The Inaccurate Tourist

17. Diving

The trip to the south started on the last day of April. Counting the rest stop, it's a twelve hour drive between Paris and Presqu'ile de Giens, but fortunately we had a car-couchette -- a bus where all of the seats convert into bunkbeds. I slept most of the trip, which was fortunate because I was getting over a bit of a cold. You shouldn't dive while congested for fear of small stoppages in the lungs or sinuses that can over-inflate while surfacing.

When we arrived in the morning, we threw all of our non-diving equipment into a meeting room and dropped all of our equipment off at the dive club house. We ate breakfast at the VVF (a chain hotel for families) while our tanks were being filled, and within the hour we were on a boat heading to the first dive site.

I had a BCD (inflatable dive vest) and regulator (mouthpiece) borrowed from the Hippocampe Club of Massy, and I was wearing a two piece 5mm wetsuit that I borrowed from Antonio. The first and second dives on this first day were about 15m deep for about forty minutes each. I have to admit that I don't really remember much about these dives, except that the water was more blue than at home in Vancouver and not as warm as I expected (16 degrees Celsius). I didn't have enough time to get my contact lenses in, so everything was pretty fuzzy as well. We might (or might not) have seen a couple of octopodes.

This was my first sea dive in two years (although I had been practising in the pool for the last few months with the dive club) and my first boat dive. It was pretty stressful, but a lso extremely interesting. It takes a lot of coordination to get everything prepared and verified on a crowded boat of divers.

I should probably mention that I have completed my Level 1 FFESSM dive certification in France, which qualifies me to dive up to 20m accompanied by a monitor. The second day was a bit less anxious, so our monitor took us through a wreck. Wreck diving is one of the more advanced subjects (there's a PADI course dedicate to it), but this particular wreck had a large entry and exit, no current and was in shallower waters. She considered it an excellent introduction to diving through a wreck. Many of the Level 2 divers went to a more advanced wreck on this day -- the Donator. This wreck is 35m to 40m deep in stronger current, so they could only spend about 12 minutes at the site.

At the end of my third dive, my right eye started to swell. It wasn't bothering me a bit, and I hadn't noticed, but everybody was asking me if I was alright. I went to go see the captain of the other boat (who is a nurse), who told me that it looked like an allergy and asked if I had been bitten under the water (I hadn't). In a half hour, you couldn't tell that anything had happened.

On the third day of diving (the fifth and sixth dives of the week), I was in a group of three divers. At this point, I was getting the hang of diving with tranquility -- the point is to move as little as possible while maintaining your position. I was able to appreciate the wildlife under the water a bit more -- the gorgons, the sieche (squid) sitting on a rock, the brightly colored fish. The fish and vegetation are much more colourful in the Mediterranean than in the Pacific. Although many of them would look at home in a collector's aquarium, the effect is much more powerful when there is a school of hundreds.

We also saw huge groupers, and on the fourth day I was extremely proud to find a langouste for the group. I was looking at the vegetation on the cliff and trying to find the fishes hiding in there when I noticed two long red and white banded blades of grass coming from a hole -- of course further investigation revealed the hiding crustacean. Cool.

By the last day of diving, pretty much everybody was broken from fatigue. Despite the fact that each successive dive was getting more enjoyable, many of the divers decided to skip the tenth and last dive of the week. The last dive featured La Piscine de la Medes, which is a sheltered and shallow area with plenty of sea life. Unfortunately, there were too many divers in the pool while we were there, so there was too much thrashing about and bumping into one another and kicking up sand. It was difficult to see very much and there isn't a dive signal that says "sorry for kicking you in the face". You just have to kind of look back apologetically.

So I saw dozens of big fish, thousands of little fish, electric blue fish with transparent fins, cardinal red fish, fancy anemones of several colors, red corals, purple corals, octopodes, squids, crabs and my langouste. Yet, thankfully, I didn't see a single detestable jellyfish. (Gah. I hate those things.) But at this point, I'd spent five days on the French Riviera, the famous Côte d'Azur, and I couldn't tell you anything about the terrain, the scenery or even the beaches.

Every day was waking up, grabbing breakfast, running to the dive clubhouse (albeit along a very attractive littoral along the shore), getting the equipment prepared and verified, getting suited up, carrying everything to the boat and travelling to the first dive site. The next dive would be hours later, but the time in between the two was taken by return travel and de-suiting, cleaning the equipment, running back to the hotel to grab lunch in order to head back to the dive clubhouse, etc. After the last dive of the day, we'd clean and put our stuff away and stumble back to the hotel for a shower, an apero, followed by dinner, some card games and early to bed.

By the way, the first night at the hotel was a special Casino night. It was all for free tokens, but I couldn't figure it all out. The dealers were dressed in black and white, with the ladies in huge bob wigs and the gentlemen in top hats, and the music was thirties lounge music. Everybody needed to have the rules to blackjack explained to them, which was just as well because the dealer had made up some new ones -- none of the dealers cards were hidden, and she paid three to one if you beat or matched her score. I finally got the point -- it was supposed to be a combination of film noir and theatre of the absurd.

Anyway, when the rest of the group returned to Paris (almost immediately after the last dive), I decided to stay at the hotel for a couple of days. Fortunately, there was another group of divers from the same club in Paris (including the aforementioned Antonio), so I just snuck in with their group.

La Londe Les Maures

I wanted to see some more of the Cote d'Azur before heading west to Nice, so I decided to go to another village close to the Presqu'ile de Giens. I picked a completely random French tourist village -- La Londe Les Maures. It turned out to be an adventurous day despite having a bit of bad luck along the way.

The receptionist at the hotel wanted to be helpful when I said I wanted to go to La Londe. She got a map from her store room and proceeded to circle all sorts of interesting attractions to visit. The village was only about an hour bus ride away, although I had to make a transfer through Hyeres, the major town about ten kilometres from the hotel. She also helped me with the various bus schedules. However, when I arrived in La Londe, I discovered that she had been confidently circling children's playgrounds, paved squares and bus stops -- anything with an interesting name in bold.

In fact, there really wasn't much to do in La Londe. It may have been a very interesting city for all I know, but since I arrived on Monday at one o'clock, everything was closed. Every shop and patisserie was closed and barred, including the office of tourism. A couple of brasseries were open, so I went into one that had a menu posted outside and asked what the plate of the day was. They told me they weren't serving food any more that day.

So I walked around, looking at the playgrounds and squares for an hour until the tourism office opened. I then headed towards the beach, which was a forty minute walk from the village centre, and I managed to find something to eat on the way. I wanted to take the hiking path back to a different small town, but I discovered I didn't have enought time to get there so I could catch the last bus from Hyeres to the hotel -- a definite priority. So I hung out on the beach for a bit, walked back to the city centre to wait for the bus. I got there twenty minutes early to ensure that I would catch the appropriate bus, and make that crucial transfer. The bus never came.

When the next bus came through, I asked why the previous one hadn't come by. The driver told me that he wasn't sure, that it should have and it usually does. I made it to Hyeres with no way to get back to my hotel at the tip of the peninsula. And my feet and knees hurt because I had been making all these hikes and walks with an abnormally full pack.

But of course, all that complaining is just to illustrate that even a bit of bad luck can't wreck a trip to a charming seaside village on the French riveria...

I learned quite a bit about practical travel in France. For example, most cities have a Gare Routiere where all the interurban buses transfer, and is often separate from the train station. Buses go to all of the small towns in a region and are quite inexpensive (between 2 and 4 euros for the journeys on this trip), and are generally exactly on time (when they show) and are quite comfortable. Even the smaller villages will have a centrally located office de tourisme, which is very well-equipped, well-informed and eager to help.

I realized during my lunch in La Londe that it was my first time in France that I had sat down by myself and ordered a full menu. In Canada, the list of foods and prices from which you choose is called the menu. In French, this list is called la carte, and dining à la carte means that you want to construct your own meal from the items on the list. "Le menu" on the other hand is a complete meal that has been preselected by the chef and is offered at a set price. You generally have some flexibility within the menu, such as choosing between entrées, and some restaurants offer several menus at different prices (depending on the food and the number of courses). I will always recommend ordering the menu. Another language lesson -- keep in mind that entrée means appetizer and not main course.

I had an extremely positive experience at a vineyard at La Londe. They were (of course) closed during the Monday, but on noticing me walking about, they invited me in for a tasting and for a bit of warm southern banter. I forgot the proper order of a degustation -- look, smell, sip, swirl, sip? But they succeeded in selling me four bottles of red wines from 1999, two of which were mislabeled as 2000. This accounts for my heavy backpack and my poor knees.

Because I was stuck in Hyeres after the truck, I dropped into a creperie. I asked why there was a dried Maple leaf on the wall -- the chef of La Marjorlaine is Canadian, which must have accounted for his hearty goodbye at the end of the evening. If you're interested in particulars, I ordered a Rouergate crepe, which is roquefort, ham and nuts in a folded crepe for 6.5 euros, with a pinchet of cidre for 5.8 euros to drown my problems in.

How did I get back into Presqu'ile de Giens? A 30 euro taxi ride. Bleah.

What do you think about diving in the Mediterranean, or the completely random French village of La Londe?

Posted by The Inaccurate Tourist at May 3, 2002 12:00 PM