with forks and knives. I played along, and found it most difficult to control the dripping of melting ice cream down the sides of one's cone (and fist) with only a plastic utensil.

At this point the sky had stopped raining intermittently and we got some real sun. I ended up with a little bit of a sunburn, mostly due to my winter paleness.

We walked out on a jetty, where there were lots of little sea creatures stuck to whatever this is. Here, we ran into that group of 1,000 again, but they were being loaded into boats to see the Isle aux Oiseaux so they weren't a bother.

We dropped by Natacha's home on the way back, to pick up some things. I met her parents and we talked about French health care, mostly. Back in Bordeaux, we went to Mélanie's house. Her father turns out to be a genealogy enthusiast, and was excited to meet me because I'm from Oklahoma. He told me how his great grandfather had abandoned his wife and children to stow away on a vessel bound for New York and, passing through Ellis Island and, having worked in an Illinois mine for a while, ended up in Indian Territory. He started a new family and his present day descendants live in McAlester, where some cousin of Mélanie's gathered these details and mailed them to the family. I read the letter about her husband's heart attack the year before the letter (1991) and other details, but it felt pretty weird. Talking about McAlester and Colgate in pre-Statehood Oklahoma with a French family is a pretty odd experience. Very interesting, though. And Mélanie's father was very enthusiastic.

So Mélanie drove me and Natacha back to the tram, and so the journey ends. It was a great way to spend an idle Sunday. The next two days are going to be devoted to studying history. I'm not looking forward to it, really.