What a day!

It is hard to know where to start with a description of yesterday.  It was a long, amazing day.  We began with a simple plan to head to the beach for a cool refreshing swim.  We stopped in town for croissants and a bagette to complete our picnic plan and were on the beach in Stes Maries de la Mer by around 10:30.  Not too crowded, no problem parking.  It was another wonderful day at the beach.  Larry walked.  Dot studied maps and guidebooks and sunned.  We had a great picnic.  

French beaches are a quite different from American beaches, aside from the topless women.  First of all, while there are children there, they are not all screaming at the top of their lungs.  In fact, you don't even realize there are children there.  There are also no radios or noise makers, so it is a peaceful place, even when full of people.  Secondly, the french do not need changing rooms.  They are all skilled from an early age on how to change into their bathing suits on the beach.  It is pretty amazing to watch.  They simply wrap a towel around their waist, take off whatever they have under it, put on their bathing suit.  Bikini tops are put around the waist and pulled up.  It is amazing to see a whole family standing on the beach talking to each other as they put on their bathing suits under their towels.  Thirdly, as I mentioned before the fresh water showers are a god-send at the end of the day to wash off the salt.

The Mediterranean has little in the way of tides and even less in the way of waves.  While we have seen people windsurfing, there are no surfers.  To make up for this, they have something called 'Stand Ups' which are basically surf boards you stand on and paddle!    We didn't try it but it was neat to watch.

After our fill of the beach, we took another boat ride up the rhone River into the Camargue region.  I wanted to see the bulls and horses and we did.  The boat ride was so-so but seeing the animals  made it worthwhile.  I'm still puzzling over the fact that there were female bulls, and of course baby bulls.   The baby horses are born brown/black and turn white/gray as they grow up.  We are hoping to go see a bull 'fight' (Camargue style) on Friday night in Arles.  Unlike the spanish type of bull fighting they don't harm the bull.  They put ribbons on it and the bull 'fighters' try to get the ribbons.  It is a timed event.

Well, after the boat ride, we decided to do a little further exploration of the coastline by car.  We saw all sorts of wild animals driving through the wetlands, as well as a huge port and another massive beach.  The most fascinating thing we came across was the salt flats.  This region used to have lots and lots of salt flats but most of them have been turned into rice fields (which are an amazing green, by the way).  Anyway, the pile of salt and red flats were very interested.  We haven't been able to figure out yet why the water is red.  Anybody know?

Then we started to head for home.  It was already 7 o'oclock and we were getting hungry.  Since we have little more than cookies and soda in our frig at home we decided to stop in St. Remy de Provence for a quick dinner.  I was hankering for pizza and it was more or less on our way.  As we approached centre ville, we noticed first that it was very parked in (usually indicates a festival, of which there are many).  Then we noticed that there tall metal fence rails along the main route.  We amazingly found a parking space right in the center of town (someone must have JUST pulled out).  There were signs warning about the danger of bulls from 8 pm to midnight.  That's what the fences were for - to protect the spectators from the bull.  We found a restaurant right next to the main road and learned from the water that the bull run would take place in about a half an hour.  We lucked out, but I had to have spagetti - no pizza at this place.

I have no pictures of the bull run, unfortunately because it was fairly dark by the time they let the bulls (I think there were two or three) out of the truck.  There were about 12 cowboys and cowgirls on white horses.  They basically herded the bulls, one at a time, through the street into the truck.  It was quite a spectacle but not what we had expected.  We were thinking Pamploma where there are tons of bulls, but this was pretty interesting.  The fences were such that people could go through them but the bulls and horses couldn't.  The young boys would squeeze through and chase the bull as it ran up the street trying to touch it.  We felt a little sorry for the bull, of course.  Must be a little terrifying for them, but they appeared pretty well trained - except for the one who came back out of the truck immediately and chased the cowboys back down the street.  That was pretty exciting.

After several detours for closed routes, we finally arrived home around 10:30 at night.  We had travelled 265 km (160 miles).  Below is a map of our route yesterday.  I think we are done exploring the wetlands!