Yesterday, my friends and I finally made it to the beach. The faculty director for our program had suggested to the students that we take the bus to a town called “La Ciotat” because it was easy to get to and was beautiful. We took her advice, but I of course did plenty of research before getting there, comparing the beaches and looking exactly where the bus could drop us off. In my search, I saw that there was a small island just off the coast of La Ciotat that you could get to by a 10€ round trip ferry boat.
In English, this place was called Green Island—and for good reason. Apparently this place is the only wooded island in the department of Bouches de Rhone, which is the department in which I live. Side note—departments are kind of like states, but not. The government is totally centralized, there are no “departmental laws” or any form of real government in the departments. There are specifically drawn regions; I live in the Provence-Alps-Cote D’Azur region. Whatever that means, because I know those don’t have any specific powers either. I’ll have to look this up later. But back to the beach. It’s a little tiny uninhabited island. There are hiking trails (it takes about an hour to circle the island) two small beaches, a little pier for the boats to dock at, and then a small restaurant.
Thanks to my research, I was able to see that the bus was dropping us off right next to the tourism office, and also right next to the old port where the website said the ferry boat left from. We got off our bus, stopped by the tourism office to ask specifically where the boat leaves from, and then within a half hour we had found the boat, and crossed over to the island. After a short hike, we found the first beach. The water was a little chilly, but totally tolerable. I think it was warmer than the Atlantic I swam in over the summer. A few weeks back when we began planning our beach trip, we picked up some $3 goggles at French Walmart because we were told that this island was GREAT for snorkeling, but they don’t rent equipment. That was the best decision ever. The water was so incredibly clear, and there were tons of fish, plants, and other sea things on the bottom. I was literally swimming through schools of fish. It was awesome. Being poor and not having traveled much, this was exponentially more exciting than swimming in Lake Michigan, some other tiny Sconnie lake, or the Atlantic Ocean in Delaware. For those who are wondering, I did see dudes in Speedos and some boobs. I don’t think this was a nude beach, but there were only a dozen or so people there so it didn’t really matter. We all kept our tops on.
After that, we hiked around the island for a bit. The Mediterranean coast where I live is famous or a geological feature called “calanques” which means ‘inlet’ or something. In a nutshell, it pretty much means little coves surrounded by large cliffs. It’s awesome.
Eventually, we made it to the second beach. Fun fact, beaches here are mostly rocks. If you find a beach that’s sand, it’s because it’s not natural and they trucked the sand in. Before we went swimming, I dragged my group down some not steep rocky cliff next to the beach. We layed out on the end of that little point for a while and nibbled some more on our lunches. We were so prepared and brought lunches and snacks.
We thought that it would be cool to take Little Mermaid style photos of us propped up on the rocks in front of us. Being the adventurous one, I started to crawl down the rocks and get into the water to swim a bit, and then attempt this feat. I should have turned around right away. Being on a point, and not in a protected beach cove, there were some small waves coming in that were just large enough to try to move me from my perch on the rocks. Also important, the rocks were both slippery/slimy and sharp/pointy. So getting comfortable on them was not easy, and even less easy when being hit by waves every 20 seconds. The ensuing scene, which lasted for about 10 minutes, was me trying to crawl out of the water while yelling about how much these rocks hurt, and how this was such a bad idea. Since my friends sat safely on dry land and watched the whole thing while laughing, there are photos of this. I will not post them. You need to go onto facebook to find them. I promise it’s hilarious.
After all of that, we went to the real beach right next to the dangerous rocks, and did some more swimming. Then, it was time to head back to the pier, catch a ferry boat back to La Ciotat, and then catch a bus back to Aix. The bus ride was about an hour and a half, but we were only like 30 miles away from Aix. It had to make lots of stops. But for 2€ round trip, I’m not going to complain.
It was a wonderful day at the beach. I only burned a little bit in a few places, and I’ve been informed that I look rather tan. Thus goes to show that I am only a half-blooded Ginger. It might seem crazy to be going to the beach in October, but there might still be one more beach weather weekend left here.
Is it snowing in Wisconsin yet?
No comments:
Post a Comment