The Inaccurate Tourist

48. Plunge

I already know one of the things that I will miss the most when I finally pack up my bags and leave France: the Hippocampe dive club. The French organize clubs around nearly any activity, and the dive club offers the opportunity to train for the next levels of certification throughout the year. The teachers are well-trained volunteers, passionate and informed about the sport. In my case, I go to the pool nearly every Tuesday for swimming and practice for my Niveau 2 certificate. I passed the theoretical exam in March, and I signed up for the practical exam -- to be held over a week in the south of France. Fourteen technical dives over nine days.

After work on Friday, I went home, grabbed my packed bags and headed to Gare d'Austerlitz to take the night train directly to Banyuls-sur-Mer, a village close to Perpignan and the border of northern Spain. It was my first time overnight on a train, and it was very pleasant -- the rooms are very small, with six bunks per room, and we had a lot of gear, but the beds were sufficiently long and comfortable. I mostly slept through the entire trip, waking up briefly when they detached our cars and sent the front of the train to another destination, and again when the steward tap-tap-tapped on our door to let us know we arrived in the morning.

Les Banyuls sur Mer is a little town on the western edge of France's Mediterranean coast. If we had missed our stop, we would have ended up in Spain. Instead, we got out to a warm and bright 8:00am Banyuls morning at the tiny train station surrounded by vines.

Our first dive wasn't scheduled for a few hours and our rooms weren't prepared yet, so we dropped off our stuff in the common room and got our equipment together to haul down to the dive centre. I discovered that I forgot a crucial diving item -- contact lenses. I don't have a prescription that can be easily replaced, so I spent the rest of the week diving blindly.

The first dive also revealed that I was horribly underprepared. I intended to pick up a profondimetre and boussole (for measuring direction and depth) at the dive centre, but they didn't have any. In the end, I managed to buy a parachute (for maintaining a constant depth during decompression) and borrowed the rest of my equipment from understanding and generous dive instructors (thanks Olivier for the dive computer and Nadia for the compass!)

We had our second dive after a tasty, but worryingly light lunch at the hotel: zucchini and fish. It was good, but diving takes a lot of energy. In fact, all of the meals were included with the hotel, and we couldn't have a single complaint with the quality or quantity of the food for the rest of the week.

The next day started lazily at 8h00 for breakfast, and 9h00 at the port. I was quickly prepared, but once on the boat, I realized that I had lost my borrowed dive computer. Nnngh. If you get a chance, go into a dive shop and look at the price of the cheapest of these devices, and then imagine losing a loaner. The rest of the dive was terrible anyway -- terrible visibility, I lost my mask on entering the water and my buddy forgot to connect his BCD (inflatable vest) to the air. Other aspiring N2s got tangled in their parachute, or played "TGV" and nearly lost the rest of the group. During my simulated panne d'air (loss of air), I nearly ripped the teeth out of my partner's mouth taking his regulator. He, in turn, really did run out of air during our decompression stop and had to use the spare connected to the instructor's tank.

The dive computer turned up back at the dive shop. It usually does, knock on wood. Our fourth dive went without incident, but needless to say, all of our ascents were performed much too quickly.

We spent the evening with a great group card game -- Jungle Speed. Fast paced for quick reflexes, simple rules but interesting enough to keep you breathing heavily and on your toes. Hooray for Jungle Speed!

Our next day had such foul weather that the morning dive was called off. Our schedule permitted one day of rest so we took a chunk of it indoors, role-playing first-aid and accident response scenarios. We covered a good amount of knots as well. To my surprise, I already knew every single one of them -- it was only a question of vocabulary: cabestan is the clove hitch, noued de chaise is the bowknot, etc. Hooray for Scouts Canada!

The afternoon wasn't much better, but we went on our fifth dive anyway. I learned that sometimes your mask is useful on the boat even before you descend into the water. I also saw, for the first time, an octopus making its way over the rocks, and then scooting away in the water. Each arm was probably just under half a metre long. It was bonelessly graceful and very exciting, even without my contacts. I must remember them for the next trip!

I also learned (after the dive) that there are few pleasures greater than a crêpe beurre sucre after a cold dive. The butter and the sugar run together and you can imagine them caramelizing. We gave the crêpe stand a bit of a hassle since their butter was doux (unsalted) instead of salé (salted). They sensed a great business opportunity and promised to have salted butter for the next days crêpes.

That evening, we celebrated the 300th dive of Nathalie. Hooray for Nathalie!

The next day was thankfully bright and sunny for our sixth and seventh dives. It was May 27th, and the midpoint of our trip. Nothing else remarkable ever happens on that day, so I tried to "liven it up" by eating an entire raw tomato. Those that know me will realize that this is indeed a special occasion. I kind of enjoyed it.

That afternoon, we celebrated the 100th dive of Christine. Hooray for Christine! If you haven't figured it out by now, it's very, very easy to find an excuse for a celebration, some drink and snacks and general good times during a dive trip.

We also played French Rules UNO, which differs from regulation UNO in the following ways:

• Playing a zero lets you exchange your hand with anyone in the game, provided that their hand hasn't yet been stolen.
• If you have the exact same card as one that has already been played, you can jump in (sometimes squealing "interception!") and play your card. Play continues from you.
• You don't need to pick up two cards if you can play a subsequent +2. In this case, the next person picks up four cards, or plays another +2, etc.

The next day (our eighth and ninth dives) was spectacularly beautiful weather. I can imagine myself living in the Mediterranean! Unfortunately, the dives weren't very positive. We had a potential decompression accident during an ascent -- one of the most important rules of diving is to never hold your breath. As you rise in the water, the pressure around you diminishes and the air in your lungs expands. If your airways are open, it escapes harmlessly and you feel like you're breathing out endlessly without needing to breath in. If you block the escape of the air, you can overinflate your alveoli, the little sacs in your lungs that exchange oxygen with the blood. In our group, one of the simulations went awry and a student went up several metres without exhaling. Our dive monitor caught him immediately and had him correct the problem, but he had trouble catching his breath at the surface. Diving is an incredibly safe sport, and our instructors are well-trained and experienced... and paranoid. Given the parameters of our dive and the simulation, it likely wasn't a real decompression accident, but they had him shipped off to the nearest major centre with a hyperbaric pressure chamber and dive physician. He returned with good news from the X-ray (no damage), but a proscription from diving for a month.

In addition to the worry about our teammate, a couple of us were suffering from low morale. Our ascents weren't improving. We had a few successes here and there, but typically we didn't have sufficient control over the speed. I had yet to save a simulated life without ascending too quickly. The rule is 12-15 metres per minute, or exactly the speed of the tiniest of the visible bubbles. The monitors made a special point that night of telling us that we aren't to decide whether we pass or not -- it's up to them.

The tenth dive of the trip took place under the experienced and lovely eyes of Lydie, one of the monitors from the dive centre. Oh, Lydie. It was also my first dive trip on a Zodiac. I tried to play Navy Seal entering the water, sitting on the side of the boat fully equipped and somersaulting backwards into the water (I was successful. It's fun). For once, with a great deal of effort and concentration, I had a very comfortable and agile ascent. I wasn't flopping around at buckles, buttons and pullcords. Unfortunately, it was still too fast. This was the moment when I realized that I might not get my level two certification.

We took the rest of the afternoon off as the second half of our day of rest. We decided to go on one of the local hikes, but quickly got lost and had to abort in order to make it to the wine tasting on time.

Banyuls is mainly known to the rest of France because it produces a naturally sweet (not cooked) red wine popular as an aperatif. We had made an appointment at a local vineyard -- Cellier des Templiers.

Our tour started off with a film (in French, subtitles in English) gushing over the terrain of the region. It's drenched in sunlight and the ground is perfectly angled to take advantage of the latitude. If the average rainfall was any more perfect, they wouldn't need the perfect sea winds that perfectly regulate the humidity of the grape. The hosts enthused over Banyuls wine with chocolate and marvelled at Banyuls wine with cheese.

After the propaganda, we got to see some of the vines themselves, and wander through the huge casks storing the wine. One of the particularities of Banyuls is that it is stored outside in smaller barrels for part of its maturation. I'm sure there's a very good reason for it, but at this point of the tour, the guide mentioned that he didn't like Canadians because they don't buy enough wine. Hooray for... hey, wait a minute!

The wine tasting was conducted around a bar. We each got our regulation tasting glass and went through a couple bottles. Everyone smelled their wine deeply and let it roll over their tongues in a very wine-tasting way, but there wasn't any spitting out. I've only ever seen that on TV and it seems like such a waste. There was a charming silver receptacle to pour the rest of your glass in if you didn't want to finish it -- I can only assume this gets thrown away at the end of the day.

The sales technique was well-practiced. By default, they serve the middle range wine of each variety, not wasting the expensive stuff except on demand, nor giving us the opportunity to determine the quality of the less-expensive. They offered free shipping only if we purchased a variety in a multiple of six. Anything mod 6 had to be taken back in our baggage. The guide went around the table muddling the orders and waving fingers in the air, counting fictional and real bottles and telling us how many more we needed. Discounts and offers went up and down, a free bottle on this lot, a euro off the other lot if only we buy three more bottles. Finally, just for fun, they sold us vinegar made from their wines (in lots of six only, of course). It was fun, but I didn't have to deal with collecting the money afterwards. Hooray for Christine!

Our next day of diving (the eleventh and twelfth dives) had beautiful weather. I was in better spirits, and had a couple of reasonable ascents -- good control and tolerable speed. The shared breathing simulation went well. My partner for the day (Catherine) and I left feeling pretty good for a swell change. The after-dive crêpes were delicious, of course.

That evening, I met Guillaume, Florian and Floriane. These three little kids were fascinated by the photos I took of our trip, and exclaimed WOW at every one, barely visible in the glare on the tiny screen of my camera. They showed me their owies and bandaids from various pool mishaps, and Florian showed me his Spider-man action figure and explained why he was black instead of regulation red (something to do with a high tech space suit). Guillaume explained that he knew a little bit of English (mainly WAZZUP!) and Floriane told me about a book she had just read with three little pigs and a heavy breathing wolf.

The meal that night had a six euro surcharge, because it was a gourmet feast of regional specialties. It was exceptional, in fact, with a red pepper and anchovy tapas to start, followed by a seafood paella with tiny little crabs (presumably for decoration or flavouring, not direct consumption), a cheese plate and a frozen dessert.

Our thirteenth dive should have been an accompanied deep dive, and the fourteenth dive should have been autonomous, but some of us needed to finish a couple of skills. I was the guide on our first dive, and my lack of contact lenses finally caught up with me: Nathalie (our instructor) kept on simulating crises and I kept on missing them. Finally, she grabbed my fin and pointed fell unconscious, losing her regulator. I got her to the surface safely and slowly enough.

I was guide again for the fourteenth dive, but there weren't any accidents. It was a beautiful, leisurely dive for a change, starting in the depths, seeing some coral, little dalmation things, yellow squishies and tube worms and gorgons. Without contacts, I had to approach things very closely to see them, and it was very enjoyable. We went up and had a decompression stop using the parachute, and played rock/paper/scissors, just like in Canada.

That night, we called the chef out from the hotel restaurant to congratulate and thank him for his excellent job. The applause lasted so long that the director of the centre came out and screamed at us. He actually screamed, with a red face and bulging eyes and everything. He had had quite enough of our antics. I was astonished -- when we weren't at the ocean, we were playing cards on the terrace, or calmly celebrating someone's nth dive with a drink in the middle of the afternoon. One of the divers from another group took offence and they took it outside.

We got our certifications that night. I got my level two! Hooray for Level Two!

The next day, we sadly left this little paradise (the odd and inappropriate behaviour of the hotel director aside, it was ideal). We took the TGV home, with a short layover in Perpignan and arrived exhausted in Paris. Sylvain picked us up at the station to drive us home.

Hooray for dive vacations!

Posted by The Inaccurate Tourist at June 6, 2003 12:00 PM