dunes, boats, and… oysters!

Yesterday was a pretty great day. One of the reasons was that it didn’t rain once! It was super-sunny and warm all day long and it actually felt like spring is supposed to feel. The other reason was that I got to go on a tour with a student group to see a little more of the southwest region of France and the ocean!

We loaded the bus in the morning and our first stop was the Dune de Pyla (pronounced pee-lah), located right on the Atlantic coast. It’s about 45 minutes from Bordeaux and it’s the highest dune in Europe, therefore a big tourist attraction. Climbing the dune kind of makes you feel like you’re in a desert, only there are trees surrounding it, and once you get to the top, you can see the ocean. At the top we encountered a sandstorm (which I guess wasn’t really a sandstorm; it was just the wind blowing some sand… but it’s the closest to a sandstorm I’ve ever experienced!), and when we finally descended, I got to dip my feet in the ocean for the second time in my life! (The first time was in Spain in January)

After having a nice little pique-nique by the water, we climbed back over the dune to catch the bus to go to Arcachon, a little city on the coast located on the Bassin d’Arcachon. We took a 3-hr boat ride around the basin, where we learned about the basin and the cultivation of oysters, which is a huge region specialty here. There are so many oysters in the basin that they actually export them early in their lives to other coastal towns around France, Spain, and Italy. There’s a whole world of oyster trading I had no idea existed!

The highlight of the day was when we stopped at a tiny little coastal town called Le Canon for our dégustation des huîtres, or “oyster tasting.” Yes, that’s right: I tried an oyster! And it was raw! I figured I had to because a) I paid 10€ for this day and I needed to get my money’s worth, and b) I didn’t try the escargot at Laura’s the other day, so I felt that I needed to try a regional specialty while I was in France. So, I loosened the little sucker with a fork, squirted some lemon juice on it, closed my eyes, and slurped it back, swallowing without chewing it. But I suppose I have to explain that it didn’t go exactly as smoothly as that: it took me about 10 minutes to work up the courage to pick up the thing, then another 10 minutes to separate it from the shell, douse it with lemon juice, and then interview everyone who’d just done it (which included every question about the process I could think of). Then I did it, or at least I tried to do it: the first time I tried to eat it, I only got the juice. Then I had to go through the whole process again. My friend Carly came over and almost made me call the whole thing off when she said, “Jenny, just do it! They’re not good anymore after they’re dead!” I had forgotten that I was about to eat a live animal until she said that. See, if you eat an oyster raw, it is technically still alive until you detach it from its shell. I yelled at her for that comment. But then I ate it anyway. Honestly, it didn’t taste like much of anything. It was just really slimy and the lemon juice covered up the real taste. But I did it! I was very proud of myself.

Below are a few photos of the Dune and the place where we had our dégustation. In the first pictures, you’ll notice Carly pretending to grimper the Dune (grimper is French for “to scale”). In the picture of the little village, you can see some sticks sticking out of the water. These are called pignettes because they are young pine trees (pin, en français) and are used to mark the spots of the parcs à huîtres, little areas where the oysters are cultivated. We saw tons of clusters of these sticks everywhere around the basin. The last picture is of the beau bâteau that we took for our cruise.

A la semaine prochaine! (Till next week!)