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| Wine-less for the moment |
The Patris family brought Hannah, Caitlin, and me to Camargue, which was easily one of my favorite trips of the year. We started out in Aigues-Mortes, in the Place Saint Louis, which has a prominent statue of Saint Louis, aka King Louis IX of France. The statue is holding his right hand up and apparently, is well-suited to balancing a bottle of wine, which happens on a regular basis after eventful nights in Aigues-Mortes. (Empty bottles, of course!)
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| Remparts from afar |
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| Girls with the Tower |
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The city is surrounded by remparts, ancient walls that enclosed and protected the city starting in the mid-13th century, when they were built. The name Aigues-Mortes means “dead waters” and stems from the fact that the sea used to come right up to the edge of Aigues-Mortes, making it a perfect port for Saint Louis to use as a starting point for his crusades. The remparts are a full mile long and have towers interspersed, allowing Saint Louis and his men to keep an eye out. The most famous tower is le Tour de Constance, which for a long time served as a prison for protestants. We didn’t have an ‘official’ tour guide as we wound our way around, so Hannah decided to take on the role and explain to us important things like that the holes we saw in the wall were more than likely port-o-potties for soldiers. I’m not sure if that’s true or not…
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| So pink! |
From the top, we could see out to the salt manufacturing plants (sauniers) which have been in existence since the mid-1800s. (Salt has been harvested since the 12th century) We took a tour of the salt fields (les salins), which are ENORMOUS- 18 km long and 13.5 km wide, similar in size to the entire city of Paris. Anyway, the way it works is that they let the water from the Mediterranean flow in starting in the spring and they flood the fields. The water evaporates, leaving behind a more-and-more concentrated salty solution, which turns bright pink! The reason behind the pink is algae. Naturally occurring algae produce the color, and the predators that would normally eat them are unable to survive in the high saline waters, so the algae thrive and change the color of the entire body of water. Eventually all of the water evaporates, and voila… It leaves behind huge harvests of salt. Harvests typically take place one time per year in September, before it starts to rain! The salt is then washed and processed and left out to dry for a full year, so some of the mounds that we saw are the remains of the 2010 harvest.
The Camargue region is famous for three kinds of animals: flamingos, horses, and bulls. We were lucky enough to see all three on our trip! The flamingos get their pink color from eating artémias, a type of small pink shrimp that gets its color from eating the pink algae. Someday I’d like to go see a bull-fight in the area; they differ from the traditional Spanish bullfights in that these bulls are smaller and rather than trying to ride or otherwise antagonize the bulls, a small rosette is placed between the bull’s horns and the razateurs try to grab it without getting crushed by the bull. 
Last but not least was the symbol of Camargue as seen in its capital, Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer: the Camargue Cross. The cross/trident used by bull-herders represents belief, the fisherman’s anchor represents hope, and the heart represents the charity of Saint Mary.
